Hello my friend,
I hope all is well with you, wherever you are in the world.
Today, I would like to touch on RESILIENCE. I have spoken about resilience before but Covid has introduced things we never knew we would have to cope with. And it is fascinating to watch how we, as a human kind, cope with our current everyday reality.
I don’t know about you but I have a feeling that we are not coping all that well. What I see most of the time is an attempt to force previously used solutions to the new challenges. (even though we say to ourselves that we are “flexing” our approach…)
It made me think about how resistant we are to change.
To be perfectly honest, it makes me angry and I often have to stop, detach (often from my own train of thoughts), take a deep breath and remind myself to be kind. To myself and to my environment.
I am old enough to know that my emotions of reactive anger and occasional frustration will not help me feel better. Far from it. Been there, made a video. Million times over.
I also know that I cannot control my outside environment and things that are outside of my control (and currently almost everything is outside of my control). But I can control my responses and my inner dialogue. I know that I can have the best coaches in the world trying to make me feel better but if I don’t make that internal effort myself, it will not happen.
“What does all of the above have to do with resilience?”, you ask.
“A lot.”, I answer.
In my view, we can only cultivate resilience if we are fully aware of what is happening inside of us. If we are clear on what is important to us, how we want to feel, how we want to approach external (uncontrollable) challenges, take responsibility for our actions and really understand what resilience actually means.
And to me, forcing old solutions to the new challenges, expecting my past “proven” methods to work again, forcing and pushing through the challenges without stopping and reviewing whether they actually make any sense – is not understanding what resilience is. It is pure bullying and madness.
This is a meaning of Resilience I found in one of the dictionaries:
“Resilience is the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, or significant sources of stress.”
Resilience basically means that we deal with whatever obstacle we encounter in such a manner that the outside world does not even notice we went through any challenges. But most importantly, it means that we don’t go into an autopilot trying to force our way out the life obstacles. But we stop, review our options, look at things from different perspectives and consciously choose our responses. So that we can bounce back from any adversity as quickly as possible.
You don’t have to tell me – not an easy task. But personally, consciously choosing the way forward seems like a better option than going with the flow of automatic emotions and reactions. (which we often regret)
RESILIENCE is a big topic and I am doing a small presentation on what resilience means to me on 27th February at 5pm UK time.
If you are interested in joining us, you are welcome to register here.
Have the most wonderful rest of the day and (if you’re celebrating)
Happy Valentine’s Day?.
Michaela xx