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.