You know the bad stuff is gonna happen. Life feels tough from time to time. Change happens. Daily dramas push against us – at least every once-in-awhile. Heck, sometimes even grocery shopping is enough to throw me off track.
Just what your daily dramas are or how you define the bad stuff often depends on the day and your perspective.
My daughter, for example, would consider my homemade chicken potpie as some of the bad stuff. As for me, I gotta say I wasn’t totally in love with the cancer diagnosis I got a few years ago
But, all of these situations – the big and small – provide an opportunity to build resilience.
Resilience is just a cluster of qualities that help you manage, cope, and even thrive, through life’s uncertainties so that you come out of the experience a little better – dare I say even wiser — than when you started.
Everybody is born with some degree of resiliency – yes, even you, no matter what you think — are resilient. And the qualities of resilience like optimism, acceptance, flexibility, can be learned with attention and practice. When we do it – when we become stronger – we also infuse our life with meaning.
I’m not sayin you’ll always feel good or that life takes on the ease of a Brady Bunch episode. I’m just saying that with resilience, the tough times become an opportunity for growth, like it or not.
The melanoma diagnosis, did, for example, cause me to pause and give thanks for the life that I have and all the people and things within it. I moved closer to my values and appreciated the experience (fortunately I’m healthy now) as a reminder to take stock of what matters most. I didn’t like it. I don’t want to do it again, but I learned from it and because, I’ve worked on my resilience, I knew even during the ickiness that the experience would be a gift. Knowing that helped me stay balanced and aware, instead of fearful and anxious.
Stories like this are all around. People endure hardship much bigger than my own. They face daunting daily challenges. Or, we go out and get married and have kids – both of those things have seriously tested my resilience on a daily basis. But with resilience you can move through the challenge with grace.
After even the biggest hardships, resilient people take what they’ve learned and use it in their lives. They go on to start a company inspired by their disabled child. They become better parents and partners. They fight to change laws to help the rest of us. They adopt children, improve the health care system, feed the poor. They go on to love again and live big, fulfilling lives. And in so doing they inspire the rest of us.
This is how resilience works. And it’s there for you to develop and use.
Want to know more? Learn how to Reframe the Tough Times and bounce back from anything during the 8-week resilience class I’m teaching in collaboration with the Daily Om. The class has LAUNCHED! Yippee!. I’m so excited about this. The class is a powerful, unique, and convenient opportunity designed to help you enjoy life more. Because, it’s delivered directly to your Internet portal, you can even practice this stuff in your pajamas. Sign up at: http://www.dailyom.com/cgi-bin/courses/courseoverview.cgi?cid=224&aff=
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I love this post, Polly! I write a blog about resilience and I think you’ve really summed up the important aspects of it here. A lot of it is about acceptance and seeing the opportunities and gifts that come along with it. Sometimes we don’t see those right away. People who have lost their homes to foreclosure may not see any gifts at first. But, after a time, they may notice that the crisis brought the family closer together as they all pitched in to help or that, if they had stayed in that house, the kids would not have made the terrific friends they have now in their new neighborhood.
I also like what you say about acceptance regarding your melanoma: You don’t have to like the crisis that is happening to you, but you do need to acknowledge it and not resist it.
Good stuff!
Bobbi, thanks for your comment. I’m so glad you enjoyed the post. I absolutely agree with what you wrote; so much of resilience is acceptance and knowing that the gifts will come even if we can’t see them right away. I look forward to reading your blog!