
How to Develop Self-Reliance to Better Navigate through Life
What is resilience, why is it so important, and how do you know if you’re resilient enough?
Resilience refers to the process and outcome of gracefully navigating and evolving through every life experience, with integrity, especially through whatever needs to be done at any given moment and, through challenging life experiences without getting broken.
It’s having the mental, emotional, and behavioural flexibility and the ability to adjust to both internal and external demands with whatever life brings forth for you. It’s your ability to withstand adversity and bounce back and grow despite life’s downturns, to turn every challenge into a possibility for growth. To flow with life no matter what comes your way.
Being resilient requires a skill set that you can grow over time and an internal support system : Self-reliance.
It requires being grounded, wakeful, vibrant, and balanced from the inside out. Building resilience takes time, inner work, and a well-regulated nervous system. It demands strength, courage, and a lifestyle that is supported by clarity and healthy values. You’ll likely experience setbacks along the way, and that’s ok.
Resilience is strongly influenced by personal behaviors and skills such as self-esteem and communication abilities, as well as external things, like social support and resources available to you.
What is resilience, why is it so important, and how do you know if you’re resilient enough?
Being resilient does not mean that you don’t experience stress, emotional upheaval, and suffering, rather, it involves moving through emotional pain and suffering. It means you have the resources within you to move through it with grace.
People face all kinds of situations in life. There are personal crises, such as illness, loss of a loved one, abuse, bullying, job loss, and financial instability. There is also the shared reality of tragic events in life, such as natural disasters, a global pandemic, and war. People learn to cope with and live through very challenging life experiences. How these situations are lived and transcended without collapsing but with acceptance and courage implies self-resilience.
Resilience theory refers to the ideas surrounding how people are affected by and adapt to challenging things like adversity, change, loss, and risk. Flexibility, adaptability, and perseverance can help us tap into our self-reliance by being conscious of our thoughts and behaviours.
Resilience involves these five principles
• Gratitude
• Compassion
• Acceptance
• Meaning
• Forgiveness
The Top Factors that Build Resilience
Developing resilience involves a combination of inner strengths and outer resources. Some of the key factors that contribute to one’s personal resilience include:
• Your way of perceiving life.
• Your state of balance or imbalance.
• Coping strategies and paths of safety.
• Your support systems, both internal and external.
• The ways you view and engage with the world.
• The availability & state of consciousness you are in.
Let’s dive deeper into the combination of factors that contribute to building self-reliance.
- One’s supportive social systems, which can include immediate or extended family, community, friends, and organizations, foster one’s resilience in times of crisis or trauma and supports resilience in the individual. However, it stems from within a person’s capacity for growth & inner trust.
- A positive sense of self and clarity in one’s strengths can stave off feelings of helplessness in the face of challenge. A study published in November 2020 in Frontiers in Psychology found that self-esteem and resilience were closely related.
- Coping skills and problem-solving skills help empower a person who has to work through difficulties and overcome pain. Research finds that when you have a spiritual connection to life you are way more resilient as you do not have that sense of separation.
- Connection gives the ability to intuitively understand something that impacts your soul and gives meaning to your life. You can experience spiritual connection by having a relationship to the Creator, their ancestors, Mother Earth, and all living things.
- Being able to communicate clearly and effectively helps people seek support, mobilize resources, and take action. Research shows that those who are able to interact with, show empathy toward, and inspire compassion and trust in others tend to be more resilient.
- The capacity to manage potentially overwhelming emotions, also referred to as emotional intelligence, or seek assistance to work through them helps people maintain focus when overcoming a challenge, and has been linked to improved resilience.
Why is Resilience so Important?
Resilience is what gives you the emotional strength to cope with trauma, adversity, and hardship but also to experience joy, connection, and aliveness. Resilient people have the resources, strengths, and skills to overcome challenges and work through setbacks. People who lack resilience are more likely to feel overwhelmed or helpless and rely on unhealthy coping strategies, relationships & situations such as avoidance, co-dependence, isolation, addiction, and self-medication.
2-Step Self-Care Plan for Boosting Resilience
Embrace Nature
The very human desire to interact with nature and the natural world is part of our DNA — connecting on even a basic level with plants, pets, and other living creatures, natural materials, or the outdoors helps us calm stress, better focus, and lift the mood. There’s lots of research documenting this effect. Gardening, for example, has been shown to have mental health benefits.
How to Do It?
• Step outside: include a daily walk in nature in your daily routine.
• Add indoor plants if you have the space and budget.
• Fill your home with natural textures, colors, fabrics, floor or wall covering patterns, artwork, or other objects made from natural materials — or that in some way embody designs found in nature (such as shells, flowers, leaves, and waves).
Shift your Perspective
Your attention instinctively tends to go to the place of greatest stress in your life. If your attention stays focused on the stress for a long period of time, it can suppress your immunity and create an imbalance in your nervous system. Zoom in when you feel overwhelmed by the past or anxious about the future. To do it:
• Focus on your surroundings: register what you see, smell, taste, touch, and hear. Become present through your senses.
• Shift your focus to a simple task you need to accomplish today or can finish now.
• Read a good book, enjoy a fun video, or chat with someone who helps you feel worthy.
Zoom out when the present moment feels difficult, upsetting, or uncomfortable. Look at things from a little distance or a higher perspective. To do it:
• Ask yourself whether this will matter in five years.
• Close your eyes & take a deep breath, then exhale sighing out.
• Imagine yourself rising higher and seeing the situation from a certain altitude.