The Power of Resilience
Resilience is the Key to Healthy Living
If your life is anything like mine, you probably encounter a constant stream of situations that could put your ideal healthy lifestyle on hold for yet another day. Though most people face challenges every day, some do manage to stick to eating healthy food and working out regardless.
So what’s the difference? The answer is for us to be resilient.
I’ve now been working in the field of resilience for nearly ten years. During this time I’ve noticed how crucial it is to be resilient when it comes to sticking to a healthy lifestyle and managing weight in the long term. I’ve seen the difference between friends that have it, friends that don’t, and also how my own life changed as I improved my resilience.
To be resilient means being able to positively respond to a crisis. This is the toughest lesson I’ve had to learn – to not just get back up after a setback, but to also improve myself in the process. The truth is that we all respond when something happens, but few of us really take these challenges as positive opportunities to improve ourselves and the situation.
This is where the power of resilience can be truly fantastic – as you learn to positively respond to situations, you develop the power to turn negative situations into positive experiences. A stressful job can become an exciting challenge. A breakup can be a chance to learn and grow. It’s all a matter of perspective and how we choose to respond. That’s right – we choose how we respond to these situations, and we can choose to be more constructive about it.
What is important is that how we respond directly affects our eating habits. Just think – after a stressful day, we are much more likely to want some ice cream rather than go for a jog and eat a healthy meal! But if we are good at managing stress, then we’re more likely to stay healthy, resulting in a better, healthier body, that makes it even easier to stay positive and on top of things. This is a virtuous circle that we want to be in, and building your own resilience means you can quickly step back into it after a challenging day.
The great news is that you can start improving your resilience at any age, and the best time is to start now!
Here are five powerful tips to get you started:
Let your goals be your guide
Choose what it is that really gives your life a sense of meaning. Whether it is supporting your family, making a difference in the community, building an awesome career, or anything else that makes you get out of bed. Make sure that being healthy is an important goal for you as well. These goals will be very powerful when making hard decisions as you should choose the option that would best help you towards your goals.
The importance of involving others
Don’t do it alone! Involving family, friends, colleagues and others is extremely valuable when building and maintaining a healthy lifestyle, with research confirming that this is a crucial step in being successful in losing weight and keeping it off. Make sure your support network knows what you want to achieve, and always be ready to accept their help!
Embracing change
If there is one constant in life, it is change. This we’ve all heard many times, but how many of us really take this to heart? Embracing change means looking forward to when situations change and being excited about how we will manage new situations that haven’t even happened yet. Be ready for change so that you can stick to eating healthy meals and staying fit regardless of what happens.
A grounded sense of hope
Sometimes very positive people can seem a bit delusional, to the point of denying some harsh realities. When it comes to weight management, research has shown that an overly optimistic mindset can actually be detrimental. The key is to have realistic sense of hope for the future. This means having realistic expectations of what you can accomplish, along with the trust in yourself that you will accomplish it.
Looking after yourself
So important in maintaining a healthy lifestyle is to look after all aspects of what your body needs. Eating good food and working out is one thing, but you also need to get enough quality sleep (at least seven hours a night) as well as be in a positive environment. This might mean stepping away from friends and situations that drag you down, and spending more time with yourself and others that bring value to your life.
Being centered and confident
Guess what – the mere fact that you have come as far as you already have means that you are a fantastically capable person with every reason to have a lot of confidence in yourself! You can further build confidence in yourself by remembering these keys – have firm values and stick to them, be decisive and trust your judgement, be committed and believe in your own self-worth. All of this means you absolutely have the ability to get healthy and stick to your healthy lifestyle in the long term. Even if you’ve tried many times before, now is the time to use resilience and prove what you can really do!
About the author
Jurie Rossouw
Jurie Rossouw is the founder of Think Lean Method, a ground-breaking book on combining personal resilience and brain health to stick to a healthy lifestyle in the long term. Jurie specialises in the field of resilience which he uses as a platform to make meaningful and lasting changes to people’s lives. Living in sunny Sydney, Jurie's interest is the integration of various fields, including nutrition, neuroscience, psychology and personal resilience, which he distils into simple and practical plans that everyone can follow. Having gone through a reinvention of his own life, Jurie now helps others transform their lives to become goal-oriented and dramatically improve wellbeing.
