The Art of Resilience

How resilient are you?

When you have an unwanted event occur in your life, you respond and do what you can to resolve it. Action is resilience. Waiting also has a place. Instead of anxiously spinning your wheels trying to manage a situation that is primarily out of your control, sometimes wisdom suggests you simply sit with the situation and wait for it to pass. Patience is resilience. Then, at a certain point, if the situation doesn't pass, waiting it out no longer seems to be an option ... whatever "it" is to you; the pandemic, the political angst, a problematic relationship, or a specific way you feel stuck in your life. When it appears that an unwanted situation has become your "new normal", it's time to adapt. Adaptation is resilience. The American Psychological Association describes resilience as:

Resilience is the process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility and adjustment to external and internal demands.

A number of factors contribute to how well people adapt to adversities, predominant among them:

• the ways in which individuals view and engage with the world

• the availability and quality of social resources

• specific coping strategies

Psychological research demonstrates that the resources and skills associated with more positive adaptation (i.e., greater resilience) can be cultivated and practiced.

So, how resilient are you? Are you open to becoming more resilient? The Terrarium Effect My favorite way of looking at resilience is by talking about the "terrarium effect". Terrariums are fascinating. With a terrarium, you can create a perfect little environment that has everything it needs - perfect temperature, perfect humidity, and no threats. The plants grow into perfect specimens - healthy looking, no disease, no damage. It's a beautiful, charming little scene that you would love to step into and spend some time with.

In many ways, we are all looking for our terrariums in life. That's what gated communities are all about. Protected, perfect-looking communities, where everyone seems to have all they need and want. It's an understandable desire. You may be very willing to spend a lot of time, energy, and resources trying to create your personal terrarium where you feel safe and comfortable. But, here's the thing about terrariums. If you take the lid off a terrarium and a slight breeze blows across it, the plants inside will easily snap over. The plant stems have no strength. They never needed to develop strength because they were never challenged. They grew to be beautiful specimens, but they are lacking in strength and resilience. A slight breeze is all it takes to break them in half. It turns out that being well-protected and always having everything you need and want will make you fragile and vulnerable. We know that our immune systems are strengthened by being challenged and weakened over time by over-sanitized environments. So, if terrariums only make you more fragile, vulnerable, intolerant, and less resilient, it makes you question what gated communities are really protecting you from. You develop strength and resilience (and every other desirable quality) by showing up and facing the challenges and unwanted situations in your life. It's the challenges that give you the gifts of survival and compassion. So, instead of the endless, exhausting attempts to defend against every challenge that might come your way, it seems that a wiser - and healthier - use of your time, energy, and resources would be to purposefully engage in life's hardships. The following poem comes to mind:

The Guest House, by Jelaluddin Rumi This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they are a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice. meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes. because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

Step 1 | Avoid the Suffering Loop Life doesn't always cooperate with your plans. Try as you may, the unwanted stuff is going to show up and interfere. The "unwanted" is a part of life; there's little you can do about that. But how you deal with it makes a big difference. Do you lock the door, pull the shades, and turn out the lights? Do you exhaust yourself fighting it on the front porch, trying to keep it out of your house? Or do you invite it in? Pretending you're not home is a form of suffering. You're not at home when you habitually focus on what's wrong in your life and then get caught up in the loop of thinking and feeling that these unwanted events shouldn't be happening to you.

"It's unfair." "Life shouldn't be like this." "There must be something wrong and it needs to stop!" "I can't deal with this and shouldn't have to."

You're also not at home when you spend a large amount of time and energy trying to figure out why this misfortune happened to you.

"Why is this happening to me?" "What did I do wrong?" "Why am I failing to keep it all together?" "What am I missing?"

The stories you tell yourself about why it shouldn't be happening to you or why it is happening to you are false narratives. They are fantasy loops that keep you distracted from your life by keeping you in your head and separated from your body. Being separated from your body means you aren't home.

