Resilient Spirit: A primer
Going in a bad situation is not under your control but coming out of it certainly is, if you don’t allow that situation to overpower you, and dampen your spirit. You will bounce back; your bouncing back would depend on your resiliency level. Negative things do happen, and no one wants them in their life. When something ‘bad’ happens, if you focus on what you want, keep your mind off what you don’t want or are worried about, and take action, then miraculous things can happen. When hit by life disrupting change, you will never be the same again. You will emerge either stronger or weaker, either better or bitter. You have within you the ability to determine which way it will be for you. As you struggle with adversity or disruptive change, your mind and your habits will create barriers or bridges to a better future. Blaming others for how bad things are for you, keeps you in a non-resilient victim state in which you do not take resiliency actions. Resiliency comes from feeling personally responsible for finding a way to overcome the adversity. Your struggle to bounce back from setbacks can lead to developing strengths and abilities you didn’t know you were capable of. Your unique resiliency strengths develop from self-motivated, self-managed learning in the school of life. Self-knowledge enhances your resiliency because your way of being resilient must be your own self-created, unique version. Self-knowledge comes from self-observation, experimenting, and being receptive to feedback of all kinds. The observing place within you is where you develop conscious choices about how you will interact with the world you live in. Experiencing choices leads to feelings of freedom, independence, and being in control of your life. As you become more and more resilient, you effectively handle disruptive change adversities, and major setbacks faster and easier. The negative thoughts, apprehensions, insecurity drain you; such feelings bring you down emotionally and blur your vision. The consequent reaction hurts you more than the situation which gave you these feelings. You can’t make feelings go away, but you can move through them. Resilient people express what they feel upset about as a step toward regaining a positive frame of mind needed for bouncing back. Expressing your feelings is as important as the maintenance work you must do on equipment your life depends on. But, do we actually know how do we feel, can we articulate our feelings, can we write down our feelings. In fact, most of us would be at loss of words, or would not be able to go beyond few sentences if we chose to write how I feel, because we have been restraining them for so long that even in our private space, we are not able to express them. You may begin by writing down your feelings as answer to the queries like What pressures I am feeling? How are my work and my life different that it was a year ago? What is difficult for me now and what difficulties am I expecting? What feels distressing to me? The above list is your negative list, the reasons for your stress, insecurity, distressing challenges, now try answering another set of queries – What do I have fun doing? What do I get enthusiastic about? What would I like to do that I get enthusiastic about? What would I like to do that I keep putting off? What do I enjoy sharing good experience with? When do I sleep best at night? What positive aspects of my life am I ignoring? The first set of list you put you in thinking mode, and you would notice while you are writing the answer to those queries you are also thinking about the solution of those situations. The answers to the queries in the second list will put you in action mode; you will feel the excitement while writing your response to them. These were some of the things you always wanted to do, but forgot to do due to professional pressure or work pressure or rigmarole of routine. Having these two lists together would also help you get the right perspective, it would prepare you to handle your situation, and it will subconsciously train you to handle the difficulties, consequently making you more resilient. Because, after you’ve made your lists about what drains you and what revitalizes you, you are at a choice point. Are you going to take action or not take action to reduce your distressing, energy-draining experiences and increase pleasant, revitalizing experiences? In the 1960s, research psychologists began to investigate people who coped well with life’s difficulties and were more stress resistant than others. They discovered that people who cope well focus outward to problem solve their difficulties. Revisit your list of negative experiences. Pick one item and create an action plan to feel less vulnerable and more in control. Decide to find a way to decrease the negative effect it has on you. You can begin sorting them by asking yourself – What if I ignored this? What if I avoided contact? Could I do something about this? What could I do to change how it bothers me? Can I make it go away? Can I get it out of my life? The answers to these questions would help you look things in much better perspective. You feel strained only by what you emotionally and physically attempt to deal with. Disengaging yourself from some things around you conserves your resiliency energy for more important challenges. Let’s hope some of the things that I have mentioned in my post help you see things in better perspective in challenging times and help you be at the driving seat in every situation.