The Importance of Resilience

By Chris Stanton
The Remodeler's Advisor Newsletter


The Importance of Resilience We live in a time of accelerating change full of hope and great opportunity. But it's also obvious that we also face significant challenges - personal, social and global. This newsletter primarily focuses on the business of building and remodeling but none of us check our souls at the office door. We have families, we listen to the news, we get flipped off on the way to work. Some of us have even surrendered to the 24/7 electronic dashboard that keeps us running adrenaline way beyond formerly sane levels.

Stress is one of the primary byproducts of a lifestyle inundated with change and stimuli. And while stress in and of itself is not necessarily bad, there is a plethora of evidence that too much stress and/or poorly managed stress are leading causes of illness, accelerated aging, irritation, distractedness and excess wear and tear. No earth-shattering news here. But how we respond to stress and the constant roar of change is critical.

One key to adapting more quickly when too much stress is occurring is learning how to increase and maintain your resilience - the ability to withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions. Resilience gives you the power to prepare yourself in advance of a potentially stressful event. It also gives you the power to reset your system and to recoup or bounce back faster when experiencing unexpected challenges. Resilient individuals have the sustained capacity to create an energetic cushion that helps reduce the stressful effects of overload, time demands and resistances more effectively. Building a reservoir of resilience is also essential if we want to effectively serve others and make valuable contributions towards creating a new and better world. A portion of my coaching always focuses on building this capacity. But the solutions are also simple (with a caveat) and readily available. Love and care and appreciation and kindness and compassion and laughter and meditation and breathing and exercise and resting and being in nature all work great. Simply stopping for a moment to catch oneself in an internal rant and gently shifting your energy to a more positive (heart) space does too. The world is not going to slow down. In fact, I suspect it's actually speeding up right now. People won't need you less. In fact, most evidence points to accelerating stress across the planet.

So why not start increasing your effectiveness and health by taking better CARE of yourself? Here's the caveat: because it's so damn hard to remember to stop long enough to remember to stop-for a minute or so, a few times a day-and escape the "tyranny of the immediate", all those "have-to's" and never-ending "to-do lists". Learn this one habit and change your life-radically!!!