Adventures in Sustainable Living Podcast

E232 

Building Resilience and Adapting to Change

No matter what you do, some day something is going to come along and change your world without your permission. No one is immune to such things. This of course can create a tremendous amount of stress.

But this is where our personal resilience comes into play. Our resilience allow us to adapt to change and deal with the unexpected in a healthy way.  But resilience is also directly tied to sustainability. Both concepts are interconnected and often reinforce one another. Both are crucial concepts necessary for balancing our world, our environment and even our day to day lives as well as our personal well being. 

So join me for E 232 where I am going to give you some constructive tips on Building Resilience and Adapting to Change. 

Welcome back everyone to the Adventures in Sustainable Living podcast. This is your host Patrick and this is E 232 Building Resilience and Adapting to Change. 

In this episode I first want to define personal resilience and discuss why that is so important. Then I want to talk about how to build your own personal resilience. After that I want to relate that to sustainability and explain how the two are closely tied together. 

But before we do that, let’s talk about the good news story of the week. 

Good News Story of the Week

This week’s good news story has to do with litter, in particular beach litter in Europe. European beaches are some of the most heavily used beaches in the world. Despite that, beach litter has gone down by 30 to 45% according to a survey conducted over 253 beaches.

This is partially the result of strict waste control standards that require Europeans to separate trash into several categories. This is also part of the EUs zero pollution action plan which aims to reduce ocean plastic by 50% by 2030. Between 2015 and 2021, total beach litter has fallen by 30%, with the biggest reduction seen in single-use plastics which has fallen by 40%. So, this is fantastic evidence that the Europeans are making wonderful headway in their efforts to fight plastic pollution. 

Now let’s move forward with this week’s episode which focuses on building resilience and adapting to change. 

When I was a kid growing up on the farm in Georgia there was always an endless list of chores to do. The two farms in the family provided us with the majority of our food and each of us had to do our part. But being young at the time it was difficult for me to appreciate the point of this whole exercise. 

Decades later I find myself living on a working homestead in the middle of the forest. Every day I engage in the same type of work and behavior that I complained about so relentlessly when I was a kid. Go figure! 

What I have since realized is that such a lifestyle provides many unexpected benefits. I am debt free. I have a lot of personal freedom and security. Within reason I live my life the way I want. I am happy that in many ways I seem to exist outside the norm. However, despite all that I have managed to accomplish, there is one thing that seems to apply across the board. I am not immune to the unexpected. Things still happen that I cannot control. People still make decisions that affect my life in ways I cannot change.  

But I also think that all of us have had similar experiences.  Our lives, and sometimes even the entire world, changes without our permission. We are suddenly find ourselves presented with a new reality not of our choosing. 

For example, occasionally some world leader sets out on a personal agenda that affects the well being of everyone else. Since we now live in a global community, it turns out that arbitrarily invading another country or senselessly starting a trade war touches every citizen on the planet.

And like most people I sit and shake my head in disbelief and question what the point is of this whole exercise. After all most people simply want to live in peace, perhaps raise a family and have some sense of personal security and build a future for themselves. 

But again, like most people I cannot escape the affects of the unexpected changes that occur in our world. When such things happen, whether it be on a global scale or just in my personal life,  I tend to focus on how to rebound  or recover from the effects of such changes. I do a quick mental inventory of the homestead. Everything is powered by renewable energy. We produce a great deal of our own food. The extra supplies we have including wood, propane, home canned goods and dry goods means we could sit tight for many months if needed. Truly the cabin property has become my home made version of personal resilience. 

While I truly appreciate my personal independence and resilience I also know that there are many people in the world that suffer the effects of such sweeping global changes.  

But to some degree, in my opinion, our loss of personal resilience is the product of modern culture. We have managed to build a society, a culture, and for the most part a global community that is completely comfortable and one that feels safe. And at least historically, for the last 60 to 70 years the world has been mostly quiet and stable. 

