The role of resilience in mapping our best aging journey

By Joan Zaretsky

In last year’s KIT magazines, I reviewed Sue Lantz’s Five Strategy Framework to support each of us mapping our best aging journey. We thoroughly enjoyed her presentation at our Annual General Meeting in Brandon in May as she enlarged upon the significance of each of the five strategies.

Over the summer as I was reviewing my Resilience course which I teach at the University of Manitoba, I started to notice many commonalities between Michael Ungar’s research and Sue Lantz’s mapping framework.

What is Resilience? Resilience can be defined as an individual’s ability to bounce back. We often hear the word “resilience” in relation to sports figures who have been injured and their ability to quickly return to their game. In this sports setting, resilience is used to describe a person who bounces back physically from an injury or crisis. However, there is a lot more to resilience than this usage would suggest.

Eldon Dueck, a retired Hanover school principal who offers workshops entitled “Resilience: The Invisible Backpack” describes resilience as the ability to reframe an adversity and to view it from a different perspective, preferably one of a growth mindset, whereby we may ask ourselves, “What have I learned from this experience to make me stronger in the future?”

Michael Ungar, the Director of the Canadian Resilience Research Centre housed in Dalhousie University, whose research my course is based upon, defines resilience as “our capacity, individually and in groups, to navigate our way to the psychological, social, cultural, and physical resources that sustain our wellbeing, and… our capacity individually and in groups to, negotiate for these resources”. Ungar developed a list of twelve resilience resources which enable adults to build on their current understanding of resilience. In the case of RTAM members, these qualities support us in maximizing our enjoyment of the last decades of our life’s journey. The chart below outlines the 12 key resources Ungar has identified for adults throughout their lives.

A Dozen Resilience Resources

1. Structure/routines

2. Consequences/ accountability

3. Intimate and sustaining love from others

4. Lots and lots of supportive relationships

5. A powerful identity

6. A sense of control

7. A sense of belonging/culture/ spirituality/life purpose

8. Rights and responsibilities

9. Our basic needs are met

10. Positive thinking

11. Physical wellbeing

12. Financial wellbeing

I couldn’t help but identify the overlap between many of these twelve resources and the five strategies which Sue Lantz presented at our AGM to support older adults planning for their best retirement journey.

When we think about Sue’s Health Strategy, there are a number of resilience resources related to physical health such as the resources associated with our basic needs and our physical wellbeing. There are also a number of resources related to our mental health such as our maintenance of a powerful identity, a sense of control over our decision making, a sense of life purpose, and positive thinking.

In reviewing Sue’s significance of our

Social Networks, Ungar suggests maintaining our resilience through intimate and sustaining love from others, through our development of lots and lots of supportive relationships and having a sense of belonging in a community whether based on friendship, culture or spiritual commonalities.

The mapping strategy of planning our Caregiving Team is tied into Ungar’s description of the significance of having lots and lots of supportive relationships to call upon when we start to prepare our list of future caregivers. It is important that we have a sense of control in our selection of those individuals who we trust to best support us in specific roles, as outlined by Sue.

Sue’s last strategy in her framework supports the importance of the implementation of the complete list of the dozen resilience resources to support our successful movement through the upcoming years. Ungar’s last resource is financial wellbeing. Sue emphasizes that our financial wellbeing is dependent on how we have managed her other framework strategies over our older adult years. Ungar concludes that “Finding the resources we need for success depends on the quality of our social, built (created) and natural environments.” All aspects of our life intertwine to support our resilience and wellbeing as we map our best aging journey.

In the next KIT, I will discuss Ungar’s