In my last blog post, I described the "resilience well" and how we may find ourselves "on empty". I said that the well is refillable.
The bad news is, that once it gets near empty, it takes a long time to refill - it is a slow process at the best of times. The best thing is to never let it get even close to empty in the first place. But making sure it stays mostly filled, and keeping the revenue and expenditure of resilience relatively balanced and stable, is a commitment to make to yourself and keep.
How Does the Resilience Well get Filled?
The essence of what fills your resilience well is: "Joyful Activity". Activities which bring you personal joy, contentment, peace, and happiness. For everyone, the list of what activities do this for you will likely be different. For me, it has been some of the following things:
1. sitting and thinking, with no interruptions or distractions
2. having "nothing to do"
3. paddling in my kayak with or without company
4. riding on a bicycle going nowhere in a hurry
5. reading - especially fiction, adventure stories
6. traveling through the Internet looking at good news stories, humourous memes and videos
7. cross-country skiing, making my own trail, on a quiet day in the woods, even at night
8. camping
9. watching (and sometimes re-watching) action movies and especially series and epics
I think you can see where I take my resilience back. Your list will be different. Start now, "refilling your resilience well". Put a piece of paper up on your fridge - every time you think of something you have once enjoyed, now enjoy, or might enjoy in future, put it on your list. This list is both a prompt and a reminder to take time out of your "responsible" day and take some "me time".