For example, in the 1300s people were dying of plague. In the 1800s, in the absence of meaningful labor laws, many people including children were working 16 hours a day. In the 1900s there were over 40 different military conflicts worldwide including the First and Second World War, Korean War, Vietnam War, Spanish Civil War, the Irish War of Independence, as well as many others. 

These days we tend to worry more about whether or not someone has offended us. Additionally, everything we need is just a click away or we take a short drive to the supermarket. In general we can have what we want when we want and it is that built in convenience factor that deprives us of the vital skills to adapt to the unexpected.  Instead we tend to get angry when we don’t get what we want. There was quite clear and quite obvious during the pandemic. For decades now there has been nothing that has truly challenged the basic fabric and foundation of how we live and consequently we have lost our personal resilience. 

When I talk about resilience what I mean is the ability to adapt in the face of the unexpected, in the face of stress and even tragic events. It is about being adaptable and flexible, recognizing and utilizing our personal strengths.  People with resilience do not necessarily experience less grief, distress, or anxiety than others. However, they tend to be able to cope with and recover from personal 

setbacks more quickly. But the thing that most people do not realize is that resilience is not necessarily an inherent trait. It has to be taught or learned and perhaps strengthened by experience. 

For example,  my time on the farm not only taught me to be prepared for the unexpected but to be able to hang in there for the long haul. Without even realizing it my parents and grandparents instilled a sense of personal resilience and the ability to adapt to unexpected changes. I think the main reason for this is that we made the most of our resources. What we had was exactly what we needed and we rarely wasted anything. If we came up lacking, be it money, food, or other necessities, we figure a way out of it. Creativity and ingenuity, and sometimes uncertainty, was a part of how we lived. Consequently, this is what I carried over into my adult life and my life on the homestead seems to reinforce that behavior. 

Despite the development that has occurred in my small community over the last 20 years, there are still a lot of things that just not easily available. For example, if I forget something at the supermarket or if I don’t have all the ingredients I need for a recipe, it is a 42 mile round trip. If I am working on a project and need hardware or other materials, the closest lumber yard is a 30 mile round trip. Home Depot is an 80 mile round trip. This means I have to cook something else or wait another day or sometimes another week to complete my project. 

But the same is true whenever I have traveled and live abroad. You quickly learn that things just don’t work the same. It takes a lot longer to get anything done. Certain foods, materials, and services are just not available. If you plan on completing a task, doing a job and purchasing something specific at the supermarket, it just may not get done today, or maybe not even tomorrow, or the next day. What this means is that you have to adapt because you are not always going to get exactly what you want. 

So, if personal resilience is not inherent, and because of modern culture we are mostly deprived of needed experiences and training to build that resilience, what can we do about it? And most importantly, as you will see, resilience and sustainability go hand in hand. But, let’s look at personal resilience first. 

Building Personal Resilience

Building personal resilience involves several strategies that can strengthen you ability to cope with adverse situations and unexpected events and challenges while still maintaining your mental health and wellbeing. Consider the following: 

Maintain a positive outlook

When things get challenging, it is crucial to stay optimistic. This does not mean ignoring the problem but rather focusing on positive outcomes and remaining hopeful that in the future things will change for the better.

Be Adaptable

Part of being adaptable is accepting that change is inevitable and is a part of life and personal growth. This tends to reinforce your positive attitude and allows you to respond effectively to any crisis or sudden change. This also strengthens your ability to respond to any future challenges. 

Maintain strong relationships

The correlation between living a long happy life and having positive productive relationships has been demonstrated in multiple studies. The same is true when it comes to resiliency. These kinds of connections provide a network of supportive individuals. I truly think this is something that is undervalued in our present society because we think our connections on social media are true friends. This is another reason that modern culture has caused a decline in our personal resiliency.  

Create a meaningful environment

This has a lot to do with living your life the way you want. If the environment you life in day-to-day is something you created and it adds purpose to your life it will help you to maintain a clear head even when surrounded by dysfunction. It will also help you to maintain a wonderful sense of control over your life. 