The truth is, the unwanted is part of life's package deal. It's integrated into the product. It's not a feature you can opt out of. This is how it is. It's not a mystery you need to figure out. There is nothing wrong. You didn't fail. You didn't miss something. There's no mystery. It's simply built into the product. Fighting the unwanted also doesn't seem to work so well. Fighting it only makes it stronger. Eventually, it either exhausts you and makes its way into your house anyway or it slyly keeps you busy on the front porch while another misfortune sneaks in through the back door. Unfortunately, fighting what you don't want seems to be a pervasive Western approach ... the battle against this ... the war on that. In our culture, trying to get rid of what you don't want seems to be a more valued strategy than trying to create more of what you do want. And that's a shame. You feed what you give your time and attention to. When you battle against something, you're simply nurturing more discord and strife. More suffering. When you focus on getting rid of a bad habit, you give that bad habit more strength over you. When you focus on getting rid of a personal trait that you don't like, you empower that trait. Fighting never works out so well in the long run. So, pretending you're not home is suffering. Fighting is suffering. What's the option, then? The unwanted is a part of life. Its presence is a sign that you are living a life. So, stay engaged. Move out of your head and back into your full body. Then open your front door and greet everything that comes to visit you - wanted or unwanted, expected or unexpected. Step 2 | Embrace the Unwanted "Embracing the Unwanted" is a bit of Eastern wisdom that can be a tough sell for the Western mind. So let's take it a step at a time. To begin ... embracing the unwanted does not mean that you simply tolerate every unwanted situation in your life. You are wired to protect yourself. If you can resolve a challenge, discomfort, pain, or inconvenience that comes your way, by all means, do so! "Embracing the Unwanted" is a practice for those situations that don't have an easy remedy or a quick resolution. It's a practice for those situations where your only control, at least in the short term, might be in how you respond to it. And how you respond to challenges is the training ground for building strength and resilience.

What Eastern wisdom understands so well is that the more you battle the unwanted situations in your life, the more they fight back. The energy you invest in trying to keep the unwanted outside the gates and out of your living room only makes it stronger and more fierce. And you can't pretend you're not home - it knows you're there. And besides, that's no way to live. It's a losing battle to resist. There's a better way. As Rumi advises in his poem, invite the guest into your house and do what you can to make it comfortable. You can make this shift with a little self-talk ... "Well, this situation is an unexpected and unwanted guest in my house, but since it appears to be staying for a while, I will be a gracious host." Step 3 | Practice being the gracious host. Being a gracious host means:

• greeting your unwanted guest at the front door and inviting it into your home.

• offering your guest a seat in your living room.

• getting to know your guest by looking at it gently and paying attention to how its presence feels to you.

• asking your unwanted guest what it needs to be comfortable.

• asking if your unwanted guest has something to tell you or teach you. And then listening.

• being as patient, tolerant, and brave as possible until your guest is ready to leave.

Now, it's not easy to be a gracious host. Upon arrival, unwanted guests are often unruly, ugly, and smell bad. But that's where persistence comes in. As you commit to the role of gracious host, you'll get to know your guest and discover qualities that weren't apparent at first. You'll get a glimpse of their suffering, a glimmer of insight into why they showed up at your door, and an understanding of what they need. Being open and fully present in their company enables them to calm down and behave. They are then able to drop the fierce mask and get the care they need so they are not as offensive. And when they trust you enough to accept your embrace of them, a wonderful thing happens ... they give you a gift. Step 4 | Accept the gift your unwanted guest brings you. No challenge shows up without bringing a gift. If you can be a gracious host to your unwanted guest, they will eventually present you with it. Sometimes you may need to wait a while until they are ready to give it, but the gift is always there.

