#4 - What's in Your Resilience Recipe? R.I.S.E.

Hey there, Resilient Souls. Welcome back to the Resiliency Project. Last episode, we explored the big question: what makes one person get up and another give up? Spoiler alert, you can't run out of resilience. But it sure can feel like you have.

This episode delves into the dynamic nature of resilience, likening it to a rubber band that stretches, contracts, and adapts. Discover how resilience is not just a tool but a choice that requires maintenance and a personal recipe to thrive.

We break down the R-I-S-E framework: Relationships, Inner Strength, Spiritual Practice, and Endurance, and how these four pillars form the foundation of resilience. Explore how to build and maintain strong connections, manage emotions, find meaning and purpose, and maintain good health.

Finally, we discuss the crucial role of identity in resilience. How do we honor and grieve our old identities while embracing new ones? Join us as we navigate the transformation from the old you to the next best version of you.

Stay tuned for more insights and personal growth. I'm Annie, and this is The Resiliency Project.

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
Hey there, Resilient Souls. Welcome back to the Resiliency Project.
Last episode, we asked the big question, what makes one person get up and another person give up?
Spoiler alert, you cannot run out of resilience.
But sweet souls, I sure know it can feel like you have.
So if you can't lose your resilience completely, then it means somewhere deep

(00:27):
down, even when it doesn't feel like it's down there. Resilience must be a choice.
And I think at that moment, my choice was to either get up or give up because
this in-between stage of not knowing what to do, I couldn't sit there anymore, not one more second.
And since I've always been, you know, the overachiever, I was going to choose

(00:50):
the get up camp, even though I didn't know how or what to choose.
That's when I realized maybe I was thinking about resilience all wrong.
Resilience, it isn't like a tool. Maybe I'd been using it like a tool that you
take out of the toolbox, like a hammer, use it and stow away for later when you need it again.
I think that's what I'd been using resiliency as, kind of a tool I took for granted.

(01:14):
But now I'm realizing resilience is far more dynamic.
Resilience is far more complex than a tool that you can take out and use and stow away.
I think it's more like a rubber band. It stretches, it contracts, it adapts, it pivots.
And just like a rubber band, you can stretch it too far and you might need a

(01:34):
little bit of rest, a little maintenance to get it back in shape.
Maybe resilience was more like that, that sounded more true.
And at least that realization that I could maybe give it some some maintenance
and put it back together, that realization gave me hope.
So I'm thinking about all the things that go into resilience.
Oh my gosh, it could go on for days and there's no answer that's really wrong.

(01:56):
What did you think goes into your resilience recipe?
All right, mental toughness, grit, etc.
But the list kept going and going because, yeah, mental toughness and grit,
definitely, I have used those so much.
But mental toughness, when you're in the middle of an argument with your partner,
probably not a skill you

(02:17):
want to over exercise at the moment generally doesn't
turn out well in that moment when you're
arguing with someone you love very much and you really don't want
to but you want you want resolution the resilient thing in that moment is vulnerability
compassion so I don't think there's any right or wrong of what goes into your
resilience recipe I think it's about deciding what do you want to create for

(02:42):
yourself right now what is the next best version of you.
And for me, I decided I needed to rise.
Get up or give up. I'm going to get up and I'm going to rise.
So I put that up on the wall. R-I-S-E.
I know it's cheesy, but look, whatever works, people.
I attributed it to my resilience recipe being R, relationships,

(03:03):
I, inner strength, S, spiritual practice, and E, endurance, rise.
That's the promise I made to myself, I had to start somewhere.
I mean, I was laying there post-surgery, couldn't do anything,
no job, broken heart. What else did I have to do?
But you know what? I kind of like that recipe.
Let's dive into it and break that R-I-S-E down just a little bit.

(03:25):
And I'm really liking that. I think it's more like the four legs of a table
supporting our resilience.
You see where I'm going? Super cute. I asked for your resilience recipe and now we're doing a table.
Yeah, I'm liking it. Let's go with this. So R for relationships,
that's everything social, Social.
Everything's social. Building and maintaining strong, supportive connections is crucial.

(03:47):
We do not get through this life by ourselves, ever. You can't do it alone.
Whether it's family, friends, colleagues, therapists, having a solid support
network really does make all the difference.
Really, really does. Think about empathy, effective communication,
heck, even just venting, volunteering, your community involvement,

(04:10):
giving back to something bigger than yourself, and the ability to resolve conflicts
in a healthy way, not in a toxic way, in a healthy way.
These are ingredients that fortify our social resilience, and we need them.
Those are skills we need every day, our relationships and the ability to foster
and maintain them. Inner strength,

(04:32):
I call this the emotional. The eye of the rise is emotional inner strength.
This is all about managing.
Oh, I'm so bad at this. Or I have been managing and understanding your emotions.
This was my weakest leg of the table. Self-awareness, self-compassion,
adaptability, and positive self-talk. Key, all key.

(04:55):
And you know what's funny is I have those things generally for other people
to the extreme. I didn't and I'm still working on having those things for myself.
And that's not just a bunch of woo-woo talk. You really do need to be kind to yourself.
It's about being kind to yourself in times of struggle and being able to maintain

(05:17):
a positive internal dialogue, not some Pollyanna pie in the sky attitude where
you're in denial about problems.
But no, you're having a positive attitude objectively.
Emotional regulation. Feelings are not facts, right? Right. That's a big one
for me. So I had to and I'm still working on emotional regulation.
It's like the oil that keeps this whole engine running smoothly.

