How to Build Resilience: The Foundation of Survival Preparedness

You want to know how to build resilience! Because when the trouble comes, you don’t have time to start trying to figure it out!

Imagine being surrounded by Germans in the middle of winter, cold, little supplies and no word of being resupplied anytime soon. It was December 1944, Bastogne, Belgium.  Hitler was trying to split the Allied Forces and was brutal in his assaults.  But the men of the 101st Airborne, along with the 10th Armored Division, proved to be more resilient than the enemy could have possibly conceived.  Their capacity to withstand the onslaught of the German forces and ability to stay tough in the middle of being cold, hungry, tired and even wounded is the stuff great stories are made of!

But resilience isn’t just for soldiers on the battlefield.  It is for the single mom who is trying to make it by working two jobs.  It is the couple losing their second child in pregnancy, it is the person who has gone through a hurricane and is on their sixth day of no power and no word of it being restored any time soon!

The online website dictionary defines resilience as, “an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change.”  It is a word that applies to what “we” do, and what we prepare for in the survival preparedness community.

Resilience is the cornerstone of what “we” do!  Is the foundation that we all need.  If you don’t have the ability to recover and adapt during times of struggle, no amount of food, water or gear is going to get you there.  Resilience is in the mind and the heart!  It looks beyond the cold, fear, struggle and sees survival on the other side.  This is where you start!

This article will walk you through how to build resilience.  But you can’t just read about it.  You need to “build” it!  That means you need to be active in working this through. 

Why You Need to Build Resilience

When you are in a stressful situation, the body goes into action, the whole body!  It is important to understand how you specifically respond to stress.  You need to identify it, label it and be aware of it so you can deal with it when the trouble comes.  We’ve all seen the different ways people respond, from the person curled up in a fetal position on the floor to the insane person grabbing their hair and yelling at the top of their lungs to the person who goes into a catatonic state.  It’s all that and everything in between!

Every part of your body is affected by stress.   Stress affects all systems of the body including the musculoskeletal, respiratory, cardiovascular, endocrine, gastrointestinal, nervous, and reproductive systems.[1] The issue comes when we are talking about long term stress, the kind we think about in the survival world.  All your systems are working at a heightened level and you can’t go on for too long with your body working at full capacity without a break or something will break!

These physical effects are brought on by our emotional response to the stress, fear, panic, anxiety or whatever we are feeling due to the survival situation.  This is the part we need to deal with.  It is the emotional response that brings about the physical response!  Let me give you an example. 

Real World Example of Needing Resilience

You are riding out your first hurricane after your move to the Gulf Coast.  Family has called you because they saw the reports on the evening news.  Your co-workers talked to you about being prepared.  You took your time and didn’t stock up at the grocery store and when you finally did, the shelves were empty.  You are now in the middle of it with a flashlight that has two year old batteries and the power just went out.  You get through the wind and the rain, but after two days you still don’t have power.  You throw out hundreds of dollars worth of food from your refrigerator and freezer.  You don’t want to think about how you will replace it all since you are barely making it every month! You are hot and miserable and can only communicate when your neighbor charges your phone for you.  After the third day, the power comes on.  You check the fridge to make sure it still works, you turn down the AC, take a shower and then sleep for sixteen hours straight.  Why?  Because you are mentally and physically exhausted after the stress and your body needs to rest!

How Do You Build Resilience?

Self-Awareness

The first step in building resilience is being self-aware.  This means that you know your strengths and weaknesses.  When you know what those are, you will be able to adjust for your weaknesses and triggers that cause the stress response in you.  Of course, everybody is different.  This is why you need to know yourself and how you will respond.  

For example, in the hurricane example above, the individual would be aware that they don’t like to be uncomfortable and can’t lose money at this point in their life.  The ideal position would be to have a generator and small window unit.  But if this person is already struggling financially, they could have had a back-up plan with a friend or co-worker to bring over the most expensive food to help preserve it and even stay with them until the power comes back on.

