Improve Your Resiliency Through Purpose
Throughout our lives, we are faced with unexpected events and challenges that can test us physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. Illness, injury, loss, and major life changes can impose tremendous stress on our lives, and our ability to withstand these stresses can play a major role in our overall health and wellbeing. In the words of Dolly Parton, “if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.”
Resilience plays a major role in determining how quickly we recover and rebound from challenges over time. One of the key ways to boost our resilience is by having a solid sense of purpose in our life that gives us a reason to continue learning, growing, and persisting with conscious intent.
Understanding resiliency
Resilience is commonly defined as our ability to “bounce back” after a particularly difficult or traumatic life event that we perceive as a negative experience. The American Psychological Association explains that resilience is an ability we can all cultivate, and is a combination of three factors that shape our relationship to an occurrence: how we think about it, what we do in response to it, and what our feelings are in relation to it. Having a strong and meaningful purpose in life can dramatically increase our overall resilience for overcoming adversity.
While grief, anxiety, depression, hopelessness, and other negative feelings can test our resilience, purpose helps us stay focused on the road ahead without succumbing to overwhelming emotional burdens. While purpose may differ from person to person, it’s commonly found through helping others as a part of a meaningful career, hobbies, volunteer work, community service, authentic relationships, or caring for pets and loved ones. Because acts such as these are personally meaningful, challenges encountered in life are met with greater resilience
Having a purpose also helps us to step outside of our emotions while we process difficult times, promoting self-awareness and personal growth. In an article by Psychology Today, purpose is described as a meaningful, long-term goal that inspires decisions and choices made in the present, which directly or indirectly impacts others in some way. This connection to the world is part of what holds us accountable and keeps us committed to our purpose, contributing to our resilience as a result.
Tangible perks of having purpose
The many benefits of improving resilience through purpose range from greater stability to improved mood and physical health. For instance, the capacity to learn from any situation or circumstance increases our self-confidence, determination, and optimistic perspective for the future. Recent studies evaluated by Practical Neurology have also shown that individuals with a strong purpose in life are generally healthier, specifically in the areas of cardiovascular and cognitive function, physical fitness, and quality sleep cycles. Additionally, this research indicated that those with a positive sense of purpose are more resistant to cognitive decline and exhibit less of a tendency to develop Alzheimer’s with age progression. Clinical strokes have even been shown to decrease by 22% for purpose-minded individuals, suggesting that purpose and physical resiliency in old age go hand-in-hand.
To find your purpose and boost resiliency, consider reflecting on these questions: What do you love doing? What are the characteristics of people who inspire you? What are you naturally good at? How do you enjoy helping others? If you or someone you know is trying to learn more about purpose, resilience, and emotional health, find out how Arctos360 can help.