Cultivate Resilience with Practice!
Resilience is not a trait. Resilience is a learned behavior cultivated by development, preparation, experience, adaptability, and passion. This is good news; This means you, and anyone who is willing, can build and improve upon being resilient. If you’ve been knocked down, you don’t have to stay there. You can DECIDE today, right now, to get back up and put to practice being more resilient. Like patience and discipline, resilience is a mental muscle that requires being worked out to grow. Therefore, you can’t just sprinkle resilience on yourself like fairy dust, or simply say you’re going to be resilient. That would be like saying, “I’m going to build big bicep muscles without ever lifting weights or using resistance.” It’s impossible! You must practice resilience to grow resilience. Practice is your weights!
The key to cultivating resilience is practice. Here are 5 ways you can start practicing resilience right now.
- ACCEPT THE REALITY – This is kind of like the first step in the 12-step program, you know, “Hello, my name is ___________, and I am….” You must admit that you’ve been knocked down, caught off guard, and there is a crisis at hand. You must also accept that you could experience failure and some setbacks. It’s very important to recognize the emotional responses to these roadblocks or challenges are fear, anger, frustration, and a more so, blame. These are all NORMAL emotions that are a part of accepting the reality of what is happening to you at this moment. Your pain is real, it’s relative to your life, and it matters! The turning point is, it’s not how you feel that will determine your resilience, but how you respond. Once you’ve accepted the reality and taken ownership (regardless of who’s fault it is), you’re now in the driver’s seat. You can start to take some control back. Now, you get to DECIDE which way you will go!
- FIND THE OPPORTUNITY – In every cloud there is a silver lining. You must begin to search for new opportunity as though your very life depends on it. (It just might!) You can’t change the reality of what’s happened, but you can change your focus. You must live up to what you have obtained. Start asking yourself questions like; What are my gifts and talents? If money was no option and I could do anything right now, what would it be? What are the resources I have at hand? How can I make the most of my time? What do I need to know or learn? Who can help me? These are probing questions that will get you on to something productive. In this time, being productive and taking the necessary action, is the fuel you need to find the opportunity in the misfortune. There is ALWAYS opportunity, you must find it!
- RECALL PAST SUCCESSES – The mistake we make is focusing on the closed door far too long. You can look at the closed door for so long, that you will miss the door that is open right now. When you start to feel frustrated, exhausted, or feel yourself shifting to a more negative mindset, remember times in the past when you thought you wouldn’t get through, but you did. Recall past successes and remind yourself that you have already experienced hardships, maybe even harder than what you’re facing now, but you made it through. You got to another point, and you will this time too! You must strain towards what’s ahead, keep making progress, and never, never, never, never, never, give up!
- GIVE THANKS – If you’re going to allow your mind to ruminate on anything during a time of setback, let it be on whatever is good. Let the first thing you do every morning be to give thanks for anything that is right in your life. Take time to write out everything you’re grateful for and the blessings you have. It is true, that an attitude of gratitude will make what have enough. Be patient with yourself and others. Ask for grace and give grace. You will make mistakes but forgive yourself quickly and get back to thanksgiving.
- PREPARE FOR THE COMEBACK – Let your comeback be better than your setback! The time is now to prepare for your future success. You must work on developing your action plan now…Don’t wait. It can be tempting to procrastinate, to spend too much time on busy work, or to simply get lazy, but that is the absolute worse thing you can do. If you are going to come out on the other side stronger than you started, you need to be planning and preparing for what’s to come. Questions to ask yourself; What will I need to change? What do I need to know? How will I adapt? What impact do I want to make? These are great ideas to get you thinking about your future success. The time is now, today is the day. PREPARE FOR THE COMEBACK.
Remember, a knock down isn’t a knockout! You have the choice to make the most of your situation, practice resilience, learn, create some positive changes, and come out better than ever. The choice is yours to make…What will you DECIDE?