One thing to consider if you are married or with kids, it is good to know what their triggers and stressors are too!  You can be self-aware, but if someone in the group is panicking and stressing, it can add to the stress levels of everyone involved.  You will want to know how to best help ameliorate their stressors too!

Positive Mindset

Another step in building resilience is maintaining a positive mindset.  This is easier said than done when you are in the middle of the “junk,”  but it is very doable with the right outlook.  Mindset is about your attitude, about how you see a certain situation.  Having a positive mindset means that you are able to see the positive side of things although the stress is right in front of you. 

Again, using the hurricane example, our young single friend could tell himself that he didn’t lose the roof over his head.  He could think about being grateful that he wasn’t hurt, that his place of business wasn’t destroyed and he has a job to go back to when the power comes back on.  It is all about how you look at it.  We are not suggesting to be Pollyanna here.  Instead, we are choosing to think about and reflect on the positive aspects of our lives!

Adaptability

Being adaptable is important to building resiliency.  Adaptability means that you are able to be flexible when circumstances change.  No one likes change.  But in a survival preparedness scenario, change is a constant. When you are adaptable, you will be able to use problem-solving skills to navigate through the emergency.  More importantly, you will learn from mistakes and setbacks.

In our hurricane scenario, our friend could have started cooking his food before it spoiled and used the food to reach out to neighbors to then establish a relationship that would be mutually beneficial in the next emergency.  After the power came back on, he could have researched ways that he could keep power going to his refrigerator and freezer, or at least saved his food from spoiling by taking it to a friend’s house that had room to store it for him.

Determination

Building resilience means having focused determination.  Focused because it involves setting realistic goals and setting a plan to meet them.  When the emergency hits, it includes the motivation and perseverance to face the adversity in front of you.  It can include inspiration from your parents or another role model, but it could also just rise up inside of you not wanting to give in to a victim mentality.

Post hurricane, our friend should set a goal and put a plan in place to not be unprepared for a hurricane again.  It’s not hard to do, you just need determination!

I experienced this with a few colleagues when they experienced the loss of all their food in their refrigerators and freezers during the Derecho that hit Houston in May 2024 and then again with Hurricane Beryl that hit in July 2024.  After two back-to-back storms where they lost hundreds of dollars, you could say they were determined to not have to go through that again!

Situational Awareness

Situational Awareness is necessary when we discuss building resilience.  We talk a lot about situational awareness in the survival and preparedness world.  It simply means being aware of your surroundings.  It is a constant awareness, not just a one time thing.  Let me explain, our young hurricane friend should have been situationally aware to the possibilities of hurricanes in his area when he moved to the Gulf Coast. You want to know the major natural disasters that can affect you, be it hurricanes, tornados, blizzards, floods or fire.  That knowledge should have helped him think about and even start getting prepared.

But our young friend needs to be situationally aware on a regular basis.  This means when he found the place to rent, he needed to do some due diligence about the neighborhood, look at crime reports and even talk to some neighbors.  When he goes to the grocery store, he needs to not have his face buried in his phone, but instead he needs to have his head up while he walks, so he doesn’t trip, but also paying attention to cars that are backing up and even bad guys who might catch him unaware and try to rob him. When he leaves his home, he should be weather aware and know if it will rain, snow or be extremely hot.  All these and more fall into the situationally aware category!

Practicing Resilience

The Curse of Knowledge

In the survival preparedness world we are cursed with a ton of knowledge.  We read survival articles, listen to podcasts and watch videos on YouTube.  Most of it is really good advice and information.  But, we are knowledge rich, and experience poor!  This means that many people don’t practice what they are learning.  This is a problem if people are truly wanting to build resilience.  Knowing how to do something is one thing, you need to actually do it to have the experience!

Experience

Experience has a symbiotic relationship with the skills we mentioned above: self-awareness, positive mindset, adaptability, determination and situational awareness. 

When you begin to actually “do the stuff of preparedness” all these skills are enhanced.  You become more self-aware of what you can and can’t do.  You gain a positive mindset because you have had success in, for example, building up your food storage.  You go camping or turn off the power for the weekend and you and your family experience how to adapt to, another example, cook outside.  Your determination increases because you realize with a little effort, you can make big gains.  And your situational awareness increases as you start to watch how many people are actually living in a fog.