This is truly what my homestead does for me. No matter what is going on in my life, or in the world for that matter, I can go back home to a place of my own creation that truly means something to me. 

Identify your core values and find a sense of purpose

This is directly connected to creating a meaningful environment for yourself because you are going to focus on what really matters to you. The purpose here is to build a life and lifestyle that is inline with what you value. I often tell people to make a list of the three to five things that mean the most to you, the things that provide meaning, the things that provide value for your life. Once you have identified those things, get rid of everything else. Having this purpose in mind will help you to learn from past experiences and stay motivated no matter what happens. 

Maintain an attitude of continuous learning

Always, always, always maintain an attitude of continuous growth and learning. This way you can leverage the one thing you always control: how you use your mind to develop yourself. 

Create healthy routines that promote self care

Prioritize sleep, exercise, proper nutrition and personal downtime. Numerous studies have connected these habits to improved health and personal well-being. Not only that, but having a healthy routine builds stability in your life. When we are faced with challenges, we tend to revert back to what we have practiced. Having healthy routines means that is what you reach for when things in your life go wrong. 

Manage your stress

One thing is for certain, life is not alway going to go your way. We all have stress in our lives for one reason or another. How you manage it makes the difference. Having healthy routines in your life goes a long way toward managing stress and helping you to cope when things go wrong.

Resilience and Sustainability

Now you may be wondering at this point what the heck personal resilience has to do with sustainability. Allow me to give you an example. 

As it turns out resilience and sustainability are both critical concepts involving environmental as well as community and social management. However, as you will soon appreciate, resilience and sustainability both have distinct meanings and specific applications. 

Sustainability focuses on meeting the needs of our present communities without compromising the resources available to future generations so that they can also meet their own needs. This also involves maintaining and improving the quality of life in all communities in a balanced manner that takes into consideration any environmental, social, and economic factors.

Resilience, on the other hand, is about having the ability to prepare for, absorb, and recover from the unexpected. It involves the capacity to adapt to change and maintain essential functions even in the face of things such as natural disasters or economic crises.

While sustainability focuses more on long-term continuity and improvement, resilience is concerned with immediate recovery and adaptation. However, both concepts are interconnected and often reinforce one another. Any system, meaning a society, culture or community,  that is resilient is better positioned to sustain itself over time, and a sustainable system is more likely to be resilient, meaning it can recover from and adapt to unexpected changes. For example, natural disasters. 

In practice, achieving both sustainability and resilience is seen as crucial for managing any sort of complex system whether that be our national economy, national security, addressing global challenges such as climate change, resource scarcity, social inequality and right down to your own personal life.  For instance, in community development, sustainability initiatives might focus on preserving traditional methods and resources, while resilience initiatives might focus on adapting to new conditions and improving living conditions.

Ultimately, the relationship between resilience and sustainability highlights the need for integrated approaches that consider both long-term sustainability  and the ability to withstand and recover from short-term disruptions. This is especially true when it involves our communities, our country and even right down to our personal lives. 

Certainly you can appreciate that the world we live in today is constantly changing, sometimes overnight. It is enough to make anyone feel a little bit of uncertainty because we don’t know what tomorrow is going to bring. From climate change to military conflicts to world leaders that focus only on their personal agendas, it’s hard to say what tomorrow is going to bring. 

These of course are things we cannot control. But, individual resilience helps us to maintain our own psychological well-being and successfully adapt to changes and deal with stress. As mentioned above, developing resilience involves specific behaviors, thoughts and action that can be learned. 

In my opinion, if you make the effort to cultivate personal resilience and build a sustainable lifestyle where you managed many of your own resources, you will have more personal security and personal freedom than most people on the planet. Armed with a sustainable lifestyle that is reinforced with resilience you will be able to embrace the uncertainty of our world with curiosity instead of fear. 

Until next week folks, this is your host Patrick signing off. Always remember to live sustainably because this is how we build a better future.