Resilience Starts with Doing Hard Things

League of Wildness,

I've mentioned a couple of times that my personal mission statement is to achieve optimal health centered around the cycles and seasons of nature.

But what is optimal health?

The other day, I was chatting with a doctor during a community class. We were talking about what “normal” means when it comes to health, and she said, “In my mind, optimal health is the normal state of health. We only call it ‘optimal’ these days because we’ve normalized the disease state.”

That convo led me to consider what optimal health looks like for me:

* I sleep well and wake up feeling well-rested

* I have the physical and mental energy to get through my day without a nap or a sugar/caffeine boost

* I have the strength, balance, and mobility to do normal daily movement such as: descending stairs while carrying something, getting on a step stool or ladder, stacking and loading wood, walking to do my errands

*I am resilient and can adapt to changing conditions such as weather patterns, work stress, travel, or challenging exercises.

*My body and mind feel good. I don’t have frequent symptoms such as headaches, stomach aches, heartburn, sore joints, fatigue, memory problems, and so on.

I enjoyed such health for most of my life. Like anyone, I occasionally get sick, but it’s rare. Over the past several years, I’ve had more to deal with. Joint damage in my hip that was bad enough to require hip replacement. I have occasional brain fog, insomnia, and a snap/crackle/pop knee. Most of what I deal with is attributed to perimenopause, which I have learned I can manage well with nutrition and activity. I’m not claiming that is the answer for everyone, just that it’s worked for me.

Sometimes, medication is needed and thankfully we live in a time when it’s available. But often, changes to lifestyle can be tried first, or alongside meds, and yet they are rarely recommended as often as medication is. I was offered an anti-depressant for my symptoms, but no one ever asked what I was eating (or not eating). It turned out my potassium intake was low and once I fixed that, all of those symptoms disappeared. Despite that Americans spend a combined $5 trillion on health care annually ($15k per person on average) it’s rare that anyone talks to us about the daily habits that contribute to our health state.

Why do we now look at ‘optimal health’ – which should be our normal state – as something rare and difficult to achieve? I’m sure you’ve seen the memes that insinuate we can’t have optimal health and still enjoy a slice of cake, but it’s not true. Why do we accept ‘normal’ to mean suffering with symptoms, disease, and diagnoses?

Wade Davis (an anthropologist) said: “The fluidity of our memory, our capacity to forget, is the most haunting trait of our species. It accounts for why we’re able to adapt to almost any degree of degradation.”

I find that especially interesting when it comes to how we view human health and how easy it is to accept disease and the degradation of health as a normal part of aging. To some degree, there is truth in that – our bodies do change through phases of our lives. However, I know people in their 40s and even their 30s who accept a wide variety of disease symptoms as a normal part of aging when it is not.

Two of the biggest reasons adults give for a lack of attention on their health is time and difficulty. I’ve talked about the time factor here and here if you’d like to check those out. Just like time, difficulty is something we can work through. If we haven’t been active for a long stretch, then even a short walk is going to feel uncomfortable. You might be surprised how hard you breathe, or how slow your walking pace is. You might decide it’s too hard and therefore not worth doing. Challenging our bodies (and our minds!) is what makes them grow, so it shouldn’t feel easy all the time. Doing things that challenge our bodies builds resilience.

Resilience is the ability of our bodies to adapt, recover, and grow in response to challenges. It’s not only about being strong or tough. It’s about the capacity to meet demands, bounce back from injuries and stress, and become more capable over time as a result.

When we challenge our bodies through exercise, cold exposure, rucking, or even just walking in bad weather, we become more adaptable and stress-resistant. These types of stressors train our nervous system, muscles, and cardiovascular health to better regulate themselves. Allowing us to come through both challenging exercise and daily life. The more we do hard things by choice, the more prepared we are to face the hard things we didn’t choose.

Every time we shy away from something that is uncomfortable or that we dislike a bit, it decreases that resilience and thus our ability to adapt and deal with stress. If you find you can’t handle everyday changes to your environment, such as heat, cold, wind, sun, rain, exercise, or relaxing, it might be a sign that you’ve allowed your health to settle into “normal” when it should be optimal. Challenging yourself is vital, but so is knowing how to rest and relax.

Note that I didn’t say you have to love any of those things. I definitely have my preferences for ideal weather, favorite exercises and so on. I try to mix in other experiences, too, the ones I don’t like as much, like leg day or indoor cardio. Doing things that are hard in one area of life translates to getting through hard things in other ways. Adapting to change and building resilience has resulted in humans being able to survive every area of the planet. We thrive in the Arctic Circle and in the jungles along the equator. Those challenges also help you move the needle from ‘typical normal’ to ‘optimal normal.’

If you’re in the Misogi Ruck Challenge, you’ve been challenging yourself and adapting for the last 8 weeks and that’ll show itself in your Misogi this weekend! If you aren’t in the MRC, it’s never too late to choose something that challenges you and get out there and do it this weekend.

Do the hard thing.

-Kim

Resilience Starts with Doing Hard Things

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