(05:38):
You can't overlook inner strength. Then, of course, spiritual.
This isn't just about religion. I don't care about your beliefs.
Maybe you simply believe in only you. I don't care about your religion.
I'm glad for what works for you. But it's about finding meaning and purpose,
connection with yourself, connection with a a higher power, something bigger than yourself, right?

(06:01):
Practices like mindfulness, meditation, faith, going to church,
prayer, if that's your thing, belief in something outside of yourself,
or at minimum, being grateful for what you have can really center and calm your mind.
The spiritual resilience can give us a sense of grounding, but also direction.

(06:21):
And that grounding can be very, very, very significant. And finally,
the E is for endurance, physical.
And look, everyone under 50, I want you to really listen.
Physical resilience is about maintaining good health.
You cannot take it for granted. And you have to do that through eyes and nutrition.
And most importantly, rest. Because I know some people out there working 60

(06:45):
hours a week with a full-time family, a house and extended family,
all the responsibilities you have, you're thinking sleep, that's a thing of the past.
It does catch up with you. And I really want you to think about how you can
make that a priority, how your physical health can support how you support others.
It's a real thing. It's a real thing. So it's about building stamina and managing

(07:08):
stress and establishing healthy routines.
As someone who is terrible at routines, I need a routine the most.
It is a huge struggle for me. Maybe you can relate.
Physical resilience supports everything else we do, like another sturdy leg
of our resilience table, okay?

(07:28):
That's how I broke down my resilience recipe in four big categories.
Relationships, inner strength, my emotions, spiritual, my mental and spiritual
health, and then my endurance, my physical health.
All of those are four legs of my foundation of my recipe for resilience.
So what is in your resilience recipe? Think about what you need to rise.

(07:52):
Relationships, inner strength, spiritual practice, endurance.
Those are the four pillars that support my ability at least to bounce back and thrive.
And if you don't have your components of your resilience recipe yet,
you can borrow mine until you think of the ones that you want.
So I had to take a look at what each one of those were to me personally.
Now, as I was figuring out my
resilience recipe, I realized something crucial. Oh gosh, this was huge.

(08:16):
To truly understand where my resilience needed maintenance, I realized I had to ask, who am I now?
Who am I now that I have survived so much? Have I asked myself that?
It was the realization in talking to others that we discovered,
where do those dark nights of the soul, because that's where your resilience

(08:37):
is tested a little bit, those dark nights of the soul, when you feel helpless,
power, if even for a moment, when we couldn't find our resilience,
the common denominator, we realized in talking over,
you know, maybe some adult libations, the common denominator was that our identity
had changed somehow in this dark night of the soul.

(09:00):
I was no longer a wife. I was a widow. Before that, my role as wife had turned
to caretaker, another identity.
It doesn't matter if you're ready for it or not. It's coming.
When I lost my parents, I certainly felt like an orphan.
And I think that's common no matter what age you lose your parents.
When relationships end and we're no longer identifying as part of a couple, that hurts.

(09:24):
That's an identity that we have to let go of. Even losing a job for a moment,
it can feel like you are no longer the provider for your family.
And that is definitely an identity that people take very, very seriously.
Whether willingly or unwillingly, identity changes can be incredibly challenging.
I went home and visited my high school friends, my dear, dear friends,

(09:47):
and some of them were Gen X, are shockingly entering the frame of time where they can retire.
Because they started, for example, my dear friend, she started teaching right
after college and she put in her 30 years teaching and now she's retiring.
I assure you, she's pretty happy about the fact that she can go address her

(10:07):
bladder issues and go to the ladies room anytime that she feels like now,
which will be a huge identity shift for meeting a teacher.
And she knows, she's laughing right now. She knows who I'm talking about her. Hey girl.
That's a positive change that she's embracing, but it doesn't mean letting go
of the old identity is easy because there's that in-between stage where,

(10:28):
yeah, you're embracing this and this is good, but you still don't know.
You're not fully embracing whoever you are next because you don't know who you are next.
You hear it all the time. People retire. They can't wait to retire and they
get home and after the newness of it all wears off, they're kind of down and lost.
It's that identity phase where we just don't know.

(10:48):
Even for me, here I was, single, no relationship, no job.
I could completely, for the most part, reinvent my life any way I want.
Any way I wanted. And most people would be like, that's pretty cool.
I'm telling you, even when a sea of choices is ours for the taking,
there's still a painful part about letting go of that old identity and embracing the new one.

(11:14):
It's funny, the spectacular you, the amazing, resilient you that got you here,
many times you can't take that person to where you're going next.
So that the tough, resilient caretaker, widow, house renovator,
boss, white knuckling through all these problems and handling things, I had to let her go.

(11:35):
And man, she did a good job. But that's not who I'm going to be next.
And I didn't know who I was going to be next because I had never asked myself
in this chapter what would make me happy.
Was I still trying to be a good partner wife to someone, a good employee from
my quote unquote old life because that made sense in my old life?

(11:58):
Had I ever asked who am I now and what would make me happy now?
And I don't think I'd had that luxury before.
And I don't know if it is a luxury. I think we should be asking ourselves that more routinely.
In our next episode, we'll dive into this role of identity and resilience.

(12:18):
How do we honor and grieve our old identities and embrace our new ones, explore our new ones?
How does this transformation from old you to the next best version of you?
How does that impact our ability to get up rather than give up? Stay tuned.
I'm Annie, and this is The Resiliency Project.