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In the last episode, I defined resilience, or emotional elasticity, as I like to call it. Here, I’d like to detail tactics for bending back into shape faster for more productive output.
I’ll consider these resilience-building tactics in three categories: building productivity immunity, training your productive resilience, and learning to recovery for greater resilience.
Build Your Productivity Immunity | Getting More Resilient
First, take care of the physiological base of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs pyramid–proper nutrition, hydration, sleep, physical activity, and so on. Without these foundational needs being met, which we all too often sacrifice heretically in the name of personal productivity, we diminish our ability to be emotionally elastic and our body’s ability to fight off actual diseases. Firming our physical ability to fight stressors, we build productive immunity for getting more resilient.
Train Your Productive Resilience | Getting More Resilient
Next, choose your emotionally-draining and productivity-sucking battles wisely. This allows you to gear yourself up for and use them as a training ground for building productive resilience.
Do you have an important, upcoming project? Have you a high-stakes conversation with your spouse or partner? Or, are you working to get an elusive “A” in Advanced Calculus? No matter the challenge, choose one at a time and then worked determinedly to achieve that goal. (Here’s the secret: you don’t need to reach the goal to gain the benefits of resilience. Failure is a necessary part of getting more resilient. But, it’s icing on the cake if you do succeed!)
These concentrated periods of working hard help your brain and body build up the resilience needed to take on bigger, better challenges that benefit your productive life.
Learn to Recover for Greater Resilience | Getting More Resilient
Finally, you must realize you are not superhuman, even if in episode 99 I encouraged you to be the superhero of your own life (which I still stand by). The issue is not being a superhero but recognizing that even fictional characters are portrayed taking time to rest. Between going on grand journeys, battling monsters and evil villains, they find time to relax and rejuvenate.
You don’t always need to be on. Actually, this creates rigidity. And, that leads to fragility, fracturing your wonderful emotional elasticity, and fraying your nerves.
Getting More on Resilience
I encourage you to visit the recommended books on resilience below. Choose one and do a deep-dive into this material. It’s well worth it!
Here’s to getting more resilient, and your productive life!
Recommended Books List
- Resilience: Facing Down Rejection and Criticism on the Road to Success by Mark McGuinness
- Finding Water: The Art of Perseverance (Artist’s Way) by Julia Cameron
- Resilience: The Science of Mastering Life’s Greatest Challenges by Steven M. Southwick, MD and Dennis S. Charney, MD
- Resilience: Why Things Bounce Back by Andrew Zolli and Ann Marie Healy
- The Gift of Adversity: The Unexpected Benefits of Life’s Difficulties, Setbacks, and Imperfections by Norman E Rosenthal, MD
- SuperBetter: A Revolutionary Approach to Getting Stronger, Happier, Braver and More Resilient–Powered by the Science of Games by Jane McGonigal, PhD
- Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life by Eric Greitens
- Building Resilience in Children and Teens: Giving Kids Roots and Wings by Kenneth R. Ginsburg, MD