RESILIENCE - Chapter 2

TYPES OF RESILIENCE FOR ALL OF LIFE’S HARDSHIPS

Interestingly, there are four types of resilience

These are: psychological, emotional, physical, and community. Each type is useful for different situations, meaning you will use specific types of resilience to combat specific scenarios in your life. This allows you to tailor the resilience strategy for the difficult situation you are currently facing. At the same time, though, it is important to note that most adverse situations require more than one type of resilience at a time. Let's take a look at the four types of resilience. For every resilience type, we will look at how each type affects major life problems, temporary problems, and daily problems.

 Major Life Problems: Major life problems are those that have a lasting impact on your life. This can include the death of a loved one, incurable illness, divorce, losing a job, or anything else that will impact your life significantly.  Temporary Problems: Temporary problems are those that disrupt your daily life but do not last more than a month or so. Things such as the flu, a tough deadline at work, your child’s upcoming math exam, or a tough criticism said by your significant other are all temporary problems.  Daily Problems: Daily problems are those that we face every day. Everyday chores, an annoying coworker, or exercising regularly are all daily problems. Daily problems rarely have a significant impact on your life. Psychological Resilience Psychological resilience, or mental resilience, is when you are able to think clearly, flexibly, and creatively. In many ways, psychological resilience is your ability to problem-solve, conceptualize goals, and execute strategies. Without psychological resilience, you might not be able to effectively think through tough situations.  Major Life Problems: Psychological resilience is key to bouncing back from major life changes, such as the death of a loved one, divorce, or career change. If you are not psychologically resilient, it can be difficult to interpret the pain you're feeling and strategize away to becoming happier and healthier in the future.  Temporary Problems: Instances such as temporary illness, an impending deadline, or an angry client are all instances of short-term problems that require psychological resilience. Psychological resilience will allow you to overcome these challenges by interpreting the problem and coming up with effective solutions.  Daily Problems: Every day, we face daily challenges that require us to be psychologically resilient. For example, whenever you are doing puzzles, trying a new hobby, or reading a book, you have to be engaged and have psychological resilience. Although daily life might not require high amounts of psychological resilience, psychological resilience will allow you to better enjoy and succeed in your daily life. Emotional Resilience Arguably one of the most difficult types of resilience to master is emotional resilience. Emotional resilience is your ability to accept adversities and find positive outlooks in grim circumstances. Emotional resilience is keenly connected to emotional intelligence, emotional awareness, perseverance, and optimism.  Major Life Problems: Emotional resilience is an important way to handle major life problems, such as getting fired, a divorce, or a death in the family. It allows us to understand our emotions but also understand that it will get better over time. Without emotional resilience, major life problems can easily feel overwhelming and all-encompassing.  Temporary Problems: Often, we find ourselves angry or upset whenever someone doesn't act the way we think they should. This creates temporary problems that require emotional resilience. Emotional resilience allows us to understand that the problem is only temporary, cope with our emotions in a healthy way, and prepare our emotions for the next time we find ourselves in a similar situation.  Daily Problems: Every day, emotional resilience is used to help us imagine, dream, and create the life we want. We often reflect on our lives through writing, making art, or walking. Emotional resilience is the key to helping us understand our reflections and feelings. Physical Resilience Physical resilience is our body's capacity to face and accomplish physical challenges, maintain stamina, and recover whenever injured. Physical resilience can be important if you have a major life-altering injury or find yourself in a life-threatening situation.  Major Life Problems: It is important to be physically resilient whenever you have a life-altering injury such as spinal surgery or a car accident. After these injuries, it will take months to recover to your original state, if at all. Your ability to keep moving, work through the pain, and get stronger is an example of physical resilience.  Temporary Problems: Temporary problems that require physical resilience include things like marathons, hiking, or sports. These instances require physical resilience, but you often voluntarily put yourself in these situations. With that being said, there are also situational problems that you have no control over, such as domestic violence. In these situations, you need physical resilience in order to perform your best under short-term pressure.  Daily Problems: Every day, we need to be physically resilient. From walking to getting a good night's sleep, physical resilience allows us to stay healthy and happy. Eating healthily, exercising daily, and sleeping well are all parts of physical resilience on a daily basis. Unlike the two previous forms of resilience, physical resilience is physically painful and physically taxing. It will be easier to see the results of physical resilience, though. Additionally, emotional and psychological resilience can impact your physical resilience. For example, suppose you are in a bad car accident and need to go through extensive physical therapy. If you are not emotionally and psychologically resilient, it will be more difficult to work through the pain and be physically resilient. Community Resilience The last form of resilience, community resilience, is different from the other three forms. The first three forms of resilience deal with one's ability to be resilient to different situations. Community resilience, on the other hand, deals with a community's ability to be resilient and respond to adverse situations. Community resilience is important for instances such as natural disasters, acts of violence, or economic hardships. Examples of community resilience include Newtown, Connecticut after the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting; New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina; and New York City after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Although community resilience is highly important, we will not focus on community resilience in this book. Instead, we will focus on the first three forms of resilience since they are what you have control over. Using The Forms Of Resilience Let's look at a stressful scenario and discuss how each form of resilience would or would not help the situation. Take, for instance, that you have lost your job and do not know where you will get your livable income.  Psychological Resilience: Psychological resilience is important when you lose your job. It will allow you to both learn from your mistakes and strategize or brainstorm ideas for new job leads. In other words, it helps you think your way out of the problem.  Emotional Resilience: Emotional resilience is important when you lose your job too. Losing your job can take a blow to your self-esteem, causing you to feel inadequate and incompetent. Emotional resilience allows you to interpret those feelings and see the light at the end of the tunnel. In other words, it prevents your emotions from getting the best of you.  Physical Resilience: Physical resilience may help you when you lose your job. If you are finding that getting fired is extremely difficult for you emotionally and mentally, you should use your physical resilience to offset those feelings. You can go to the gym, jog, or eat healthily in order to combat those feelings of inadequacy and stress. This situation exemplifies that you may need to use more than one, if not all, types of resilience to combat adverse situations.