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One of my favorite words is resilience. Resilience is the ability to get through or recover from tough times. The word actually comes from physics, where resilience is the ability of elastic material to take in energy (like from a blow) and release that energy by springing back to its original shape. It is literally “bouncing back.”
What Is Resilience?
Resilience has lots of components. One part is how we think. When faced with a difficult situation, resilient people don’t spend a lot of time asking “why me?”
They accept the reality of the situation and realize that they are going to have to be flexible in their plans. They also are realistic in their expectations—not pessimistic, but not pie in the sky “it’ll all be fine.”
Another part of resilience is in problem-solving. Resilient people look for solutions during tough times, and are willing to think outside the box, and use the resources they have to be creative.
Resilient people are willing to learn. They are open to learning new information and building new skills to help get through difficulty. And they have a good support network where they can ask questions, do a “reality-check,” bounce around ideas, and just vent a little bit.
Building Resilience
Now, farmers are among the most resilient people I know. But given the amount of stress farmers face, thinking about ways to be more resilient when times are stressful is really important. Here are some quick and simple things we can do to build stress resilience.
One is thought exercises. You can do these any time you’ve got 5 minutes. All you do is imagine a time in the future when you might feel a lot of stress. Now be flexible and creative in your thinking, and come up with 5 different ways you could respond to the situation. Who could you talk with? What might you say or do? Are there resources you can find—reading, YouTube, Extension materials, picking people’s brains? By imagining ways you can respond to stressful situations you’ll be more prepared when something actually does come up—you’ll have built up your problem-solving muscle, so to speak.
A second thing is to make sure you have a strong support network—build those connections before you need them. I’ve talked a lot about the importance of having friends and family who you can really trust and talk with—and then actually connecting by venting or confiding or brainstorming when you need them.
A final way to build resilience is by learning more about stress management and good mental health. I’ve provided a lot of information in this blog, and we have even more on our Rural Georgia Growing Stronger website.
I’ve also just learned about an exciting new program launched by Rural Minds, which is a nonprofit that provides information on rural mental health. The program, done in partnership with National Grange, is Rural Mental Health Resilience and has lots of handouts and information on mental health and wellbeing, and even resources to start conversations in the community about mental health. It will only take 5 or 10 minutes to check it out—go take a look!
Building resilience is important if we are going to bounce back from the challenges life throws our way. Luckily, there are simple, brief, effective ways to become more resilient, so we can all keep thriving.
