What is “enough” resilience?

How do you know if you have “enough” resilience? 

You can’t ever know what changes lie in store for you, so how are you supposed to know if you’ve built or saved up or found “enough” resilience? 

The answer to this is two-fold. In the larger sense, you can’t know if you have enough resilience in the same way that you can’t know if you have enough money in your bank account. Financial experts say we should aim to have 3-6 months of living expenses in savings. This would cover us if the roof needs to be repaired or we can’t work for awhile or some other catastrophe befalls us. But if several bad things happen at once, it might not be enough. That’s just pretty unlikely. Carrying that idea over to resilience, we should make sure we hang on to enough extra to handle a car breakdown or a sick family member or a big job change… but if all those things happen at once we’re likely to struggle.

The second answer is the one that interests me the most. How do you know how much resilience you have in the bank? We’ve talked over the past weeks about indicators that resilience is lacking. How do we know when it’s plentiful? What would you check to look at your “balance?”

So let’s start with this litmus test of resilience:

Are you able to feel joy, even in and between stressful moments?

This is a great measure as it tells you you’ve not used up your resilience reserves. You’ve got enough for now, and more in the bank.

Will you think about a time that your resilience has been tested and let me know if you were still able to feel moments of joy? Do you agree that this was a good way to know that you were fundamentally ok, that you had enough resilience to handle that stressor?

All my best,

Dr. G

The post What is “enough” resilience? appeared first on Ask Dr. G.