Most thinking about resilience happens after the storm, when the damage is visible and the question is how to recover. The quieter, more useful work happens before: building reserves in calm seasons so that when hard weather arrives, you have something to draw on. Spring, when energy returns and the crisis may be behind you, is a good time to think about what you want to have in place for the next one.
Why reserves matter more than toughness
People who weather hard seasons well are rarely the toughest. They are the ones with the deepest reserves: relationships they can call on, habits that hold under stress, a little slack in their finances and their calendar, and a store of meaning that does not depend on things going well. Toughness is what you use when reserves run out. Reserves are what keep you from needing toughness so often.
Thinking of resilience this way shifts it from a personality trait to a set of accounts you can deposit into. Every calm week is a chance to make a deposit.
The relationship reserve
When trouble comes, the people you can call are the first and most important reserve. That reserve is built in ordinary time, through the unremarkable work of staying in touch, showing up for others and being honest in small ways. It cannot be built in a crisis; by then you are withdrawing. Ask yourself who you would call at two in the morning, and when you last spoke to them for no reason. If the answer is a long time ago, that is a deposit to make this month.
The habit reserve
Habits that are deeply grooved survive stress. Habits that are new or fragile do not. If you want sleep, movement, a morning routine or a weekly review to be there for you in a hard season, build them now, when it is easy, and keep them long enough that they run on their own. The test of a habit reserve is simple: would this still happen in the worst week of my year? If not, it is not yet a reserve.
The margin reserve
Margin is the space between what you have and what you need. Financially, that means some cushion between income and spending, however modest; a financial advisor can help you think about what is realistic for your situation. In time, it means a calendar that is not scheduled to the last minute, so that a sick child or a car repair does not topple everything. In energy, it means not living at the edge of exhaustion as a default. Margin is what absorbs the first shock of a setback so that it does not become a cascade.
The meaning reserve
The least visible reserve is a sense of why: values, faith, purpose, the things that remain true when circumstances change. People who have thought about what matters to them before a crisis tend to find their footing faster during one, because the loss of a job or a plan does not take their reasons with it. Write down, in a calm season, what you believe your life is for. You may be surprised how often you return to the page.
Building reserves can sound like a second full-time job. It is not. It is a question of small, regular deposits: a call to an old friend, a routine kept on an easy day, an evening left unscheduled, a few lines about what matters. Choose one account that is low and make a deposit this week. Then another next week. By the time the next storm comes, and it will, you will be meeting it with something in reserve.
New messages, real moments from the road, and the All Is Well Project. Follow along and say hello.
The lessons behind everything Chris teaches. Start with three chapters, free.
Turn the lessons into your comeback.
Talk it through free with the Team Dorrity coach, or work with Chris one-on-one in The Better Than Back Experience.
