Five Simple Ways to Increase Your Resilience
Every day, as I walk the halls of Fellowship Square-Mesa I am reminded of what amazing people live in our community. Residents who have overcome a setback of some kind but demonstrate to everyone their capacity to recover and bounce back. According to the dictionary, the definition of resilience is just that, “the capacity to recover from difficulties and bounce back.”
Here are a few common characteristics people that demonstrate resilience possess.
· Education. Learning everything you can about your situation. You need to become your best advocate. Attend a health & wellness class, a lifelong learning class, a support group or meet with your physician; ask questions and be curious about your situation.
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Accept. You may not be able to do everything you did before in the way that you did it, but resilient people discover a way to overcome their limitations and explore a new reality.
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Build on strengths, not weaknesses. Seek to understand fully what is really going on, including how you may have played a role in causing the adversity. Changing your diet or increasing exercise may be simple things that might have a big impact.
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Spiritual. Also identified as core values, these are the beliefs that you count on. The power of prayer, the support of your family, or friends. Believe that you can make a difference in the future despite the constraints imposed by reality.
The good news is that we can become more resilient as we age. Here are five ways to increase your resilience as you age:
1. Find a new sense of purpose; look for ways that you can make a difference in your community.
2. Identify positive beliefs in your abilities; write them down and read them every day.
3. Develop a strong social network. Reconnect with that old friend or make a new friend.
4. Embrace change. Change is real; it just happened to you, what are you going to do about it?
5. Be optimistic. Everyone has their own aches and pains; become the positive person with interesting things to talk about.
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