The thing about resilience
I didn’t sign up for this intensive course at the school of hard knocks, but here I bloody am.
I need my own Failure Friendly medicine more than ever, it seems to be one disaster after another at the moment. Can you relate?
During disasters 1 to 10 I was ‘in control’. Doing the mindfulness practices, the positive affirmations, intention setting and holding space for the ickiness. Smiling through clenched teeth.
From disaster 11 to 179 however, there was no pretending. I was so obviously not in control, nor was I ever. The Failure Friendly practices seemed to be doing jack all.
But even in this disbelief and loss of faith I kept at it.
I continued to invite my anxieties and rage to speak up in the pages of my journal. I punched a pillow. I plastered lipstick intentions on my bathroom mirror and held my heart in the shower as I coaxed the discomfort into compassion and forgiveness.
I celebrated my humanness with colourful food, lemon water and a sweaty spin class. I borrowed the energy of podcasters whose voices felt more empowered than my own. And I literally found a shoulder to cry on.
Despite my efforts I continued making expensive mistakes. I kept falling on my face and being a Karen to the people around me.
I didn’t feel like playing anymore. But even in the disbelief that it would make a difference, I kept showing up to the Failure Friendly practice. Every day Waking up, Shaking up, Making up.
I wasn’t doing it to control the discomfort anymore, I was just doing it. When everything was spinning out of control it’s what I held onto.
No matter how many times my car broke down or the COVID restrictions changed, I kept coming back to this line of lipstick letters on my bathroom mirror:
‘It’s a blip baby girl, failure isn’t fatal’.
On a long walk (thanks to my car failing, again) questions started popping into my head. They came from a quiet voice that I hadn’t heard from in a while.
Questions like:
‘What if instead of seeing it as being knocked down, you see it as proof that you rose up, spoke up, questioned the status quo? What if you’re the one breaking the system, one head butt at a time, rather than the system breaking you? What if this isn’t another thing gone wrong, but another opportunity to exercise the mindset you want to strengthen? Practice makes perfect eh?
There it was. A mindset shift that gave me freedom from fear. The payoff for consistently showing up for myself in the face of uncertainty. Yay!
The true gift though was the showing up, again and again. Refusing to give up on myself no matter how hopeless it seemed. That’s self love resistance training.
The word resilience comes from the latin ‘resilire’ meaning to spring back. The point of this practice is not to be a perfect friend to failure. Losing faith along the way is part of the process, it’s the springing back that matters most.
It’s the springing back that strengthens your resilience muscles, and builds your creative confidence. The more you do it, the easier it will become and the gaps between falling and springing will become shorter too. To the point were it may almost looks graceful!
But you can’t practice springing back if you don’t fall down. Falling down is normal, inevitable and crucial. We will always fall from grace, the aim is to know you can show up for yourself even when you’re down.
If you’re feeling down and out, let it be temporary.
Springtime is coming.
Buzzy.