Resilience through silence!

An interesting way to tap into your social sources is to withdraw, and to experience silence. It almost seems to be contradictive, social contact, is that not by definition talking with each other? Well, yes, it is quite difficult when one develops some sort of hermit-mentality, and completely withdraws oneself from human contact. But searching for some silence is far from asocial behaviour. It is in the first place the art of truly listening, with your heart, head and body.

A glance at the dark side!

After having talked about friendships that inspire us, and that give us energy, it is time to take a look at the dark side. Let’s try to see what kind of energy-draining friendships there are…

5 inspiring friends

Everybody needs good friends to preserve resilience and energy. When I was born, on March 8. In 1957, a good friend and colleague of my father – Dr. Zeeman – wrote me a personal letter. When I was 30 my mother re-discovered this letter and gave it to me, it said the following: ‘welcome to this wonderful world. I whish that you, just like your father, become a great friend for many.’ Apparently he thought this to be one of the most important things in life, and I do agree with him. Besides, in regard to my father, he was right too. That my father had plenty of resilience and energy is not hard to see, knowing that he, as a widower, remarried when he was 61, got 3 more kids, and worked (with great enthusiasm) until his 75th.

The past 57 years, friendships have mainly been a great source of energy for me. Mainly. It is the realistic side of friendships. There are those friendships that give you energy, and those that cost you energy. Today we’ll take a brief look at 5 kinds of friendships that are all ‘energy-giving’. I like to call them the 5 inspiring friends…

Buddies!

Friendships are a beautiful and very realistic social source of energy. Not everybody has a warm family, or lives in a truly motivating relationship. Even though these 2 are very important social sources, they are not for all of us, and certainly not always, there to tap into.

Dutch Resilience!

Of the 5 social sources that we are about to discuss, the last one, concerning our national identity, is possibly the trickiest one. So, why not start with that one!

Sylvia and I have been bridge-builders for most of our life, and we take great joy in connecting, working, and creating teams with others from different nationalities. When I was 19, I moved to Germany to learn to work together with people that are living and working, coming from a really different cultural background. This was especially meaningful to me since my parents have had rather bad personal experiences with Germans (my father was sent to the concentration-camp Vught, and my mother had barely survived the Hongerwinter), and therefore they haven’t exactly raised me Pro-German. Nonetheless, I have lived and worked for 22 years in Germany, and I have learned a great deal during these years. Interestingly enough, looking back now, I think that, that is also really thanks to the fact that I am deeply routed in my Dutch Identity.

Resilience: where do I find the energy?

Resilience is an exciting combination of:

1.    Personal Competences (like the 7 you can find in our ‘Resilience Scan’)

2.    Social energy sources

3.    Structural energy sources

After our last blog-series on resilience, where we have discussed the 7 personal competences, we start a new series on ‘Social Energy Sources’ today.

Building resilience: healthy relationships

It really is a little obvious maybe: people with healthy relationships have more resilience. It still is quite interesting though how having positive relationships and social competences has a direct and positive influence on your health. Here some of the impacts that being friendly to the people around you has (according to the researches of Dr. David Hamilton and Dr. Helmut Kolitzus).

1. It reduces the harmful substances in your blood (so, it actually works a little like heart-medications).

2. You have less of a chance to catch a cold.

3. Being nice to others enhances the emissions of serotonin and dopamine, so that you are less affected by depression and feel generally happier and more positive towards life.

4. The life-expectancy of socially capable people is about 7 years higher.

5. You sleep better.

6. You have more energy and a clearer picture of your self-esteem.

Naturally this is by far not a limited list. It just shows how being friendly is (even solely for health-benefits) absolutely worth it!

Resilience: my father, my role-model

Today, the third of May, I am flying back home after three intensive consultancy days in Hamburg. Today is also the day on which my dad, doctor Henry Donders, was born (121 years ago). He was a third child of a family that grew to be a family with 11 children. His father was the owner/director of a textile-factory in Tilburg. He was a strong figure who loved to work hard, but who was also very well capable of enjoying his life. Ones a year he used to take my father for a little trip to Brussels (remember: still in a time where there were no cars). My dad often took me on similar one-day trips across the country, and today I’m taking my kids on little trips across Europe as well.

My father became a general practitioner in Kerkrade. Where he mostly was attending to mine-workers that suffered from black lungs. He continued his studies to become an ophthalmologist, and finally he became a surgeon. He always loved being there for his patients. A colleague of his, Prof. Zeeman, wrote me a letter when I was born: ‘Paul, I wish for you that you become a great friend for many, like your father, who is a great friend for so many.’

Building resilience: self-awareness and passion

The images that surface when I am thinking about this sixth resilience factor are images of people like: Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Pope Franciscus the 1., Toon Hermans, Anky van Gunsven and my own father. All of them, people that are (or were) displaying: 1: a strong and healthy self-awareness without any narcissistic traits. 2: a passion for their profession/calling and for life as a whole. 3: Sense of purpose, in the form of a personal intrinsic mission.

Building resilience: food and rhythm

We are still working on the fifth resilience factor here: namely discipline. Today we are looking at the next 2 elements of discipline. That, together with the previous 2 – healthy movement and healthy sleep – form the basis of this resilience factor.

Building resilience: sleeping well!

Having a good-night-rest. Sleeping long enough. Waking well-rested! What a luxury. Sadly, for quite some people, it has become a luxury that they often have to do without. Someone (some time ago) came up with the story that one can manage fine with 5 to 6 hours of sleep a day. The thing is that it actually seems to work for a few years. And yet, these people are (seemingly without really noticing it at first) damaging their brain and body extensively.

Someone who goes with less than 5 hours of sleep twice a week has a 200% bigger chance of getting a stroke (Dr. Helmut Kolitzus). Rene Kahn wrote the very nice and practical book ‘The 10 Commandments for a Healthy Brain’. One of these commandments is ‘sleep healthy and sleep plenty’. For all phases of life it is important to get enough sleep. What is enough though? For teenagers that is actually a lot: 10 to 12 hours. But for all others it is AT LEAST 7-8 hours. Another interesting fact is that one can’t really catch up lost sleep. So, sleeping very little during the week, and trying to catch it up by sleeping a lot during the weekend doesn’t work.

Building resilience: discipline

The resilience-factor nr. 5. Confronted with the word discipline many people suddenly get the feeling of powerlessness. A bit of this kind of a story: ‘Tried it each year, but gave in after a couple of weeks.’ For many people discipline has something of a slightly demotivating and unreachable ideal. People with a high resilience-factor however, have a rather well-developed form of discipline, and are therefore better capable in enjoying life. They are less dependent on the change of mood or luxury-problems (like too much fat on the bones, too little or too irregular sleep, too little exercise, etc.).

In his newest book ‘Great by Choice’ Jim Collins gives an overview of 10 companies that even amidst of the great turbulences within the markets have kept on growing constantly and are still very successful and healthy. One of the principles that is distinguishing these companies from their main competition is ‘the 20 miles march principle’. If you are walking each day for 20 miles from out of LA, you’ll get to New York within 100 days. The Roman army forces have also lived by this rule (literally). They marched each day for 20 miles, and made camp at exactly that spot, no matter if it was only 3 PM or already 7 PM.

Building resilience: employing your skills

This forth resilience factor ‘employing your skills’ is, on the one hand, quite easy and fun to develop, but it is often also not consciously and regularly implemented. And that is a shame.

Daniel Pink describes, based on numerous researches, 3 basic forms of motivation in his book ‘Drive’:

Motivation 1.0: the will to survive

Motivation 2.0: reward and punishment

Motivation 3.0: intrinsic motivation