Resilience in Uncertain Times

Picture by my sister

Resilience is probably one of the most powerful skills to cultivate in order to get through these challenging times. The virus named SARS-CoV-2 (also known as Corona Virus) has hit humanity with an unexpected force. None of us could have ever anticipated how much our world would change in a matter of only days and weeks.

So how do we deal with such drastic restrictions to our everyday lives? How do we expect to go on after the pandemic has lost its dynamic? And will we be able to learn from a crisis like this?

Many of us are pondering these and similar questions and I am by no means the first person to elaborate on the possible heritage our society will or must bequeath.

Many people are currently working extremely hard to keep critical systems going. They ensure our food supply as well as our medical and health care system. I want to take a moment to thank each and every one, who is going out of their way to feed us, heal us and take care of us. You honorable people deserve the deepest respect!

All of us now have a chance to take a step back and re-evaluate our life. The deceleration, which has been forced upon us, may be just the moment we have yearned for all along. Stand still. Pause. Breath. Putting the busy-ness in our lives on hold for a bit is something we don’t get the chance to do very often in a fast-paced, social-media driven and hectic society. Can we learn from this new situation?

Picture by my sister

In order for us to find a healthy way to mentally survive these times, it is advisable to cultivate resilience. Resilience describes the psychological ability to cope with especially difficult situations or strokes of fate as well as finding a way back to happiness and satisfaction by drawing back on personal and social resources. Being resilient will help us to find a way through difficult times such as these. No matter what individual situation we are currently in, by applying the concept of resilience we can manage to figure out a way to persevere, overcome and come out of this stronger than before. There are ways to enhance your resilience, which you can read about in this article in The New Yorker from Maria Konnikova, where she states the follwing:

“In research at Columbia, the neuroscientist Kevin Ochsner has shown that teaching people to think of stimuli in different ways—to reframe them in positive terms when the initial response is negative, or in a less emotional way when the initial response is emotionally “hot”—changes how they experience and react to the stimulus. You can train people to better regulate their emotions, and the training seems to have lasting effects.”

If you want to learn more about how to turn problems into advantages by applying stoicism, I can recommend The Obstacle is the Way to you, by Ryan Holiday.

An unexpected but upbeat side effect is nature’s (temporarily) recovery from the ongoing pollution it had to endure before the quarantine. We can view this unexpected break of everyday life as a recovering pause as well. We should especially focus on finding a way to deal with the virus, the panic and old habits. Questioning our path. Breaking with situations we don’t desire anymore. Focusing on what really matters. Rediscovering pleasures we have postponed for far too long. Going back to reading a good book. Talking to people. Putting away our phones. Meditating. Listening. Going deep.

It’s time for us to see a chance in this global pandemic. Destiny is giving us an opportunity to plant a little seed even in the darkest battle field and trusting in ourselves that everything will be okay. Humanity will survive and be able to create a new world if we are resilient now. I hope that the new world will be a better version of our old world. But it all comes down to each and every one of us.

At this point, I would like to quote one of the greatest musicians of the last century: “Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.” – John Lennon.

Stay strong and healthy, keep each other’s spirits high, laugh and cherish everything worth cherishing today, tomorrow and throughout these times.

Picture by my sister