TESTING RESILIENCE

TESTING RESILIENCE

What can we learn from Ramadan Resilience?

Testing resilience is at the heart of Ramadan. As we bid farewell to Ramadan, I started reflecting on some of the new habits I have developed which are key to build my ability to adapt, grow, prosper and strengthen my own resilience.

During Ramadan, Muslims practice one month of fasting from sunrise until sundown. Most people think that fasting is the act of not eating anything, but drinking water is allowed. However, complete fasting includes not drinking any water.  At the sundown, Iftar is the meal that breaks your fast, and Suhoor is a meal taken just before sunrise, before the day of fasting starts. It is also recommended to eat in moderation. Waking up in the middle of the night to drink water and eat or sometimes stay up late until Suhoor did mess up my sleep, my schedule, and some routines, which makes it very hard to perform at work during the day. Ramadan is intended to increase self-control in all areas, including food, sleeping, and the use of time

Based on my own experience of years of practicing resilience during the Holy month of Ramadan, I’ve discovered a few fundamental things you can do to actually evaluate, manage, and strengthen your own resilience in the same way as you increase the resiliency of your personal or work life.

 Resilience - Fasting drives you out of your comfort zone and forces you to develop that sense of a minimum way of life. Fasting gives you the ability to survive, even when you are deprived of the most basic of all needs. This is the need for food, drink. If you cannot satisfy this basic survival need, it dominates your interest and concern. A hungry person will not be very interested in socializing, learning, or working, but you still have the ability to survive. Think of Fasting as a resilience exercise. Basically, we rehearse the worst-case scenario before an actual crisis hits us.  Ramadan is a test to help develop resilience through sacrifice and deal with the challenges of coping and adapting during the month of Ramadan. Learning to adapt to change and build resilience can help us navigate the challenging times ahead. 

Clear sense of purpose - Fasting helps you build a purpose and meaning in life. Without purpose and meaning in life, it would be very hard to survive any challenge. By minimizing food and drinks during Ramadan, we give more room to spiritual time, which symbolizes compassion, reflection, and willpower. The lesson here is we need to be taught, armed, and build resilience before a problem happens. Learn to adapt and embrace change, the reality of life, and make new habits and break old habits. In order to survive a big problem; you need to have a bigger goal and purpose. That’s the only thing that will help you to bounce back when a problem hits. 

Hope - Breaking the fast at sunset is a reminder of developing hope. That any problem you will be facing will be over. Avoiding any negative self-talk. We face difficulties in life, and one way to build resilience is to have hope. Changing people’s social system, economic system, political system. Etc. and for people to believe that change is possible is by seeing hope. The emotional thoughts that people may have can affect them physically. Hope builds courage and strong will 

An attitude of gratitude - Fasting helps us develop an attitude of gratitude. Recognizing that everything we have is a special gift to us. Why do we forget to be grateful? Gratitude helps build resilience by fostering adaptive coping mechanisms. By managing positive thoughts and emotions like satisfaction and happiness and counting our blessings and not taking things for granted, it enhances our emotional resilience. It builds our inner strength to manage stress.