3 Lessons About Resilience That Got Me Through My Eating Disorder
Resilience is not a yes-or-no personality trait, it’s a magical mindset that can be learned.
My life, June 2020: it had been 2 weeks since decided to take a gap year from college. 2 weeks since my life seemed to open up right in front of me. I had pictured myself making the best of all this free time I now had. I would start running, do yoga, write every day, read like crazy, and watch all the classics. But the hope from those 2 weeks had passed. Instead, I slept for a grand total of 12 hours in 3 days, and everything I ate proved fuel for acid reflux, thanks to the GI problems I had around that time. The anxiety in my gut routinely woke me up at 5 and I inevitably drifted off into foggy naps at around 3 in the afternoon. I was at rock bottom. And I stayed there, longer than I thought I physically could.
But imperceptibly, things started turning around. I slept. I stubbornly started eating the foods I feared. I dealt with having more quarantined free time than I could possibly want by wasting it in spades. Now, more than mid-way through my gap year, I’ve held 2 internships I love, beat the beginnings of an eating disorder, finished 2 online courses. Most importantly, I’ve become happy with where I am. And resilience is what got me here. But before this year, no friend would have described me as such.
Here are some lessons I’ve learned about cultivating the magic of resilience.
1. Respect Your Telekinetic Powers
In 1955, researchers Emmy Werner and Ruth Smith began a 40-year longitudinal study on infants from the island of Kauai, searching for those that were “resilient.” They were looking for kids, who, after facing adversity, somehow found the will to keep on. They found that regardless of their backgrounds, people who were resilient over the years become more successful and had similar ways of seeing the world. They were independent, resourceful, and sought out new experiences. They had support systems of caring friends or mentors. They could reinterpret challenges and traumatic events as opportunities for growth instead of points of defeat. And most importantly, they had an internal locus of control, believing in their own power to affect change in their lives.
In other words, they had the power of “real-life telekinesis,” the ability to influence the world without physical interaction. As they rightly believe, we can all literally make our own luck.
Daniel Kish is one such optimist with “telekinesis,” and it was his story this past year that convinced me to become one too.
Daniel was blind from eye cancer before he was 13 months old. But instead of being confined to a wheelchair for his entire life, he started clicking his tongue to “see.” On the way to school, climbing the neighborhood trees, or even biking, using echolocation the way bats do to navigate the world. Just because he believed he could.
The morning I heard about Daniel, I was stuck in a rut. I hadn’t gotten anything productive done in days but couldn’t seem to start. But that afternoon, I started writing again, being reminded of the possibilities of what I can accomplish.
The stories we tell ourselves make or break everything. Change what you believe, and you change what you become.
2. Resilience is the Trampoline For the Next Five Minutes
Many may have heard of this quote by management consultant Tom Peters: “Excellence is the next five minutes or nothing at all.” It is a wonderful piece of advice, but I propose the change:
“Resilience is the trampoline for the next five minutes or nothing at all.”
A few weeks ago, I experienced some of the worst self-doubts I’d felt in a long time. The progress I’d made with my health had slid precipitously back to square one, with no end in sight. Everything I ate went down wrong. I was hungry but full. I was moody, irritable, and my stomach ached. What if I wouldn’t get better? I sulked on the couch, feeling as if I’d wasted my year.
But my niece was having none of it. As a four-year-old, she prioritizes nothing but her own happiness. And that day, her happiness was the trampoline, the slides, and me, her favorite toy. I got dragged to the playground and spent that sun-soaked afternoon bouncing up and down, making my niece giggle again and again as I pretended to be an astronaut, touching the roof of the trampoline with each jump.
Was I being resilient that afternoon? Yes, although I didn’t know it at the time.
Resilience isn’t always hard-knuckling it through the pain, it’s inventing little reasons for being so happy that you forget the need to be resilient in the first place. Resilience is knowing when to rescue yourself from a negative spiral and think about nothing for a while. The pain will come back. But resilience is choosing the next five minutes, and the philosophers that contemplated happiness without an answer just hadn’t been on trampolines in a long time.
3. I Came. I Thanked Myself. I Conquered.
One day this past year, I was calling my best friend and was suddenly reminded of the habit we cultivated while we roomed together senior year. Every night before we slept, we would list 3 things we were grateful for. No fake-outs. No BS. Just us, the fairy lights, and our reflection of the best parts of our day, what we did to get there, and what we’re excited for. It was a bit like finding the best parts of your life and yourself to compliment. “Active gratitude,” I dubbed it later.
Senior year should have been my most stressful year. Between my college applications, school work, and extracurriculars, I was busier than ever. But for some reason, my best friend and I always reserved the afternoon for nap time, and we relished going to the dining hall for long, chatty meals that lasted an hour. Don’t get me wrong: we were stressed. But when the nightly gratitude list came, we always had 3 things to be thankful for. And before we knew it, the college application season was over.
According to studies in positive psychology, gratitude can make you more resilient. It helps you deal with painful moments, build strong relationships, and actively work towards a happier future.
In one 10-week study, the psychologists Emmons and McCullough asked participants to journal a few times per week, with one group focusing on gratitude, another focusing on annoyances, and the third on events that affected them (either positive or negative). After the study, the gratitude group was found to be more optimistic, physically healthier, and needing fewer doctor’s visits.
Start thanking yourself for the amazing things in your life. Then start working on squeezing more amazing things in there. Really. You’ll thank me for it.
