The Dance of Personal Sustainability and Resilience
What is Personal Sustainability?Derived from Latin sustinēre= to uphold, to sustain means to bear a burden, to hold up against, to endure. In our world of accelerated change, how we manage change, adversity, and endure our way through hardship and suffering of any kind can be measured by our level of personal sustainability. What is Resilience? In distinction resilience from Latin resili(ēns), prp. of resilīre =spring back, rebound, often to its original shape. For example, I will sustain my intention and focus on seeing opportunity. I will sustain my courage. I will be resilient in the strong tides of change. Or, from a martial arts perspective, I will sustain my centre, and yet will be resilient to the punches and kicks that come my way, flexing and flowing with them.(Aikido) In visual imagery, a tall tree has sustainability in its roots and leaves, and resilience in its ability to flex with strong winds and wild temperatures.

In Bucky’s generalized principles, “Unity is Plural at minimum two”, sustainability is the compressive element, resilience is the tensile element. They are complementary and go together. When we have sustainability we have resilience and vice versa. Just like when we have up we have down, concave, convex. Not separate.
Personal Sustainability increases whenever we strengthen our Personal Foundation *Building strong boundaries *Living our values
*Operating in high integrity
*Managing our expectations and the expectations of others
*Maintaining our health and fitness
*Being sure we have our money handled
*Managing your energy bank account
*Cleaning up our relationships
*Being aware of our choices, actions, reactions, stories
*Creating a life playlist for the workaholic
Resilience increases by nature when we work on our Sustainability, plus when we specifically target developing Resilience
*Remaining open and flexible
*Letting go of rigid and fixed thinking or positions
*Adopting the highest altitude perspective we have access to
*Scarcity - “Not Enough” leads to “more is better” leads to “you” or “me”
*Keeping mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually fit
*Having the willingness to be challenged
*Being able to navigate our dark night of the soul
Highly developed Sustainability and Resilience inherently indicate a highly developed person, someone who has high cognitive, emotional, moral and other intelligences. By their very nature, most Positive Deviants are high in their sustainability and resilience. They have learned how to build endurance. It gets back to personal development. Doing the work on self. It includes having a strong
Integral Life Practice.
Courage Quotes - finding courage through love
Sustained by Beauty
Voluntary Simplicity
The Divided Life - Its high price
Creative Integrity-how to navigate the new world of work
To Access the Emergency Tool Kit for Maintaining Sustainability, click here.
What Does Integrity Mean- Integrity as a daily practice using Integrity around money as an example
Healthy Anger - transmuting anger into a positive force
For a discussion on the Definition of Ecology-the Study of Consequence
To learn about the Principle of Exchange-how to create a Win Win Win in all relationships.
To read about Deception, Truth and Conscious Communication, click here.
To Return from Personal Sustainability to Positive Deviant Home Page
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