Photograph by Judith Garner
BORROWED WISDOM:
When I peeled back the layers, I found a beautiful resilience inside. This is how I know I'll always thrive.
~Lori Schaefer
Every day someone, somewhere, is facing a setback. It might be minor or major in its impact, but one thing for certain is people will have different reactions when faced with setbacks. How do you react to your setbacks?
Some people bounce back easily, while others get stuck in victim/blaming mode finding it difficult to move forward. When a setback happens, we can act with a victim reaction or a resiliency response. Resiliency is the ability to recover in strength and spirit after life’s adversities that may feel overwhelming at first.
Resiliency is a skill that can be developed. In his book, The Resiliency Advantage, Al Seibert, PhD speaks to mental health (not mental illness) demonstrating that all of us can develop greater resiliency and teaches how to master change, thrive under pressure, and bounce back from setbacks. Here is a link to: Resiliency Quiz - How Resilient Are You? https://resiliencyquiz.com/index.shtml
When faced with adversity it is useful to remember that:
• Your mind and habits will create either barriers or bridges to a better future.
• Resiliency can be learned. It comes from working to develop your unique combination of inborn abilities.
• The struggle to bounce back and recover from setbacks can lead to developing strengths and abilities that you didn’t know were possible.
As I consider how resiliency can be learned, I turn to my own skill set, and think back to how I developed it. First, I’m going to give my parents a lot of credit. Especially, my Dad. He frequently told me something his own father said to him: “There’s nothing so bad, that some little good doesn’t come from it.” This has been imbedded in my mindset since my childhood. It’s very helpful to have a thought like this for resiliency! It shifts your focus from negative aspects to positive aspects quickly, yet still helps you learn lessons from negative aspects and move forward. My Dad, who passed away at nearly 94-years of age, was a resilience expert, in my opinion! A member of the “Greatest Generation”, he grew up in the Great Depression and World War II era.
Another key to developing resilience to setbacks is possessing healthy coping strategies. How do you do that? To me, you do it by what I call being “learning-based”. I’ve written about law of motion and body cells at my Healthy Inside & Out Blog, emphasizing our living bodies never stop moving! Even when we are externally at rest or sleeping, internally our organs, blood, tissues--all made up of cells--are rapidly moving. I believe the human mind (always thinking and always dreaming) is continually in motion too--right along with the physical body that sustains it. As such, being “learning based” is a growing catalyst of movement in the mind (brain) and a servient characteristic of wellness and longevity.
The best resource I’ve come across that comes close to conveying this concept is a book that does not address health, but is about achievement and success in business, relationships, parenting and school. The book compares the power of two different mindsets that people can have. It's not just our abilities and talent that brings us success--but whether we approach our goals (whatever they are, including managing our health!) with a fixed or growth mindset: Mindset-The New Psychology of Success. How We Can Learn to Fulfill Our Potential, written by Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D.
You see, there are these two major mindsets that can guide our thinking and/or beliefs called: “Fixed Mindset and Growth Mindset” that Carol Dweck, Ph.D. discovered through all her decades of research on achievement and success. Let’s just summarize that the “Growth Mindset” is how we can truly learn to fulfill our potential, and I say develop our resiliency skills as well. It’s potent and it can be learned! It just takes a paradigm shift in one’s thinking. I highly recommend reading this book!
I suppose that striving for resiliency is something that everyone desires, what do you think? Here is some borrowed wisdom on the topic of “Resiliency”:
“Life doesn’t get easier or more forgiving, we get stronger and more resilient.”
― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free
“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
“Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects of you. Never excuse yourself. Never pity yourself. Be a hard master to yourself-and be lenient to everybody else.”
― Henry Ward Beecher
“The world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is.” –“The Desiderata” https://www.desiderata.com/desiderata.html
“Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it. My optimism, then, does not rest on the absence of evil, but on glad belief in the preponderance of good and a willing effort always to cooperate with good, that it may prevail. ~Helen Keller
“My barn having burned down, I can now see the moon.”
― Mizuta Masahide (17th century Japanese poet and samurai)
By Judith Garner, Certified Health Coach
Helping people stay healthy inside & out!
