Resilience- Part 1- Personal Resilience
Resilience
Resilience: an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change.
Resilience is an essential aspect of preparedness. When I think of something that is resilient, I think of of something that is hard to kill. That is what we try to build into our prepper plan. In this series of posts, we will discuss three different layers of resilience. There is personal resilience, which is your mental and physical ability to cope with adverse circumstances. There is financial resilience. Finally there is basic resource resilience. This envelopes all of your basic resources such as food, shelter, and water.
Personal Resilience
You are are your best survival tool. You need to be able to depend on your body to get you out of harms way. You may also need it to procure food and water in a TEOTWAWKI situation. Looking overweight or weak can make you stand out as a target. There is no need to start training for the Olympic swim team unless you have the 12 hours a day to dedicate to such an aspiration, but start doing what you can now to be healthy. This includes trying to maintain a healthy body weight and developing muscle and cardiovascular endurance.
This doesn’t have to be hard. Eat reasonable portions and plan your meals. Cooking at home will develop a great skill as well as put you in control of the ingredients that are going into your meals. This is about finding healthy foods that you like. For those of us who fight the scale, fad diets may take off the weight, but it always comes back. We have to make a lifestyle that is healthy and enjoyable. If you have the space, gardening will build resilience in all three areas. It will build personal resilience as you get some exercise planting, weeding and watering the garden. You will eat much higher quality food than you find in the grocery as well. It will provide financial resilience as you save money on fresh produce you don’t have to buy. It will also build basic resource resilience as you become able to produce even the smallest percentage of your own food.
Push yourself to get in or stay in shape. This is what ever you like to do. Walking, biking, running and swimming are all great cardiovascular activities. This will enhance your ability to survive the everyday work week by reducing stress as well as give you an advantage in a post-apocalyptic world. Strength training will help to make you more physically resilient as well. Stronger muscles make heavy tasks easier. They also work to support weak joints.
Work with your limitations; everybody can’t be a gold medalist. My personal limitation is arthritis in my knees and back. I can’t do extremely heavy lifting, but I work out with lighter weights 3 days a week. I find I have much less pain when I make the gym a priority. When I skip a few days in a row, everything starts to lock up. Running would kill my knees, but I am able to put in 30 minutes to an hour on an elliptical glider that gives me the same cardiovascular work out. Swimming is another great exercise for people with back pain or arthritis. Do what you can when you can. Because you can’t do everything doesn’t mean you can’t do anything.
According to the CDC, the top three causes of death are Heart Disease, Cancer, and Respiratory Disease, in that order. Heart disease can be greatly reduced by maintaining a healthy weight and exercising. Cancer may be the cause we have the least control over, but even it can be mitigated by a healthy lifestyle and a diet rich in fruits and vegetables. Respiratory Disease is primarily caused by smoking. This is a no brainier. I know it’s hard; I quit smoking myself. But it is absolutely devastating to your health and your finances. It will also put severe limitations on your ability to move fast and far if the need should arise. If you smoke, quitting should be your number one priority in prepping. As with all addictions, it will be a lot easier to quit now than when it hit’s the fan. If we were to suffer a collapse, you will be operating in one of the most stressful situations of your life while you are unable to get a fix from your vice or vices of choice. Even if you are able to obtain your vice of choice, it will come at an extreme premium that will eat away at your resources much faster than it presently does. This jeopardizes everyone around you. Quitting your addictions will never be easier than today. It is the single best thing you can do to be more resilient.
Maintaining a positive attitude is essential to personal resilience. Your mind is what will keep you alive in tough situations. If you allow yourself to lose hope, you won’t survive a tough situation. Being connected to GOD will give you hope. Knowing the Creator of the universe is helping you through it will give you great peace in hard times. Getting connected to GOD is as easy as reading The Bible or praying. Our Prepper Links page has studies from the entire Bible on mp3 for free downloads.
We can train our minds to be more resourceful.When things break around the house, see if you can fix it yourself before you call the repair man. Some things aren’t as complicated as they look. While learning to DIY, you will train your mind to be more resourceful as well as save a few bucks and build your skill set. Our friends George and GA over at Survive2balive recently posted an article on the Art of Scrounging. It speaks about seeing value in things we often take for granted. For example, I try to find old decking on bulk trash day to use for the walls of my garden beds and compost bin. This saves money in the present and trains your mind to look for uses of otherwise discarded objects.
More than anything, resilience is an attitude. It is an attitude that is always looking to do more with less; an attitude that is always learning and staying positive. By being resourceful in the good times, you build a skill set that will be there for you in the hard times. By living below your means, you have already trained yourself to live on less in times of scarcity. Resilience is about doing what you can, when you can.
God bless you and happy prepping!
Good and thoughtful post. Living out here, it is all about making do and improvising. My daughter and I built a small guest cabin this summer not quite complete, out of almost all salvaged material. Door, Window, roofing, insulated chimney, insulation, all from the dump. Used poles instead of 2x4s for the wall studs. If you have to drive 70 miles to the nearest store, you make do a lot.
You are living it Alaska Rose!!! Alaskans are self sufficient out of necessity. It is very refreshing.
Recon- as always a great thought provoking post and thanks for the mention. A person can have the best laid plan but it’s not worth much if you can’t get off the couch to put it in place. Preparedness is more than storing food and gear. One must prepare physically, mentally, and spiritually as well.