Hello there, my beautiful friends and welcome to my fifty-third blog.

My wish for you all is a magnificent 2021. May it be a year filled with peace, laughter, much happiness, loads of love, and amazing times. A year that is kind, soft, and gentle. I hope that you are able to make the most of the precious gift of each day. Make amazing memories, chase those dreams, remember that miracles do happen and that magic is real.

I have spent a great deal of time over our blessed holiday, reflecting and thinking and pondering on the year that has just been. So many mixed emotions from a personal, country, and world perspective and this brought me indirectly to the topic of today’s blog, resilience.

Resilience is the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties.  It is the care worker looking after someone when she is struggling with her own issues and grief. It is the person with a terminal illness choosing to find gratitude every day. It is the man who has lost his job and still has a ready smile and a happy demeanor. It is about finding the time to laugh with your family and friends, even when you are worried and frightened about the future. It’s about me consistently trying to perfect my tree pose.

2020 was a year when most of us found ourselves tapping into our own resilience more than perhaps we have ever had to before. This next year could prove to challenge us further. We are witnessing the loss of life on a huge scale; we are fearful for the lives of our nearest and dearest and we are actually grieving for the life we knew before. We may also be experiencing anger and helplessness as we see the daily injustices that the Coronavirus seems to illuminate. Resilience is something that we can toil over and develop. Working on these resilience skills may help as we are in the throes of the second wave of the coronavirus and the myriad of challenges that have accompanied this and will continue to do so.

So, let us take a look at what we can do to enhance our resilience.

1. Accept the situation when we cannot change it.

Flip, I struggle with this one and often feel that I do not have the courage to just accept the things that I can not change. I am trying to embrace the uncertainty, or at the very least to embrace the reality of the uncertainty, and am hoping that this will help boost my resilience. Another aspect of acceptance is honesty. In order for us to start accepting that life will never be the same again, and that is actually okay, we need to be truthful with ourselves, and then we can start to learn to accept our new and forever changing normal, and move on.

 

2. Have a sense of purpose.

Since I started my nutrition consulting business and since I took over another busy physio practice, not to mention my Neolife, I have been able to focus my energy. I have not had as much time to think about these scary things. This has helped me remain engaged in the matter at hand and has made me feel more hopeful and more courageous. I guess it is also positive that I am trying to help others and this in turn is helping me. I feel so blessed to have such a busy and fulfilling professional life. Think about what gives your life purpose and meaning. Write it down. It might be one big thing, or it might be a whole lot of little things. You will know this is your purpose when you become inspired, excited, and energized to go and live your best life. This will, in turn, help to build your resilience.

 

3. Keep calm and composed.

I am not well known for my composure. I tend to panic, overreact, and shoot from the hip when faced with a disturbing situation. Be it a flat tyre, a son who is not answering his phone or reading his messages, a traffic officer stopping my car in the middle of lockdown, to name but a few. I struggle to remain calm at these times. My aim from here on is to stop, recognize the disruption, take a minute to think properly and carefully as to how would serve me best to respond, and then act on this in a calm and composed fashion.  This is also about learning to reframe our thinking, which will then allow us to respond to these disruptions in a healthier way. Watch this space!

 

4. Be optimistic.

While we live, there is hope. Hope is the expectation of a better tomorrow or a better week or a better month. The more we hope, the happier and healthier we are. We may even live longer. This is sometimes much easier said than done, as most of us have experienced at some point during 2020. It is so easy when we are together with our loved ones on a beautiful holiday with the sun shining brightly and the sea sparkling ahead of us (even if we can not swim in it or feel the sand between our toes). However, on darker days, this can prove to be more difficult. The long days when you are in bed feeling really ill and scared with Covid (albeit for a few days only) and you long for the sympathy and love from your person who has just died. When you feel flooded with negative thoughts, own them. Think about where the thought comes from and try to offer three positive alternative thoughts. Often saying things out loud reinforces this. During these times, we should try to remember happy moments and memories and the people who are around to support us, give us strength, and help us keep positive.