When I peeled back the layers, I found a beautiful resilience inside. This is how I know I'll always thrive.
~Lori Schaefer
Every day someone, somewhere, is facing a setback. It might be minor or major in its impact, but one thing for certain is people will have different reactions when faced with setbacks. How do you react to your setbacks?
Some people bounce back easily, while others get stuck in victim/blaming mode finding it difficult to move forward. When a setback happens, we can act with a victim reaction or a resiliency response. Resiliency is the ability to recover in strength and spirit after life’s adversities that may feel overwhelming at first.
Resiliency is a skill that can be developed. In his book, The Resiliency Advantage, Al Seibert, PhD speaks to mental health (not mental illness) demonstrating that all of us can develop greater resiliency and teaches how to master change, thrive under pressure, and bounce back from setbacks. Here is a link to: Resiliency Quiz - How Resilient Are You? https://resiliencyquiz.com/index.shtml
When faced with adversity it is useful to remember that:
• Your mind and habits will create either barriers or bridges to a better future.
• Resiliency can be learned. It comes from working to develop your unique combination of inborn abilities.
• The struggle to bounce back and recover from setbacks can lead to developing strengths and abilities that you didn’t know were possible.
As I consider how resiliency can be learned, I turn to my own skill set, and think back to how I developed it. First, I’m going to give my parents a lot of credit. Especially, my Dad. He frequently told me something his own father said to him: “There’s nothing so bad, that some little good doesn’t come from it.” This has been imbedded in my mindset since my childhood. It’s very helpful to have a thought like this for resiliency! It shifts your focus from negative aspects to positive aspects quickly, yet still helps you learn lessons from negative aspects and move forward. My Dad, who passed away at nearly 94-years of age, was a resilience expert, in my opinion! A member of the “Greatest Generation”, he grew up in the Great Depression and World War II era.
Another key to developing resilience to setbacks is possessing healthy coping strategies. How do you do that? To me, you do it by what I call being “learning-based”. I’ve written about law of motion and body cells at my Healthy Inside & Out Blog, emphasizing our living bodies never stop moving! Even when we are externally at rest or sleeping, internally our organs, blood, tissues--all made up of cells--are rapidly moving. I believe the human mind (always thinking and always dreaming) is continually in motion too--right along with the physical body that sustains it. As such, being “learning based” is a growing catalyst of movement in the mind (brain) and a servient characteristic of wellness and longevity.
The best resource I’ve come across that comes close to conveying this concept is a book that does not address health, but is about achievement and success in business, relationships, parenting and school. The book compares the power of two different mindsets that people can have. It's not just our abilities and talent that brings us success--but whether we approach our goals (whatever they are, including managing our health!) with a fixed or growth mindset: Mindset-The New Psychology of Success. How We Can Learn to Fulfill Our Potential, written by Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D.
You see, there are these two major mindsets that can guide our thinking and/or beliefs called: “Fixed Mindset and Growth Mindset” that Carol Dweck, Ph.D. discovered through all her decades of research on achievement and success. Let’s just summarize that the “Growth Mindset” is how we can truly learn to fulfill our potential, and I say develop our resiliency skills as well. It’s potent and it can be learned! It just takes a paradigm shift in one’s thinking. I highly recommend reading this book!
I suppose that striving for resiliency is something that everyone desires, what do you think? Here is some borrowed wisdom on the topic of “Resiliency”:
“Life doesn’t get easier or more forgiving, we get stronger and more resilient.”
― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free
“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
“Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects of you. Never excuse yourself. Never pity yourself. Be a hard master to yourself-and be lenient to everybody else.”
― Henry Ward Beecher
“The world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is.” –“The Desiderata” https://www.desiderata.com/desiderata.html
“Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it. My optimism, then, does not rest on the absence of evil, but on glad belief in the preponderance of good and a willing effort always to cooperate with good, that it may prevail. ~Helen Keller
“My barn having burned down, I can now see the moon.”
― Mizuta Masahide (17th century Japanese poet and samurai)
By Judith Garner, Certified Health Coach
Helping people stay healthy inside & out!
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