As you move through Calibrate, the task at hand is to maintain the habits that have gotten you this far. But what about when life throws curveballs. In this short, two-part guide, we’ll delve into some tools for preparation and response.
Part 1: Getting up after falls with experiential resilience
It can be scary to think about having slips. But here’s the thing: you can recover from any of those falls. None of them have the power to derail you. In fact, you’ll be building your resilience. That’s because each of those tumbles will become a personal data point, which you can reference the next time you feel afraid that you won’t be able to get through a hard experience.
To see how this principle—called experiential resilience—works in practice, try this: look back and think about where you were at the beginning of Calibrate versus where you are today. Think in terms of what you can now do that you couldn’t do then. If you had told yourself a year ago that you could do those things, would you have believed it? From there, you can project that progress into your future with confidence; you know you’ve risen to the challenge before.
Part 2: Keeping a preparation mindset
Let’s say you’re cruising along, hitting all your tracking goals, and making health-supporting choices. Then something happens. It might be a fight with a spouse, a loss at work, or family drama. This is not a surprise. It will occur. And it’s understandable if you start to lose momentum.
When this happens, creating an articulated protocol for how to respond in tough moments is the best way to set yourself up for success. When structuring your plan, consider how to incorporate routines and people that you can rely on to help you switch into a damage-control autopilot mode for challenging days. Here are some examples of these that you can implement both in the moment and over time.
Long-range
In the moment