Force a Scenario

You can practice survival skills in isolation, like building a fire, filtering water or building a shelter.  But one of the best ways to build these skills is to force a survival scenario.  Survival and Preparedness Influencers have promoted these types of scenarios for many years.  This is how one scenario could work.  

Take a weeknd and turn off the power at the breaker box!  Then, simply figure out how you get through the weekend without power!  That’s it! It’s simple, right?

Well, if you are married with kids, you’ll have to clear it with your spouse and kids.  They might not like the scenario.  But if you do it smart, like a “glamping” challenge.  They might bite!  And kids, the younger they are, the more likely they will see it as a fun weekend activity!

Before You Go All Survival Rambo

So before you pull the plug on your power, you might want to think through what things might look and feel like.  If you have a spouse, include him/her in the scenario and planning and share that you want to be better prepared if the lights go out so you are not stuck like our young hurricane friend mentioned in the article above.  If he/she is game, you have a winner!

Get a game plan together.

• Think through how you will handle it when it is dark.
• What kind of lighting will you use?
• How will you cook?
• How will you power your refrigerator and freezer (you might want to keep the power on just for those, but not use it anywhere else).
• How will you get hot water to wash up with?
• What will you do to pass the time?
• How will you stay cool or warm, depending on the season?
• How will you get information?  
• How will you charge your cell phones? If you choose to utilize them for communication.

All of these questions and more will help you make a plan so you don’t go into your survival scenario blind.  And, congratulations, you have the beginnings of a plan that will help you in many survival scenarios!

After Action Report

One of the actions you and your family should take after your survival scenario is to complete an after action report.  This doesn’t need to be anything formal.  But asking some questions and making note of them will help you make your survival plan better for the next survival scenario or if the real thing happens!

You can ask questions like:

• What worked well?
• What didn’t work well and we need a better solution?
• What did we want or what could we have used that we didn’t have and might need to purchase?
• Did anyone struggle during this scenario?  Why?
• What might we need to do differently if this happened during summer or winter?

Taking a little time to do this, when it is fresh on everyone’s mind, will help to prepare you for the next time!

Beyond Survival and Preparedness

The skills we mentioned in this article are not just for your survival.  They are everyday skills that make the difference in all aspects of life.  When you are self-aware, have a positive mindset, adaptable, determined and situationally aware, it translates into more than just survival.

What good boss doesn’t want you to have these skills?  What coach wouldn’t want this in his athletes? What parent wouldn’t want to see this in his child’s teacher?  The person who functions with these abilities is an asset to any company, team or student!

The truth is that these skills are not common like they used to be.  But it doesn’t have to be like that with you!

Be Different! Be Self-Reliant!

You can be different out there in the craziness of this world!  People will see these traits in you and admire them.  Hopefully they will want them too!  And then you can share your knowledge about how to build resilience and how it impacts every area of life!

The crazy thing is that it doesn’t take that much to be different.  But building self-reliance skills will set you miles apart from the current direction this society is headed in!

Final Thoughts

The world has changed and is changing, but you don’t have to change with it. By building resilience, you’re not just preparing yourself to survive challenging times, you’re forging an unbreakable spirit that will carry you through all of life’s trials. Just like those brave soldiers in Bastogne, just like that single mom working two jobs, just like the couple facing unimaginable loss, you too can find the strength within yourself to keep going, to adapt, to overcome. So start today! Take those first steps to become self-aware, to cultivate a positive mindset, to practice adaptability and determination. Keep your eyes open and your head on a swivel, always situationally aware. And then put it into practice. Challenge yourself with a survival scenario. See what you’re made of. Because when the real test comes, when the hurricane hits or the power goes out or life throws you a curveball, you’ll be ready. You’ll be resilient. You’ll survive and thrive in this world, come what may.

Endure and Excel,
Todd

[1] – https://www.apa.org/topics/stress/body