Resilience is not a privilege. Resilience is a necessity. Today’s world seems stressful, fast, and constantly changing. I believe that the world has never been different. There were always wars on our planet. But the digital revolution brings it right into our living rooms. We have to be flexible in order to survive in today’s world. We have to be ready to learn, unlearn, re-learn to stay relevant. There comes stress, burnout, depression. Life tragedies are happening and we must be ready. I learnt this the hard way.

Why we all need to be resilient

During the past weeks I wrote 4 articles about 4 different types of resilience. I strongly believe that paying attention to our mental, emotional, physical and social wellbeing is crucial for our overall happiness and health. You might be arguing that this whole resilience thing doesn’t really concern you because you’re doing fine. Imagine real tragedy strikes you. You get into the stage of emergency. There is no time and energy to learn about care. You have to act immediately and your emotions and thoughts will go on autopilot.

Take big corporations for instance. They have prepared whole emergency plans. They’re running test alarms to simulate fire in the building. In case that this situation really happens, the whole organization knows how to act. It’s low probability that they will have to deal with it, but what if? Marshall Goldsmith writes in his book Triggers that we all make one mistake, we are not counting on low probability events. The message of the book is clear. We have to be conscious of ourselves and of our environment in order not to become a victim of unexpected situations. Not knowing ourselves is like running in the building on fire with no idea where is an exit or how to use the foam machine.

The 4 types of resilience

Every single day we can do a little to become a resilient person. Think what you can do today to boost all 4 types of resilience.

Mental resilience

Mentally tough people don’t get discouraged by setbacks. They do acknowledge their feelings, they might become sad, disappointed or angry – but they don’t stay in this stage of mind. They will go back being optimistic and positive towards the future. Your attitude ultimately defines your career, position in the team and in the company. There are a few ways how you can slowly become mentally stronger person. You can read more about it here.

Emotional resilience

We have a tendency to underestimate our emotional wellbeing. When we get hurt physically, we immediately act. We know what to do if we burn or scratch ourselves. At the same time we completely ignore our emotional injuries such as rejection, loneliness, failure. You can imagine how much mess can untreated physical injury cause. You can get inflammation. The same can happen with emotional injury. It can get worse and lead to anxiety, clinical depression and so forth. Read my article on emotional resilience and learn how to be emotionally stronger from today.

Social resilience

Humans are social beings. In every aspect of our life we depend on each other. When we were babies, we were strongly depending on our parents to provide us shelter, food, love. Now we depend on all those people who work to grow food for us, provide us with electricity, clothes, education. At the same time we work to provide value to other people. Healthy relationships with people around us affect the quality of our lives. Our network of closest people creates a protection shield in case adversity strikes. Creating healthy relationships should be one of our priorities. To learn more about social resilience read my post here.

Physical resilience

Physical resilience is the ability of our body to endure various challenges and maintain stamina and strength. Body and mind are interconnected. Therefore, physical wellbeing can also strongly affect your performance at work. In order to keep up our physical resilience, there are 3 non-negotiables – right nutrition, physical activity and sleep. Read how to boost your physical resilience in this post.

Let me know what are your current challenges and I’ll be happy to find the right solutions for you.