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My husband spoke in church this week and it was so awesome! He spoke about resilience, and as a life coach this kind of right up my alley. He was so kind to come to me and ask me my thoughts. We got to spend quite a bit of time talking about what I teach and blending that with the gospel (it’s all truth so it just goes together). He then took our conversation and turned it into a beautiful talk, and I’m not just biased. Many people were asking for a copy and told him how much they appreciated and resonated with it. I love what I teach so much that when there is an opportunity for me talk about it, I get so excited and sometimes can’t stop talking about it (lucky for my husband). So today I share some of my thoughts, his thoughts and our combined thoughts on resilience. Resilience is a necessary life skill and one that I feel is important to grow and develop, probably now more than ever. Being resilient puts us in control of our life. It gives us the power to endure the circumstances of life. It gives us the determination to move forward! Life is not meant to be comfortable all the time - understanding AND accepting this is the key to becoming resilient. We cannot wish away the hard times, or those things that we would rather not deal with. When we resist them, they actually become more miserable. When we know that the entire human experience means half good and half hard, we can embrace the hard knowing the good is coming. And we don’t have to let those difficult circumstances control us. The thoughts we choose to have about it will determine our experience. We have the power to choose how we react to unwanted circumstances. Viktor Frankl said: "Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
Whatever happens to you is your circumstance. You get to decide how you will react. If you decide to see your life is so hard and indulge in thoughts of judgement, jealousy, and self-pity, you are creating additional challenges on top of the challenge that is already there. That doesn't sound very fun. Our brains natural tendency is towards negativity - it’s a survival mechanism so there is nothing wrong with us, we just need to be aware of it. It also means that we will have to be focused on shifting our thoughts if we want to have a different experience. These negative thoughts can feel really believable to us and it can be hard to make space for the light. Here are some small shifts you can make to open up and see it differently:
• Ask yourself: "I wonder if it’s possible that I am seeing this wrong?” Or “is this thought serving me?”
• Be patient with yourself.
• Observe your reactions as if you were a loving third party.
• Try to verbalize the thought that is leading to your negative feeling, and then see if you can come up with a more productive thought.
This is just a sampling of the goodness he created, but I hope it shows you how important resilence is and how it is totally within your reach.