#Resilience in the #NewYear 2018 Instead of Resolutions

www.pixabay.com gerault 2018 Fireworks for the New Year -#Resolutions Resilience

Build Resilience, Not Resolutions

I’ve never really made resolutions for the New Year. I assume it’s because of my parents never made resolutions.  I do like to review the year that is passing. Instead of building resolutions, I like to review my past behaviors, decisions, choices, successes, and failures. I do this as a means to reflect on things, not judge. As humans, we can be very hard on ourselves and others. Reflection is important so we can evaluate our life and adjust things as we move forward. people want to make new resolutions every year which is hard to create consistency and commitment to resolutions because you’re changing them every year.  Why not work on building resilience year round and over time you’ll build quite a bit of it.  Yet, we need more than reflection to stay positive and grow on the other side of trauma, death, and loss. We must build resilience in our lives to be able to thrive after trauma. Resilience is what enables humans to stay positive through life transitions.

It’s the New Year, please don’t Make Resolutions

The New Year is the perfect time to renew your commitment to being resilient or start to build resilience in your life. Resilience is the key to aging with grit, determination, and positivity. Time and again I have witnessed “Resilient Thinkers” whether through my own aging parents or through senior clients. It’s resilience that gives human beings their guts to move through life’s hard times and grow somehow on the other end.

“Resilience is the result of successful adaptation to adversity. It is revealed by an individual’s ability to cope and recover from crises, sustain a sense of purpose and vitality, and emerge stronger from stressful experiences. Resilience is a dynamic characteristic that may shift according to the circumstance.”
Resilience in Aging
Erica S. Edwards, MSW, Morrison Institute for Public Policy, Arizona State University John Hall, Ph.D. and Alex Zautra, Ph.D., Resilience Solutions Group, Arizona State University

5 Steps to Build Resilience in Your Life:

1. Accept things as they are in life now. Acceptance is the answer to many things in life. Building resilience starts with acceptance. It allows for processing the moment in real terms with real facts after the emotions are processed.

2. “Adjust as You Go Mentality” which is one of my workshops that discusses the importance of being flexible in our mind, body, spirit. “Adjust as You Go Mentality” allows you to address the immediate needs of the moment and move forward.

3. Stay connected. Human beings are social by nature and as we age, having a connection to community, friends, family, nature, and spirituality helps to build resilience and hope into your life. This makes it easier to be positive and makes living life easier.

4. Coping skills are essential. Having coping skills and continuing to grow those skills to include meditation, mindfulness, spiritual connection, exercise, therapy, and writing are all excellent ways to increase and develop coping skills. Volunteering is also another great way to grow coping skills because when you help others you also help yourself.

5. Grow and thrive after experiences – expand after trauma. This is the most important step because you must learn to grow and thrive after transitions, trauma, death, and disease to engage in a resilient, positive aging life.

 

By no means is this easy to do and I don’t discount the depths of inner strength and determination it takes to walk through life transitions. I’m providing an avenue to consider because “it is what it is” sometimes and we must move forward. Everyone builds resilience in their own way in their own time, just do it! Make things easier on yourself and build resilience in the New Year!

Link to 30 min Webinar: How to Build Resilience & Stay Positive