Skip to main content

Resilience


Webster defines resilience as an “ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change.” It is a wonderful concept but can be difficult to capture. This morning, coincidentally, while warming up for a brutal workout, I heard the essence of resilience captured: “resilience happens when you realize there’s nothing left to do but to fight.”

When you move past all your excuses, when you are sick and tired of coming up with reasons to not act or to take more convenient action, when the pain of where you are and who you are is finally greater than the pain of change, that is when resilience is birthed. Resilience happens when a choice is made to act intentionally out of necessity and determination instead of reacting emotionally out of fear, doubt or anxiety. And it isn’t that resilience replaces fear and doubt, but it is the choice to fight through it – not an emotion that overcomes you, but a decision you make. 

Each one of us battles The Resistance. It looks different in each one of us, and even in your individual life, it will manifest itself it ever-changing ways. The Resistance will try to keep you from making the difficult decisions and taking the uphill path. It will attempt to seduce you with the comfort of the status quo. The Resistance is the enemy of Resilience.

Now, it’s important to know resilience isn’t necessarily overcoming obstacles and roadblocks, it is simply making the deliberate decision to fight The Resistance. Sometimes you will win, other times you will lose, but you will not get to choose the outcome. Your choice is to fight.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Toxic Humility

We have all seen false humility: the guy who tries to hide his arrogance with feigned modesty. It’s usually pretty obvious and always obnoxious. But there is also another variation of false humility out there: toxic humility. This is often displayed in self-deprecating talk and a lack of self-confidence, belittling or undermining one’s own talents and abilities. The danger in this kind of behavior is twofold: it is too often accepted as true humility and like a virus, it spreads doubt and disbelief. To clarify, it is not that the bearer of this toxic humility isn’t honest about his view of himself. That is the very issue: he absolutely believes he has little value or utility. He thinks downplaying his own worth is humility but I disagree. CS Lewis said it best when he wrote, “Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking about yourself less.” His point being, true humility is not an ever-present raincloud of self-doubt that follows you around. It’s a focus on...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Art of Intentionality

  “Intentional living is the art of making our own choices before others’ choices make you.” – Richie Norton   I am not even sure who Richie Norton is, but I love that quote! I imagine a ship drifting out to sea, pushed around by the wind and the waves. No course of direction, yet the captain is frustrated when the ship ends up dashed against the rocks, trapped on a sandbar or marooned on an inhospitable island. It is easy to complain when life takes us where we do not want to go. But who is really to blame if we have never set our sails to align us along an appropriate course? Do we blame the waves, wind and the weather? Or should we blame the captain of the ship? It is our life and our ship. We must set our sails with intentionality and determined choices. Otherwise, we are doomed to aimlessly drift along according to the choices and decisions of others. 
Post a Comment
Read more

Hasty Hares

We live in a world full of hares. People darting from one thing to another. Always looking for a shortcut. Constantly seeking a quick fix. Ever searching for a hack. And more than anything, they want it NOW! Speed seems to have replaced diligent planning and patient determination. It’s all about quick results, immediate feedback and instant gratification. People seem to be less concerned with the direction they are headed than how fast they are moving. They don’t know where they are going – and are quite possibly moving in the wrong direction – but at least they’re making good time! But the pace and aimless effort catches up. They get jaded and burn out. Or they simply end up “lost.” They fail to notice that movement isn’t progress. They don’t consider that sheer velocity, without control and accuracy, is dangerous and destructive. They forget the tortoise wins. Every. Single. Time. “It matters not how slowly you go. It only matters that you do not stop.” – Confucio...
Post a Comment
Read more