Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas
Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it’s less good than the one you had before. You can fight it, you can do nothing but scream about what you’ve lost, or you can accept that and try to put together something that’s good. Elizabeth Edwards
This weekend was a fun weekend of going to a friend’s place and enjoying a jazz festival and then yesterday, popping in to see family in the afternoon. It is lovely to be able to do these fun things again. We were happy to see bands perform we’ve seen at previous jazz festivals.
It is a testament to the resilience of people being able to bounce back from difficult situations that festivals are going on.
Resilience is the ability to manage the emotional impact of stresses, difficulties, and traumas in our lives. Are we born with an inherent resilience that protects us, informs how we discover and explore the world, how we learn, and take risks, or do we develop resilience?
Being resilient doesn’t mean we don’t experience stress, it is how we deal with it that makes us resilient. We are resilient when we work through our pain, our losses, and our setbacks. We are told we can grow our capacity for resilience and hasn’t these last couple of years been a testament to that. We haven’t equally faced difficulties, traumas, and setbacks. Some of us have been fortunate to sail through these last few years without much impact and others have seen the fabric of their lives ripped apart.
Flexibility and adaptability to go with the flow of life, and perseverance to not give up when things get hard help us to be resilient. When we believe things can get better and that we have the resources, strengths, and skills to overcome the challenges and work through our setbacks we will have the strength to carry on.
If we have gratitude for what we have, compassion for ourselves and others, acceptance of what is, and believe there is meaning and purpose to life. If we can forgive ourselves and others for our shortcomings we have the building blocks for a resilient life.
Resilience is very different than being numb. Resilience means you experience, you feel, you fail, you hurt. You fall. But, you keep going. Yasmin Mogahed
This doesn’t mean we won’t have moments of being overwhelmed by trauma, adversity, and hardship, but we will utilize our resources, strengths, and skills to overcome and accept the challenges and realities of our lives. Being resilient does not mean we never need help, it means we will acknowledge our situation, seek help and adapt to situations and move forward. Resilience is the core strength we use to carry our load in life.
If we can develop a resilient mindset we will do better in life. It will help us weather the ups and downs. If we are grateful for what we have, and where we are and know even if it seems bad it could be worse, and that we are stronger than we think we are and there is a joy to be found even in the midst of adversity. The more joy we glean from small things in our life the better our lives will be. Resilience is taking the lemons in life and making lemonade. It is people going through hardship to give their families a better life. It is believing tomorrow will be better and enjoying whatever joys today brings.
None of this is new, every generation faces adversity and has to dig deep to find things to be grateful for and the strength to persevere. We admire those who have had the courage to persevere, and who have faced adversity with courage, optimism, and humor. It is people who have faced the greatest obstacles that have the best stories.
We don’t know what life has in store for us. We don’t know how we will react to the circumstances ahead, but we can hope we will be resilient, grateful, resourceful, and persevere through whatever lies before us.
It may sound strange, but many champions are made champions by setbacks. Bob Richards
It’s your reaction to adversity, not adversity itself that determines how you life’s story will develop. Dieter F. Uchtdorf
A good half of the art of living is resilience. Alain de Botton
Thank you for reading this post. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you will come back and read some more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.
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