In part 1 of “Improvise, Adapt, and Overcome,” I told you how I learned about resilience and why it’s so important in everyday life. I also revealed my first major life resilience test – Marine Corps boot camp – one of the most, if not the most, badass decisions I’ve ever made. In this follow-up article, I’ll explain to you why resilience is like combat readiness and 11 ways you can learn to become more resilient starting today. Ready for battle?
Resilience and Combat Readiness
To go into combat effectively, you need the following three components:
- Mission-Essential Knowledge and Skills
- Physical Fitness
- Mind Fitness
Let’s take a look at these and how they apply to the concept of resilience:
Mission-Essential Knowledge and Skills
This is pretty self-explanatory, but before going into combat, you need the down-low on the mission and what skills are going to be required for that mission. For example, you typically need logistical details, information about the enemy and their location, the mission’s objective, any potential obstacles, and environmental conditions. You also need to know how to administer basic first aid, fight hand-to-hand, and use certain weapons.
In the real world, there will always be unexpected issues, but the more prepared you are at the outset, the less the impact when shit starts to go down. Learning more than one way to tackle an issue is a great start. There are multiple ways to start a fire, but how you do it often depends on the resources you have available and the environment you’re in.
Physical Fitness
By physical fitness, I’m talking about more than just exercise. I’m talking about exercise/movement, nutrition, and sleep. They’re all important in building the physical endurance required for resilience. Ever pulled an all-nighter studying or partying and had to work the next day? Remember how disgusting, irritable, and unexplainably exhausted you felt the next day? Remember how unproductive you were?
That is just one example of how a lack of sleep will affect you. Add poor unbalanced diet and a sedentary, zero-exercise lifestyle to the mix, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. Luckily, you can offset some of the adverse effects by optimizing other areas of physical fitness. However, your ability to take the hits and keep going will suffer.
Mind Fitness
Mind fitness is at the very core of resilience. It means being emotionally agile, having a sense of purpose, and being in the right state of mind. The first of those – emotional agility – is your ability to manage swings in your emotions and channel that energy in a positive way. The better you manage these fluctuations, especially the extremely negative ones, the more control you maintain over the situation.
Having a sense of purpose is sort of like having a “motivation buffer” for your life. When you’re on a track with meaning and you somehow slip off that track, purpose is what nudges you back in the right direction. When I was in Iraq complaining about “port-a-shitters” or incessant rocket attacks, a little voice inside reminded me that I was serving the country I love and in the process, making myself a better man. It was that sense of purpose that kept me on track
State of mind is less permanent than purpose, but it’s basically a set of thoughts, behaviors, and actions we call upon to get us ready for a particular event. For athletes, it’s often highly-energized visual imagery or motivational music/audio. When I was in the Marines, I often listened to songs by Disturbed like Indestructible to help summon that inner strength. Of course, sometimes the conjuring of a powerful memory or a brief period of meditation is all it takes.
Useful Skills to “Improvise, Adapt, and Overcome”
- Develop your Situational Awareness. When you hone those mindful powers of observation, you become better adept at detecting and responding to anomalies or threats within your environment. You also recognize useful resources for improvisation. Note that I’m not saying you should be paranoid. There are various levels of situational awareness, but the key is to be aware without looking paranoid.
- Strengthen your problem-solving abilities. Doing this restores your sense of control, builds your confidence, and opens your mind to alternative solutions. It can take a while if you’re the type that defers responsibility or likes to put things off. However, a little objectivity will go a long way with practical problems. The same goes with thinking outside the box and stepping out of your comfort zone.
- Build your social network. I’m not talking about simply adding Facebook friends or Twitter pals. I’m talking about connecting with real people that will help you grow as an individual and create new experiences. Another thing… Have you heard the quote from Jim Rohn that we are the average of the five people we spend time with the most? It’s crazy to think about, but our peers have a lot of influence on us. Surround yourself with successful people, and you’ll have no choice but to be successful as well.
- Build your relationships. Sometimes, things get awful, and you need outside help. Maintaining close relationships with your family, friends, and coworkers keeps those channels open when you need them. Everyone knows that time is limited, so you won’t be able to dedicate the same amount of time to everyone. However, it doesn’t take much effort to shoot a quick email or pick up the phone and see how someone’s doing.
- Check your beliefs about the world. Beliefs, whether religious, spiritual, socially-acquired, or based in some past trauma, provide a framework for how we interpret the events in our lives (see the Handbook of Adult Resilience). Are you experiencing the same issue over and over again, like dating a girl (or guy) that ends up becoming a complete “psycho?” Then it’s time to step back and look at your underlying beliefs.
- Practice realistic optimism. There is a way to be optimistic without coming as being naive. It requires that you accept the negative circumstances while embracing the positives. If you can do that, you’ll be able to keep moving forward while preventing the upset of not completing unrealistic goals.
- Be selfless. Altruism requires that you drop the ego and do a good deed for someone other than yourself. Being selfless boosts resiliency by exposing you to new opportunities and ways of thinking, while also training you to be more objective when analyzing issues.
- Look at failures as opportunities. Many failures or disasters are opportunities in disguise. If you’ve been fired, for example, it’s not the end of the world. Maybe it’s an opportunity to finish your degree or pursue a business partnership you’ve been thinking about.
- Practice journaling. A simple journaling habit, even five minutes a day, can help improve your writing skills, process emotional issues, and find creative ways to channel your thoughts. This is because, in the process of journaling, you’re actually using the analytical left side of your brain and freeing up the right side of your brain – the creative, intuitive side. As a result, you’re able to use more of your total brainpower to achieve understanding and resolution.
- Seek new experiences. Experiences, not materialistic things, enhance your life satisfaction. They open your mind to additional possibilities, help you clear mental or emotional blocks, and see new ways of solving problems. Now, there’s nothing wrong with enjoying material things, but new experiences, especially fun exciting ones, stick with us a lot longer. Amazing experiences can stick with us for an entire lifetime and even serve as anchors when we’re feeling stressed, angry, or feeling down.
- Surrender to the moment. By “surrender,” I’m not saying you should give up. Surrendering to the moment, or mindfulness, means accepting what’s happening and separating that resistance or pain from your sense of self. This is physically and emotionally liberating because it shifts your perception of self from “poor lowly miserable ole me” to the space around that “woe is me” thought. It also lets you see your thoughts and feelings objectively without any judgment.
Want to know where your resilience stands today? Resiliencescale.com offers a couple quick free resilience tests that will show you where you stand.
What adversity are you facing today? How are you going to “improvise, adapt, and overcome?”
Now put down that bowl of Wheaties and charge the hill!
