Choosing Resiliency
Resilience is what happens when you give yourself evidence that you can survive difficult things.
If 2020 taught all of us anything, it is that survival requires a mix of flexibility and resilience.
People who are close to me often ask me how to make it through or make comments about me being “so strong,” wondering and looking for ways to adopt coping mechanisms for tough times.
My reply is always: “some days are better than others, but every day I wake up with the intention of choosing to feel as good as possible”.
I am strong, but certain things I’ve experienced the past two years could not be changed by any amount of “personal will.” My reaction? To simply decide that no matter what I face in life, whether thoughts of ruin, loss of money, unexpected death, difficult relationships, illness, rejection, fear, uncertainty, overwhelm, insecurity, lost hope, disappointment, arguments, feeling unloved -- whatever I may perceive as “negative” -- my overarching goal within all of it is to keep my commitment of feeling as good as possible at all times. What better gift or healing could I possibly offer myself other than the full acceptance of ALL my feelings, not letting the humanity of my being in any state bring me “down” or cause me to beat myself up.
I’ve come to understand on such a deep level that to get TO my good feeling place, I often must go THROUGH the cycles of feeling bad, and it is all actually one total and complete experience.
It never matters where I begin on the emotional scale, as my starting point only serves as information to let me know where I am beginning in relation to where I am always going. For me, the final destination is always in the vicinity of joy, inner peace, love and acceptance.
How I get there varies from day to day. It often looks like lots of self talk, intentionally deleting and choosing thoughts, meditation, detaching from what I think things mean, journaling, exercising, letting go of overdoing/overthinking, people pleasing, cutting ties to toxic people, visualizing, or even sitting in silence staring at the sky.
What does it look like for you? What does it need to look like today? Where can you stand to unblock some of your energies so wellbeing can flow again?
The answers always reside first in managing emotions: the adoption of a power of agency. You choose how you feel. You can’t choose your circumstances, but you can always choose your reaction to those circumstances. And I choose power and joy.
For more on this and to gain more insight into the importance and practice of self-mastery, consider the following resource from my Worth A Read collection:
The book is called “Ask and It is Given” by Esther and Jerry Hicks. Check it out here!
