How can we be more resilient when resilience feels impossible? Here are three simple suggestions.

I am a firm believer in cultivating resilience, but I also believe that it’s important to be realistic about our ability, as humans, to work our way out of the things that we struggle with if we’re still in the middle of that struggle.

We live in a world where wellness and health are framed as personal responsibilities, with little regard for the realities people face on a day to basis.

We are sold the idea that if you just eat better, meditate more, rest, exercise, and go to therapy all of your problems will be SOLVED and you will be FIXED. Those things absolutely do help to cultivate resilience, as well as helping you to connect to yourself and live more joyfully. It’s also important to acknowledge, though, that we can only do so much on an individual level. For some people the struggles they face on a day-to-day basis; poverty, living in survival mode, racism, ableism, trauma, abuse, homophobia, transphobia, etc mean that the idea of resilience can feel meaningless at best or unattainable at worst.

So how do we find space to care for ourselves when it feels impossible? Here are three simple ways to support your resilience when resilience feels impossible. They’re so simple in fact, you probably know about them already. Knowing and doing are different things though, so I’m taking it right back to basics today.

If you action all three of them, you’ll need just 15 minutes over the course of your day. If you don’t have the space to action all of them, give one or two a try and see how you get on.

1.Drink more water

This is such a simple tweak that can make such a huge difference to all aspects of our physical being. Multiple studies show that increased hydration leads to improved mood. Yep, you read that right. Drinking enough water can have a positive impact on depression, anxiety and low mood. That’s not to say good hydration is a cure; I firmly believe that we each need a toolkit of approaches to support us with our mental health and well-being struggles, however drinking more water can be a quick win. As well as impacting mood, being properly hydrated can decrease fatigue, reduce the risk of disease, and boost your brain power. The NHS suggest we should be drinking around 8 glasses of water a day, and other sources suggest to aim for around 2 litres.

Breathe

Our breath is such an amazing tool. It links to our nervous system and we can directly influence our nervous system’s state, along with the levels of cortisol - the stress hormone - in our body, through our breath. A simple way of regulating your nervous system and lowering your cortisol is by spending five minutes focussing on your breathing and allowing your out-breath to be a couple of seconds longer than your in-breath. You can imagine you’re slowly blowing out a candle to help with this.

If you’d like to explore working with the breath more, you can check out this post.

Take in the good

Studies show that our brains are wired to focus on negative experiences. This is understandable; in prehistoric times our ancestors needed to be vigilant against danger, so the brain remembering threats and negative experiendes kept them safe.

Our brains haven’t changed all that much since those times, and in the words of Dr Rick Hanson, a prominent researcher in this area, “the brain is like Velcro for negative experiences, but Teflon for positive ones”.

We can actively change this and reprogramme our brains to be more positive by really engaging with every single positive experience we have. Spend five minutes (or more if you can) at the end of each day really connecting with any good experiences you had, however small.

Maybe something really made you laugh. Maybe you enjoyed seeing something beautiful in nature. Maybe you ate something really delicious. All you need to do is sit and remember one or two good things each day, and really soak up your positive feelings.

You can also increase the effect by noticing positive feelings more as they happen. Where do you feel them in your body? What does it feel like to really soak up the feeling of joy or happiness? If it feels like nothing positive happens on any given day, remembering a positive experience from the past has the exact same effect on your brain.

You might want to expand on this practice by writing down your positive experiences each day in a book or a journal. You can then look back on your journal during times when you’re really struggling, to reconnect with the good experienced you’ve previously identified.

Resilience is so simple but so hard

I know that the suggestions in this post are incredibly simplistic. They can’t counteract oppression or the struggles people face on a day-to-day basis. They can’t make our society fairer or more just. What they can do, though, is give us a little bit of respite when we’re already struggling. They can bring a tiny bit of calm in the chaos. I hope these simple ways to be more resilient when resilience feels impossible give you a little bit of space, even if it’s just for a moment.