 

5. Be kind.

I know that this comes up in so many of my blogs, but this is so important to me, on so many levels. I definitely am not always kind and when I am tired, frightened, insecure, overwhelmed, and have low energy, kindness is seldom on my mind. What I have learned is that when I am kind to others, and to myself, the most wonderful things happen. I can deal with things better; my healing is faster and my problem solving, and creativity get a real boost. To build up one’s resilience by being kind can be one of the easiest skills to master. Even if one just starts with one kind act a day, either for yourself or for someone else.

 

6. Be grateful.

An attitude of gratitude strengthens us in so many ways. Our relationships are enhanced, and our overall health and wellness are optimized. This honestly makes the experience of life so much more enjoyable. Over the last two years, I have made an enormous effort to be grateful and it has helped me immeasurably. It can be quite useful to write the things in your life that you are grateful for and to ponder on them during difficult and trying times. There are days when you will not be able to do this, but that is fine. Remember our baby steps, one small step at a time.

 

7. Focus on physical wellness.

Caring for your body and maintaining physical wellness plays a vital role in building resilience. Prioritize a minimum of seven hours of sleep per night. If you are like me and struggle with wakefulness in the early hours of the morning, take a Calcium/Magnesium supplement. This has helped me tremendously. Focus on healthy balanced eating. Contact me if you would like to know more about this. Maintain hydration and keep active. As well as daily exercise, do fun and mentally stimulating activities to enrich your mind and strengthen your spirit. Again, one of my oft-repeated “things”.

 

8. Forgive and forget.

I have my ups and downs with this one. If I feel that I (or my boys) have been wronged or hurt, I allow the resulting hurt to fester and I waste an immeasurable amount of time thinking about it. In the past I have struggled to let go of a grudge, I overthink and overanalyze it all and it has often been to the detriment of my mental health and wellness. More recently, I am working really hard to let go of the hurt, and it seems to be working. I am definitely noticing that my brain seems more freed up to focus on the things that make my life meaningful and the stuff that makes me happy.  My overall health benefits hugely from this, too. A work in progress. Onward and upward.

 

9. Be patient.

The patience that I am referring to here is the one in which you give others your full attention when they are speaking. This is also the patience that delays judgement and lets others complete their thoughts without interrupting them. Being a good listener, no matter what we are hearing, whether we would prefer to be talking, or we perhaps do not want to hear what the person is sharing, is an awesome art to have. This is a true marker of resilience. I am blessed that I have a number of amazing people in my life who have the patience to listen to me and I am labouring on learning to be a very good listener too. Muz always listened, and properly. I really hope to be able to master this.

 

10. Cultivate connections.

By cultivating strong relationships with a couple or more people, we are able to nurture hope and courage and build up our resilience. We can have people around you, have people to do things with, but that does not mean we have a deep connection with any of them. We can be lonely surrounded by a hundred people (fortunately we do not do that anymore). Conversely, you can feel deeply connected with one or two good friends. It is not about quantity; it is about quality. During Covid times this support network has helped so many feel less alone in times of need and isolation. Using technology, video chats or zoom are also great. For those not comfortable with this a phone call or message or delivery of a treat can be so good. This has been a huge learning curve for, me over the past year. From being the social partying butterfly, I can now honestly say that my best and most fulfilling times are those spent with one or a few dear friends and, of course, with my boys.

 

11. Learn coping skills

Deep breathing exercises help calm the nervous system during times of stress and uncertainty. Let me know if I can help you with these. Meditation, yoga, and visualization can assist with getting into the habit of clearing your mind of stress and visualizing positive outcomes. There are a number of amazing apps that can help teach you these. My aim is to continue to strive to do more and more of these. Daily exercise is also a stress releaser. I have spoken of all these in a number of my blogs since these also will help to optimize your overall health and wellness as well as help build your resilience.

 

So my friends, I really hope that you can relate to this blog. I have touched on a few skills that may help us during these turbulent times. This is a massive subject and I have just scratched the surface of it. Just some of my thoughts and thanks to Amit Sood for some of his.

Wishing you all a weekend of abundance and resilience.