How adventure can help build your resilience

Adventure isn’t the only way to help build your resilience but its certainly a good one and the most fun on our opinion!

Here we explain 3 ways to help build your resilience and how adventure can help.

1. Practice pushing your comfort zone

Like anything in life, the more you practice the better you get. The same is true for your comfort zone and managing your fear. You learn to become comfortable with things you were fearful of and you get better at knowing when to push your comfort zone and when not to. It’s important to remember that everyone’s ‘zones of comfort’ are different.

How can adventure help: Adventure activities you do with you school provide a really safe and enjoyable environment to push your comfort zone. When activities are run really well each person can find their personal comfort zone and push it as much as they like.

2. Live a balanced lifestyle

When things all feel a bit much it’s often because you are out of balance in the basic (but important) things in life. People will debate what they are but we think it’s exercise, diet, sleep and managing your mind. If you let one slip for too long you become less resilient. If you continue to work on all of them you become more resilient.

How adventure can help: Adventure can’t directly help with all of these but for us adventure activities are a great fun way to get exercise (without even realising it sometimes). The natural world is also very calming. A walk in the woods can do your mind the world of good. In fact, there have been some tests to prove that smelling soil and looking at green things reduces your stress. Go do some research into it if you fancy it.

2. Build your support networks

The people around you and how you use them is perhaps the important factor in your resilience.

A few things to think about:

Who do you spend most time with? Who do you feel you can talk to the most? Who would you go to with what problem? When was the last time you helped someone through a tough time? How much time do you spend contributing to your support network?

How adventure can help:

  1. Most problems and challenges people face in life are invisible. It is therefore harder to spot when friends need help and harder for friends to spot when you need help. However, with outdoor activities it’s very clear when people need moral support or technical advice. They are therefore good at making you realise that people (including yourself) often need help.
  2. Teamwork is essential for many outdoor activities so its a more obvious example of how you are stronger as a team rather than facing challenges on your own
  3. Everyone responds differently to adventure activities as everyone has a different comfort zone so it’s an opportunity to help (and get help) from different people and expand you support network.

Adventure activities can therefore be a great way to practice building your support network.