We have a very busy life. Rest and balance is difficult to maintain. By using your inner resources more often, you will experience more resilience and balance. How? You can read it in this blog.
In the book “Resilience: how to grow a unshakable core of calm, strength and happiness” (2018) Published by Harmony, Rick and Forrest Hanson offer tools to find more balance and harmony in your life, your work, and in relationships with others.
Basic needs: safety, fulfillment and connectedness
Every person has three basic needs: safety, fulfillment and connectedness. These basic needs are anchored in our ancient evolutionary past. Our brain provided our ancestors with their need for safety through finding shelter, for fulfillment through finding food, and for connectedness through ties with each other. Our circumstances have changed enormously in the last two hundred thousand years, but our brains have remained the same. Safety, fulfillment and connectedness are therefore still our basic needs.
According to Hanson, there are four important ways in which we try to meet our basic needs:
1. Recognize reality
We can better recognize reality by developing compassion, by being mindful and by learning.
- Compassion: by accepting ourselves and others as we are, we can perceive more and better.
- Mindful: by being mindful, what we experience it deeper and we can let it go again.
- Learn: every lasting change in our mood, our view of the world of our behavior, requires learning. Healing, recovery and development are also forms of learning.
2. Focus on what is possible
Only a single experience of being locked up, powerlessness and defeat can lead to a feeling of “learned helplessness.” This determines how you handle the problem. It is therefore important to look at what you can do.
You can develop your ability by learning to hold on, by being thankful for what is, and by trusting more about yourself and others.
3. Think, feel and coordinate
Everyone experiences physical and emotional pain in their lives. Many people are constantly affected by this. In addition, to the real pain, the threat of pain comes from all sides; a truck that rushes past, the irritation on the face of a loved one. Even seizing opportunities can cause a threat of pain.
You can relieve the pain by taking time to rest, by investigating what motivates you, and by focusing on your own responsibilities and behavior regardless of what others do.
4. Live consciously
Look for what you like, where your talents are and what is dear to you. Give what you have to offer and know that you no longer have control. The days may seem long, but the years are short. Live consciously in the time you have.
You can promote your resilience by further developing your inner resources. This allows you to meet your needs and you will me meaningful to others.
Which inner resources can you further develop?
