resilience

You remember the old adage that “when life gives you lemon make lemonade”?  If we stop and think about this one, it seems pretty Pollyanna, meaning finding the good side of every situation with added sugar. Sometimes this seems like a whole lot of nonsense in the face of all that we have gone through in the past decade of our collective history. We have lived through a major, traumatic pandemic that was raging across the entire world. Depending on what country you survived it in, it was fairly well to very poorly managed by your government. We have also been living though a time when leaders of strangled, controlled, and starved countries are trying to manipulate the freedoms of democracy loving countries by creating and broadening false divisions between our populations. They have infiltrated our governments, our media, and our minds. They do this so they can have more of whatever they want from our countries – money, power, resources, whatever. And there are some of us are who are more aware of the politics and money crossing hands in this. Some of us are simply too busy trying to survive to be able to think about another thing. And others of us are unable to see the forest for the trees – it’s all just too overwhelming. It has truly been a Chinese curse of “living through interesting times” for us all, regardless of our level of awareness. I hope to offer in this blog some hope, and some food for thought to nourish you through these times of incredible stressors.

So back to the lemonade concept. If we can take a step back, take a deep breath, and detach from the toll that this all has taken on our psyches, what have we gained from all this stum und drang?

Well, in the best-case scenario, I believe there are those of us have built some resilience from dog paddling through these incredibly heavy currents in the river of life. With all the intense work that the past ten years have required of us, there are those of us who have acquired some stronger mental, emotional, and spiritual muscles, and therefore the capacity to recover from stress faster than we were before life gave us a lemon grove to wander around. Psychology Today defines the kind of resilience I am referring to as “the psychological quality that allows some people to be knocked down by the adversities of life and come back at least as strong as before. Rather than letting difficulties, traumatic events, or failure overcome them and drain their resolve, highly resilient people find a way to change course, emotionally heal, and continue moving toward their goals.” So, if you will forgive me for offering you a glass of this lemonade that I have made from our recent history, I will explain to you why I feel it is worth drinking.

 When we are living through “interesting times” over which we have little, if any control, we can feel as if we have been in a boxing match against a superior fighter. We can feel really banged up and hurt by circumstances that we had no part of in their creation. Yet deal with them we must because the reality of them has or is still happening. So how do we make it through rough times to come out able to bounce back and keep going forward towards our personal goals? Simply put, we do the best that we can and try to stay hopeful. Sometimes this means taking each day and each situation as it comes and to focus solely on working through whatever is handed to us to deal with or maybe having to multitask our problem solving. This would be like a fire fighter putting out fires one at a time or deploying their resources carefully to handle more than one fire at the same time. Sometimes it means to remove ourselves from the situation entirely when we are at our breaking point. If we chose to stay at it, we would be on fire ourselves if we didn’t walk away. And then there is the need to take down time and restore ourselves temporarily, even while things are ablaze. The problem will still be there when we wake, but we will be refreshed and able to tackle it better. The way I have found to restore myself is with exercise, being with friends, being creative, or taking time for my meditation practice when I am alone. Your way of restoring yourself may be completely different, but having your plan in place for when you need to tap out will really help you to help yourself recover. Taking a break from stress, whatever that means to you, is an important coping mechanism and helps build resiliency. Think of it as interval training for the hard times. Winston Churchill once famously said, “If you are going through Hell, keep going.” But even he had his own ways to cope, his family, and the physical constitution of a warhorse to get him and England through WWll and its aftermath.

So, let’s look at the aftermath for our own difficult times of life. The times when we are rummaging through the wreckage and trying to find healing for ourselves and a way to repair any emotional, mental, spiritual, or physical damage. There are so many modalities of healing out there right now that are accessible in person or over the internet. Mental Health professionals work online, and you can try one session as an interview to see if that person is a good fit for you. There are Energy Healers who help us heal our minds, emotions, and souls while they channel healing from the Divine and clear the releases of this suffering from our bodies, minds, and spirits. There are newer modalities like EMDR – Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing and Emotional Freedom Technique that help us to release trauma and change our relationship to it. There are also spiritual practices like yoga and meditation that can help release suffering in our bodies and minds. Then there are the numerous physical therapists and body specialists who help us repair and recuperate from physical injuries. There are so many more than I may be aware of out there that you can research and explore for your healing process. I trust that you will discover what works best for you and pursue it.

 Now let’s think about how to handle any existing obstacles we may encounter as we move towards or goals. We can surmount them by changing direction, moving around them, or changing how we think about them. Covid was the ultimate obstacle for many of us, me included. Everything came to a standstill in March of 2020. I had just opened my energy healing practice in December of 2019. My intuition was telling me in no uncertain terms that I was vulnerable to this disease, so I closed my doors 3 months later at the end of February of 2020. We all had to make huge decisions about how we each were going to survive the pandemic. (We should give each other a collective pat on the back just for the fact that we did survive it.)  Look back and think about how you created work arounds that allowed you a measure of freedom at home and with your job. Maybe you worked from home over your computer and, maybe, you still do? Maybe you learned a new skill set that enabled you to grow in your field and created something new. Maybe you became an influencer over social media or taught kids over the internet. Did you start something new or discover a new life direction that suited you more than the old one? What opportunities did you explore around this huge obstacle that enabled you to move closer to your goals? The point is, did you create a new path, even under one of the toughest times in current history? If you answered yes to any of the above, you did not let it stop you even if it knocked you, and the rest of us, down for a long period of time. You grew in spite of the odds, and you moved forward.

So, from all of the above struggles through this time we collectively lived through we built a kind of inner strength, and this is called resilience. It’s the capacity to get back up after a major setback, heal from it, and keep going forward towards our life goals. The toughest circumstances that do knock us down are, in fact, our greatest teachers. Or maybe you feel more like what Arnold’s character, Conan the Barbarian, when he said, “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger”?  Clichés, I know, but true none the less. Things become cliché because human beings have been repeatedly going through a particular issue for so long that it becomes a fact of our common experience. How we overcome hard times that create these clichés are the lessons that force our growth, teach us wisdom, and make us more resilient. We develop more emotional, mental, and spiritual strength, grit, and fortitude, and we learn a lot about ourselves in the process. All if which, I believe, is something to be proud of and our increased resilience is our reward. So, the next time you have another glass of Life’s lemonade to make, consider the resilience you already have and keep on going!

Wishing you all resilience.

Namaste,

Jean 🌱