Resilience is everything

You get dumped, you lose a job, a loved one, fail numerous times and life pretty much throws a lot of things at you which you never thought would come your way. 

How do you handle it all? 

Wiith resilience...

This is a `power-word` I learned about recently. 

After numerous ups and downs, failures, disappointments and hours spent pondering about life. Not that I am philosopher enough to engage in joyless debates of concepts but one does reach a point in life, some sooner than the others, when they start questioning why some appear happier and healthier than the rest. 

It`s no coincidence, I feel, that those who end up with incurable diseases or depression seem to share the common trait of mental or emotional fragility. They feel overwhelmed by things more easily than others perhaps. A matter of easy resolution for some might turn into months of anxiety for them. I have also experienced this myself on a number of occasions. Friends who know me well enough have witnessed my nursery experience first hand. While most of my friends were able to put their precious ones in nurseries without much thought, for me, this was a topic of great deliberation. How would a 3 year old manage so many steps, how do you send your child to a place without windows, leaving home without breakfast - unthinkable. This wasn't something that weakened my resilience, but it was a source of great stress for sure. It`s just a part of my story in general. 

Things that did weaken my resilience, however, which I do not feel the need to detail right now, are shared by most of us and the important thing to understand, I have concluded, is how to build that strength. 

Resilience is a super power. It`s like emotional immunity to the problems of life which in turn reflects on one`s physical health and happiness. Inborn for some, most of us have to work on it. Identify the things that break that super power and build conscious and healthy strategies that help us break debilitating cycles. 

How? 

1. Identify what makes you feel drained. What's your weak point, perhaps your soft spot? The way you are treated by your significant other? Whether you are successful in your job or not? Your health? 

2. Preferably, find someone who is objective towards you and with enough common sense and wisdom to help channel your emotions and thoughts towards your superpowers. This could be a life coach, a therapist, someone you trust. The important thing is they should be objective enough not to send you down the wrong path of self pity. Most of the time, friends and family side with us while lending a shoulder for us to try on. Though this provides temporary relief and comfort, in the long run, it doesn't offer much in terms of making structured changes. So find someone neutral. 

It`s also sad that speaking with a therapist is somewhat of a stigma. I was extremely lucky that my best friend, by profession, is a well trained therapist with a tremendous gift of identifying a person`s strengths and weaknesses very well. Having said that, I didn't realize that years of phone conversations with her had actually served to help me find myself. 

We are limited by numerous conditionings and a lot of self doubt. Perhaps these are a natural result of the fact that we are social animals and grow up in the hands of people who love us and yet instill their own beliefs in our fragile minds during our tender years. We're clay that gets molded and by the time we have graduated or married or perhaps much later, we still aren't aware of our own unique traits. It takes a skilled 3rd party to do that. 

I am very happy to see people taking to life coaches. I personally believe just like people are assigned health centers in many countries, they should also be taught starting from their early years, the importance of consulting professionals with the aim of overcoming personal obstacles. 

I feel too many of us grow up oblivious to our shortcomings and strengths. We choose our fields of study not according to our strengths but because we feel a certain thing is our only option - if only we had the guidance needed to help us make self confident decisions about our lives. Not out of impulse, fear or panic but out of belief in ourselves. This requires establishing contact with our inner self. Who am I, what do I have to offer this world and what will make me happy? I'm certainly not suggesting going amuck and living a hedonistic life negligent of all reality. Though spending my whole life by the pool with unlimited coffee does tempt me, no, I mean being reasonable, practical, wise etc all of that and yet having the self confidence, self love, self assurance needed to make healthy life choices. How many of us have done things just to please others? Knowing deep down that they wouldn't be making us happy at all? This is what I am talking about. 

More later. 

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