The gift is typically some form of self-knowledge, a new insight into yourself and your life, or a deepening of your tolerance, courage, strength, compassion, love, appreciation, gratitude, decisiveness, direction, ability to let go, acceptance, joy, and yes, resilience. You will develop a high level of resilience when can embrace an unwanted situation and sit with it patiently and calmly until it is ready to give you its gift. It's a transformative skill that can change your life by easing so much fear and anxiety. And there is the possibility of another magical experience. When you have been a gracious host to an unwanted guest, that guest - who was at first so fierce and threatening - may eventually become your ally and protector. It will be that inner voice that speaks up in a scary situation and whispers to you - "Ah, we've been here before, you and I. This would be a good time to use the courage I gave you." Much resilience comes from knowing that you can face and survive a challenge. It is knowing that an unruly and uninvited guest can show up and wreck your furniture and your world will not fall apart. This trust in your strength and resilience comes with experience, so make it a point to allow yourself those experiences. An example of this process is the death of a loved one. There is nothing you can do to undo this event. You may feel pain and a deep sense of loss. In response to that pain, you may attempt to buffer yourself from it by moving into your head where you can be distracted by the loop stories about why this shouldn't have happened or that try to explain the mystery of why it did happen. When you do this, you've retreated from your full body and escaped into your head. You're no longer at home. You have now moved from pain into suffering. Pain is the grief and loss you feel. Suffering is the stories you tell yourself about that pain. If you are able to catch yourself in your suffering (or maybe when you no longer need a buffer from your pain), you can instead consider the brave option of inviting your grief into your living room and offering it a seat. Now at first, your grief may storm around the room and trash the furniture. There may be tears and fierce growls. But with your patience and courage, it will eventually sit down with you where you can get to know it, to see what it looks like and feels like. You can ask what it needs to be more at ease and offer it. You can ask what it might have to tell you and listen. You can be patient with it. If you can embrace your grief in that way, in time it will offer you a gift. It will also likely transform from something fierce and scary into an ally that will show up and help you through future experiences of grief. This is a transformative way of dealing with the unwanted in your life. It's so much healthier and more effective than denying it or fighting it. Now that you've gotten a glimpse at how you can change your relationship with "what's going wrong in your life", it's time to take a very important final step.

Step 5 | Practice focusing on "what's going right in your life."

Human beings are hard-wired to look out for danger and risky situations - you do it subconsciously and automatically. It is vital to your survival. You'd be in trouble if you weren't wired to spot "what's going wrong in your life." The problem is that this survival function can become your primary way of moving through life. And as we discussed earlier, this is the foundation of suffering. You nurture and strengthen what you give your attention to. So, do you want to feed what's wrong with your life or what's right with it? It's a very simple question with profound implications. As long as you're chronically focused on "what's wrong in your life", you'll be impaired in your ability to create health and wellness for yourself. So, it's a good idea to free yourself from that habit! The remedy for that bad habit is to purposefully engage in the practice of keeping yourself focused on "what's going right in your life". The reason you need to make this a purposeful practice is because you aren't wired to automatically spot what's going right for you. What's going right for you doesn't pose a threat, so your survival doesn't depend on you being on guard for it. The foundation of health and wellness is the art (and practice) of focusing on "what's going right in your life." Remaining focused on what is going right, what you are grateful for, what you appreciate, and what you want to create more of is the most direct and powerful path towards health, wellbeing, and a greatly enhanced quality of life. Your wellness journey won't truly begin until you launch this practice. As long as you remain focused on "what is wrong" you will be sabotaging your health and wellbeing. Research has shown that a focus on eliminating bad habits is rarely successful. Success comes more easily when you add healthy practices to your life. When those healthy practices become habits, they are likely to replace bad habits. No battle. No fight. No sacrifice. Simply adding to what is going right for you. It's a win/win! Also, when you focus on a path of creating more wellness, the skills that were strengthened by your practice of "embracing the unwanted" will serve you well.

• By sitting with fear, you learned that you have the courage to set out on a new path.

• By sitting with grief, you learned that you can survive letting go of the familiar.

• By sitting with anger, you have learned how to take responsibility for your life.

• By sitting with anxiety, you have learned that you are resilient and will not break during challenging times.

The sure-footed path towards health and wellness is the practice of embracing the unwanted, learning from it, and remaining focused on creating more of what's right in your life. Adapting to what happens to you in ways that nurture your wellbeing is resilience in action.

It's a simple path, but it does require some courage and determination. It's worth it, though. Being alive, awake, and engaged makes for a deeply meaningful journey. I hope to see you on the path. The more, the merrier!

The unwanted is a part of life. Don't deny its right to be here. Don't fight it. Invite it in, sit with it, and get to know it. Accept its gift. Be grateful. Show up for another day.

Suggested Action Items:

• Listen to the "Embrace the Unwanted" podcast

• Read the "Feeding Your Demons" book review

• Listen to the "Meditation on Compassion and Joy" guided meditation