How to Grow Your Resilience Muscle
This past few months, I have been seeing a resurgence in the number of Resilience workshops I have been doing since the COVID pandemic.
I think people are still feeling the fallout of the emotional rollercoaster from the pandemic, while now being fully ramped up to ‘normal’ living. There is also a lot of conflict in the world right now that impacts us at levels we may not even fully understand.
Here is what I believe to be true about resilience. Resilience is something we develop when we go through tough experiences. I think of my Dad when I describe this. Growing up, we had a well-manicured yard at home. My Dad wouldn’t have ever thought about hiring a maintenance crew. He did it all himself with the help of my Mom for planting and watering Other than that, it was all Dad. He would shovel and hoe almost every day. When I looked at the palms of his hands, they had callouses on them from repetitive use of these gardening tools. Callouses emerged because tough work had required them to grow to help my Dad’s hands to be able to do everything that his life was telling them through experience he needed to do. The callouses helped him to carry more. To handle the tough stuff better.
And that is exactly how we grow our resilience. We develop this inner strength over time because we have to. This growth does not feel so comfortable at the time and often can feel like pain, but it forces us to shift and change to be able to carry the heavier load more efficiently. Despite the emergence of AI, I still believe the human body and spirit have so much intelligence that we have only tapped the surface of what is possible.
How do you grow your resilience and emerge from tough experiences stronger?
I remember reading once that grieving is mandatory and suffering is optional. When we go through tough experiences, we need to really feel the emotions we are experiencing. Pushing them away and trying to ignore them isn’t going to serve us in the long run. They will pop up again for us to deal with later down the road, or emerge in the form of a health condition. Do your due diligence and the self-work around really facing what is there in front of you.
But do it in a way where you are kind to yourself. Be patient. Express your feelings in a way that feels right for you - talk to a professional or a friend or write in a journal.
Self-care. Going through tough things is not for the faint of heart. It is a warrior’s work and we all get called to face tough things at some point(s) in our lives. When we take the time to exercise, eat healthy, drink lots of water, and do things like meditation and being out in nature, research shows that is like putting deposits in your energy reserves to help you be able to handle tough things better.
Remember you have a choice to make. As the familiar saying goes, “We don’t get to choose what happens to us, but we do get to choose how we respond.” For me, I have chosen to respond from a place of vulnerability and open sharing of my story. Experiencing a brain injury and then losing my Dad and then my Husband to cancer, cracked me wide open and I began to feel this instinct to share and be vulnerable in a way I have never felt before in my whole life. I began to see so many others going through stuff and thought that if I shared my story, it could help others see they are not alone. And it feels healing for me, too.
How do you want to grow and respond to what is going on in your life?
Perspective. What stories are playing in your head about what you’ve been through? What stories do you want to hear? A few months after my husband Jeff died, the COVID pandemic hit. All of my outside support was gone and I was homeschooling our 8 and 10-year-old daughters while I was working with a brain injury and headaches, and we were all deep in our grief. There were a lot of days I would get out of bed and feel like I was climbing Mount Everest. I was in survival mode (and to be honest some days I still am!), but I did start to examine my thoughts. I began to change the story. So when I woke up I would tell myself, “I get to do this. I am grateful.” Changing the story and linking it to gratitude was massive for me.
Looking to plan a Workshop on Resilience for your Team or in Need of A Keynote Speaker for your Event? Check out my offerings and contact me at ceo@potentialunlimited.ca to book!
