The Impact of Resilience on Your Health

Did you know that commitment is one of the top traits of resilience?!

Simply put, resilience is the ability to cope with stress in a positive way. It is associated with longevity, lower rates of depression, decreased stress, and greater satisfaction with life.

When you keep your commitments in the face of adversity, you are being resilient.

You feel more in control of your life. This helps you bounce back from stress faster increasing your self-confidence, your self-esteem, and your self-worth. You end up feeling as though you haven’t strayed too far from your path, but when is it a good thing to “wander” and when is it better to remain committed?

Keeping commitments wasn’t always important to me. In fact when I was a teen I didn’t much care for committing to anything. I didn’t understand the importance of what commitments can do for your health, self-worth and enthusiasm. Now, I do so I place a much higher value on keeping commitments but what happens if you falter?

I have several layers of personal commitments. I’m pretty sure we all do (even though we may not realize it) so while it is a personal commitment of mine to write a blog and send out an email newsletter every week, it is also a personal commitment of mine to create educational content with my own personal flare. I don’t want to force something for the sake of staying committed to my weekly plan.

So, after a period of considerable busyness combined with some personal heartbreak I found myself not feeling inspired to create anything. The words were just not there. Now you might be thinking ‘well of course you’d feel that way after all that and that’s exactly the time to exercise discipline’ (or at least that is what I would normally be telling myself).

I instinctively knew that what I really needed though was to take a break and be a little more introverted. This was really hard to do. I felt guilty for breaking my weekly commitment.

I heard all the “shoulds” in my mind.

You know, those things you “should” be doing. I should stick to my plan no matter what. I should be able to create inspiring content once per week, like come on that isn’t that hard?! I shouldn’t need a break. I should be stronger. I should always keep my commitments that involve other people. I shouldn’t be so lazy. And on and on it goes.

The shoulds can easily become a resounding voice in your mind if you let them.

I decided they didn’t deserve that kind of power so instead of letting them convince me they were right…I heard them…but I decided not to listen. It felt risky ignoring those voices…what if they were right?

The truth though…shoulds are NEVER right.

I feel like I better say that again…shoulds are NEVER right! There is nothing you “should” EVER be doing except for what you feel is in your best interests to do. No matter who you disappoint and no matter how it looks to others.

I can’t tell you the beauty that came as a result of my introverted rest period.

I realized that I was missing a really critical piece of the big picture when I was hearing all those shoulds. I needed to look a little deeper to see that while I totally felt like I was “wandering off the path” and being a flake on my commitments what I was actually doing is sticking to my most important commitment of all. One that when I ignore ALWAYS turns out badly…my deep commitment to ALWAYS listen to my spirit (or heart, or gut, or whatever you want to call your inner knowing of what is best for you).

I put my faith in myself and trusted that my inner knowing actually knows better than I do. I trusted that life would carry on just fine if I took a little break from everything. And you know what…it did.

So next time you are “should-ing” all over yourself, I invite you to stop and see how hard you are pushing for something that maybe isn’t really aligning with your most important commitments.

Maybe the story you are telling yourself is coming from something other than what is really in your best interests and it’s time to give yourself a break and step up to an even more resilient (healthier) version of you. 

Call me to schedule a free discovery call and find out how I can help you with that.

To Cultivating Resilience,

Dr. Kim Gowetor
Naturopath Sherwood Park
Naturopath Calgary
780-328-9088
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