Relying on Resilience

Resiliently Rebuilding

Spiders. That’s the bug that I’m considering this week: spiders, the ones I have the greatest level of discomfort around. I shiver when one gets too close to me, but in the wild I think they are quite remarkable. Trying to find the positive in those outdoor creatures that I generally run from, I was considering what the spider could teach me. What I realized is that they are determined little creatures. They have a Sisyphean task of building a huge web strand by strand, all alone, only to have it destroyed by wind, storms, animals, or (heaven forbid) a human walking through it. And then they rebuild.

They don’t engage in angst or drama about it; you don’t see spiders holding their heads and moaning about the pointlessness of it all. They simply get going and build another web. And another. And another, as required. Not only are they building a functional web necessary to their survival, but somehow they make it beautiful as well. Not only that, but sometimes spiders are victims of their own success. Imagine a little spider in a little web — and a huge insect gets trapped, destroying the web. That spider has caught more than it anticipated, but again, turns it to good and keeps on rebuilding.

This reminded me of something I’ve been reading about recently. Spiders face these crises and rise above them to restore what is necessary for their continuing survival, no matter how many times they must begin again. This sounds like resilience.

Resilience is considered by psychologists as one of the most important attributes for good mental health. Psychological resilience can be defined as the ability to bounce back from negative events by using positive emotions to cope. When we exhibit resilience, it is a sign that bad times won’t get us down, won’t stop us from moving forward to achieve things in our lives. We are able to weather the storms and carry on, by focusing on what we are grateful for, and what positive outcomes and aspects we can find within our crisis. Resilience lets us adapt and survive troubling times, both physically and psychologically.

If you don’t feel like this is your natural coping method, you can learn some skills to improve resilience. A few ideas from across the web are:

• Keep a journal (of course!)
  
• Get connected
• Find meaning
• Nurture a positive self view
  
• Take care of yourself
• Accept and anticipate change
• Work toward a goal
• Maintain perspective
• Practice stress management and relaxation techniques

To read a full list and get more information about developing such skills, check out the article Resilience: Build skills to endure hardship from the Mayo Clinic — it’s quite comprehensive. Or read more from the American Psychological Association in The Road to Resilience.

It’s important to remember that everyone does not react in the same way to life events; the techniques that work for you may not be the same as those which work for others. Develop a personal habit of resiliency and you, like the spider, will be able to simply rebuild when things don’t go as expected. And as suggested in the list above, keeping a journal can help you foster many of the other skills necessary to developing a more resilient outlook — it is a stress management tool in itself, and assists in maintaining perspective, anticipating change, goal setting/tracking, finding meaning in your daily life, and much more. Look into the mirror of the blank journal page and you will find hidden strengths and attributes you may not have been fully cognizant of. It is an accessible and reliable tool.

Related posts:

1. Big vs. Little