5 Practices to Create Resilience to Win in Today’s World

Depression in America is at an all-time high, and it continues to rise.

The percentage of U.S. adults who report having been diagnosed with depression at some point in their lifetime has reached 29.0%, with nearly ten percentage points higher than in 2015. That’s a crazy statistic, considering we live in the best time in human history. Life is exponentially easier than it was for our ancestors.

With advances in technology and innovation, society has become softer than ever.

Something our ancestors knew–and had–that’s severely missing from the world today is this: it takes an unwavering resilience to accomplish our goals.

But you can’t go from soft to resilient overnight. It takes time and practice. In the book Micro-Resilience: Minor Shifts for Major Boosts in Focus, Drive, and Energy, written by Bonnie St. John and Allen P. Haines, they teach us how we can build up our resilience with micro-resilience–little things you can do to create the instant resilience needed every day.

To build micro-resilience, add these five practices suggested by the authors.

1. Refocus Your Brain

While the nature of work has changed drastically since our ancestors roamed, our brains haven’t caught up.

Today’s professional challenges demand abstract thinking, people skills, and the ability to deal with the abundance of overwhelming information and constant connectivity of the internet.

At any given time, you are juggling multiple mental tasks. This activity adds to a taxed brain that’s drained, can’t focus, and becomes reactive.

Multitasking is a lie. It works against you and splits your focus up.

Constantly switching gears requires extra brainpower, increasing the time needed to complete tasks and the chances of mistakes.

Here are  some tools to help you use your brainpower in better ways:

• Focus zones: Create periods of focused, uninterrupted portions of your day to conquer your most significant tasks.
  
  A focus zone can be a place and/or time where you silence interruptions. Block them all out.
  
  Communication is your best friend here. Explain what you’re doing to your family and team so they know not to bother you. Create a way for them to communicate if it’s urgent.
  

• Take notes: Note-taking saves mental energy, supports memory function, and allows creativity to bloom.
  
  Writing things down and putting them into practice is what makes it effective. So, to avoid brain fog, have a journal or notebook.
  

• Time your decisions: Too many decisions in succession lead to mental fatigue—lowering the quality of following choices.
  
  To evade this effect, make critical decisions earlier in the day (if possible) or after recharging your batteries.

2. Reset Your Primitive Alarms

Our brains react very strongly to any sort of threat. This response comes from evolution.

In paleolithic times, an instant “fight-or-flight” response was critical to survival. You need more advanced skills to deal with everyday challenges today.

If you allow anger or fear to take over, it’ll spike your stress levels, causing you to say or do things you’ll later regret.

Other times, the “threat” may not even exist. But the brain goes nuts, jumping to conclusions and melting down.

Here are a few ways to prevent this brain hijack:

• Deep breathing: Proper deep breathing can calm you down. Shallow breathing worsens stress. Breathe deeply down into your abdomen.
  
  A few minutes of deep breathing relaxes the mind and balances your nervous system.
  

• Smells: Science shows that scents have a powerful impact on your emotional state.
  
  Are there certain fragrances that make you happy? Keep it around during high-stress situations.

3. Reframe Your Attitude

It’s easy to fall into pessimism.

We inherited this tendency from our ancestors, who were conditioned to respond far more intensely to negative stimuli to survive.

Meaning our brains are naturally negative. They’re acutely wired to focus on negativity much more than positivity. Which can make the world seem miserable.

A more optimistic attitude enhances productivity and creativity and deepens relationships. Here are some methods to pull you out of that cesspool of negativity.

• Dispute your beliefs: To help see things in a new way, the authors suggest the “ABCDE approach.”
  
  A: identify the Adverse event, B: clarify your Beliefs about it, C: list the Consequences based on those beliefs, D: Dispute your beliefs and consider the event in a new light, E: Energise the new belief by taking action.
  
  If consequences of a problematic situation seem inevitable—they are typically based on your pre-existing beliefs. You can change the outcome by creating and acting on a new perspective.
  
  Be patient as you seek to change or alter beliefs because it takes time.
  

• Reversals: This activity is a valuable way of looking at new options.
  
  Write down an obstacle holding you back. Then, flip the paper over and write down the opposite. (For example, if the obstacle is “I don’t have time to work out,” you would flip it and write “I do have time to work out”).
  
  Do your best to support the positive statement with evidence. Ask people you trust to help you out. When you start with an optimistic premise, the emerging ideas and possibilities can be eye-opening.

4. Refresh Your Body

The connection between physical health, emotional well-being, and mental efficiency is well-documented.

The first on the list of micro-methods to a healthier, more productive lifestyle is hydration.

When you’re stressed, you may forget to have water, but when you’re stressed, you need water the most.

Dehydration reduces cognitive abilities and creates brain fog. Alternatively, appropriate water intake keeps your brain running at peak capacity.

Staying hydrated is not only needed to live, but it’s also essential to your overall efforts towards micro-resilience—without it, the earlier strategies won’t work.

Keep a bottle of water with you. Set alarms on your phone, and make it habitual to drink water during the day. 

5. Renew Your Spirit

The final practice of micro-resilience is the hardest. The main idea is to find your purpose and tap its power in small ways.

First, examine your values and goals in-depth to determine what gives your life joy and meaning; then, create a prioritized list of personal goals (the book shows you how to do this).

You can then use these findings to recharge your spirit daily.

Once you know your purpose and have clarity on your priorities, make them visible for ongoing “micro-renewal.” A phone wallpaper, a sticky note on your bathroom mirror, a vision board, or a symbol. It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as it’s visible daily and often and inspires you.

Also, create your schedule to align more with your newly identified purpose.

The BMM Takeaway

While most of society today is soft, it’s not necessarily bad.

It’s less competition for you and your goals. They will give up when things get hard, or the journey is too turbulent. Good.

But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t work on your resilience. You should because who knows what challenges life has in store for you.

Building resilience takes time. It takes resilience to build resilience. That’s a good thing. If it came quickly, you wouldn’t value it. And you wouldn’t have the grit to endure the setbacks and challenges of pursuing your goals.

By implementing the above practices and making them habitual, you will build the resilience to outlast your competitors, overcome the challenges, and achieve your goals.