Hello everybody!
I hope you are well, along with your loved ones. Ready to move on with life.
The topic of this blog has been in vogue in the UK for a couple of years now.
Sometimes we go through hard times. We are able to motivate ourselves and pursue goals that we desire intensely but, sooner or later, something unexpected happens that causes us to begin to doubt ourselves.
Sometimes the “surprises” are given to us by a person. Things are going well for us, but someone is saying something that discourages us. People can comment without being aware that what they say is hurting us. Maybe they wanted to discourage us, but that’s probably not the case.
Other times, circumstances change (for the worse) and we have to deal with more than we thought. There are always elements out of our control and things can (and do) go wrong.
“Resilience”, translated in other languages as “elasticity and resistance” is the ability to recover, bouncing like a rubber ball. This ability improves our ability to get out of any situation.
Look at this graph: it expresses the relationship between stress and performance. Psychologists say that pressure/stress improves performance. I interpret it as an acceleration of metabolism and the functioning of our cognitive capacity.
What on the one hand is a good stimulus, in excess leads us to a “distension”, to exhaustion. We go from being more efficient to feeling overwhelmed and starting to feel anxious, because we can’t “reach”.
It is important to recognise this stage and try to curb it, redirect it.
I guess if you’ve been reading my blogs, by now you’ll know that what I’m interested in, what I want to share with you, is to think about what we can do to alleviate the negative impacts or bounce-back from these as quickly as possible.
- Be as objective as you can
When things go wrong, remember that “people don’t“ do ”things to me, they do them for them”, “some bad things happen, and they affect everyone, not just me”, “problems are not here to stop us, they are an opportunity to grow ”,“ what happens is not what counts, what matters is that we do with what happens to us ”
Objectivity is not easy and is a skill that needs to be learnt like most skills. Sometimes it is very difficult to see the positive until hindsight. If that is the case, don’t beat yourself up, remember you have now learnt something and hold onto that for next time.
- Be grateful
An attitude of gratitude towards everything that happens to us. Even the worst things change how we see our environment and the opportunities within our reach.
It is easy to be grateful when things are going well, however let us try to find reasons to be grateful, for big or small things, to savour the present and learn from what we experience in life.
“Be it little, be it nothing, whatever they give you, give great thanks.” ~ attempted translation of a Catalan proverb
- Be persistent and Be focussed
Whatever happens, once you’ve solved it, move on. One of my favorite quotes is: <‘Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end. ‘> by John Lennon. In other words, if things don’t go well, it’s because we haven’t finished yet. Don’t give up, get up, dust off and move on. Pursue what you want and don’t stop until you get it. Results are feedback until you reach the end.
Did you know that flying a plane is primarily about correcting the trajectory of the plane? Imagine for a second you were able to course-correct, with some invisible elastic bands that brings us back into place.
Although we cannot control our circumstances, we do have the power to choose how we respond to most situations. In most circumstances when we change our response to the stimuli we force the situation to behave in unexpected ways.
To quote the iconic Bruce Lee “Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.“
Look after yourself, and each other!
More information around this concept can be found here
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