Resilience is defined in the dictionary as ‘the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties’, also ‘toughness’. Seems like a fair definition although the word ‘capacity’ is slightly ambiguous in one sense. If one wonders whether ‘capacity’ means you either have it or you don’t, where does that leave a person? Or can the word suggest that human beings have the option of developing resilience if they don’t have it?
This was the most important aspect of resilience when working with children in my former career. If you’re a ‘tough’ kid then you are likely to demonstrate resilience when the situation requires it. If you’re of a more sensitive disposition then you might have to work harder to call upon those qualities that having resilience seems to imply – not being pulled out of shape by life’s little hurdles; remaining philosophical when times get tough; finding the positive in every life potential pitfall, and so on.
So what has started as a discussion about resilience in children leads easily to us in the more elderly bracket. Retirement brings many changes, getting older, a few more. If we bring to these potential stumbling blocks a fair degree of resilience then retirement and old age can be approached with a reasonable amount of optimism. If you lack resilience then retirement could be tough, not to say outright debilitating.
When a person retires / gets older it’s a fair bet that there will be more physical and emotional fences to clamber over. And, even more so, an interaction between the two. As your health becomes more of a consideration, as mine has been of late ranging from have I got cancer to why can’t I shift this bloody cold, this feeling of being a bit worn down makes it that bit more difficult to front up to the inevitable emotional / mental challenges that come as part of the package.
If you’re in good health then facing up to the inevitable life and its ditches – garage roof repair, vineyard maintenance and so on, seems a bit more doable. Sitting here feeling cold, sniffling away, headaches, aching joints, sore throat, dry cough, all of which have been with me for more than two weeks and wondering why the garage roof man hasn’t contacted me, makes me feel very un-resilient indeed.
So time to think my way through these challenges. I can’t seem to do anything about the health issues themselves but if I want to see myself as a resilient person, which I do, then at least I can examine and perhaps redefine my thoughts – can’t do to can do as in image above. That’s at its simplest of course.
I know, in the past, in a professional capacity, I have put a lot of weight on the quality of thinking we engage in. Sensible thinking helps develop resilience, woe-is-me type thinking breeds fragility. This time I decided just to do a little research on the easily available internet / Google thing on my phone. Is there more to it than this?
Nothing too serious research-wise you understand. Back in the day my research would have been in-depth. This week I took the first two sites from my Google search that seemed vaguely appropriate. 7 keys to resilience, from a guy named Ken Ginsburg and 5 (4 years later they’d narrowed in down) from a site called ‘5 Pillars of Resilience’. That’s 12 altogether and there didn’t seem to be a whole lot of overlap. So maybe more to it.
And then if I didn’t go and combine them in a way that amused me and you can decide whether they work for you. I can tell you they didn’t all work for me. I omitted 3 altogether. Here’s what I found, now in no kind of order, if they ever were, are the remaining 9.
1) Have a purpose (in your life). I agree it’s much easier to feel resilient if you feel your retirement has a meaning. So go find a meaning. 2) Mindfulness. This is so bleedin’ fashionable I can hardly bring myself to write about it. At best I think it means living in the moment, appreciating the little things. OK, I’ll go along with that.
3) Competence, and this is where it starts to get a bit tautologistic (is that a word? not according to spell-check). True if you feel competent in your life you’ll probably be more resilient but how do you get to feel competent if you feel you are not? The best I can say here is be aware of your strengths / know what you’re good at and recall them in difficult times.
4) Which relates to ‘Confidence’ well duh, yes, it would be great if we could just feel confident of what we’re doing in our retirement but it feels a bit like one of those ‘you’ve either got it or you haven’t factors. I would say set goals which stand a fair chance of being successful, this is one way to develop confidence.
5) Connecting / having positive relationships with others. Couldn’t agree more. A massive help in being resilient not least because the relationship gives you the chance to return the support and it’s generally better to give than to receive. You feel better and feeling better makes you more resilient.
6) Character, sorry don’t find this helpful. Obviously if we are fine, up-standing men and women we wouldn’t need to worry about being resilient. And how the heck do we develop ‘character’? 7) Contribution, as in the last factor, making a contribution in our retirement improves self-esteem which obviously develops resilience (although neither of these sites mentions self-esteem specifically, still I didn’t go that far).
8) Coping, another truism by the sound of it. My version of this would be to be resilient be clear about what your coping strategies are. Maybe it’s a version of self-care (another factor from the sites) which in my view is knowing how to be kind to yourself. What works for you as a ‘pick-me-up’ treat? Use it when you need it.
9) Last by no means least, control. I’ve written so much about being in control of one’s retirement of late. I don’t think I have anything else to say other than, agree. Being in control (or as much as is possible) makes you more resilient.
Well there you are. If the people that wrote the materials on these two sites ever saw this summary they’d probably have a fit. But that’s fine, my intention here is simply to give you, my readers, a flavour of the areas you might want to be considering if you’re feeling a little less than resilient in your retirement. I hope there’s something useful in this retirement blog for y’all.