Resilience

You’ve had a trying day. Maybe your work environment just seems to be intolerable lately. Or maybe something in your personal life. Maybe either or both are causing you to feel overwhelmed. You find yourself emotionally exhausted at the end of the day. You have trouble getting motivated to start your day on most mornings. Maybe your heart is racing with anxiety and you are disheartened by the potential of another overwhelming day in front of you.

[Before you read further, I encourage you to first evaluate your circumstances to determine if perhaps you are simply trying to cram too many things into a single day. This applies to work AND personal life. Sometimes the overwhelm can be easily rectified by simply eliminating a few commitments that really don’t make sense. I know plenty of people with a handful of children, each in 3-4 different sports/activities at once, wondering why they never have an opportunity to breathe.]

Let’s step beyond overcommitment. Think about an overwhelming day - whether at work or at home. We have all experienced those moments. Maybe it feels like nothing is going right or that you can’t get anything done. Maybe you find yourself in a foul mood throughout the day. And that mood lingers into your evening. Now take a minute and think…can you remember a GOOD day? Even a day when all kinds of things were going wrong, maybe all kinds of hell was breaking loose…yet you handled it with ease? You accomplished a ton and while you may have felt physically exhausted at the end of your day - you actually felt GOOD about it. You were invigorated by the accomplishments of the day and you actually looked forward to the next one.

Sound like something you remember? I bet you’ve had a few days like that. Probably more than a few.

So what causes one day to go so well, and another to simply crumble to chaos and overwhelm? What causes you to be so capable in one situation, and unable to cope - succumbing to overwhelm in the other?

What if I told you that resilience was an innate part of your being, and you had the ability to summon it whenever you chose? And what if the only difference between a good day and a bad one came down to only one thing. What you have on your mind.

Your mind is powerful and your thoughts create your emotions. Every single time. Good ones, bad ones, overwhelm, anxiety, fear, anger, love, contentment. It doesn’t matter which emotion. Without your thoughts, the emotion can’t occur. So while it looks like something outside of you is causing your reaction…that’s simply an illusion. It’s your thoughts about that ‘something’ that are causing the emotion you feel. Don’t believe me? Test it out. Let’s use traffic for example. One day you’re driving home in outrageous traffic. It’s taking you twice as long to get home and you are frustrated and angry. Your mood is getting worse by the minute. You tell yourself you’re sick and tired of the commute and maybe even thinking about finding another job closer to home. Fast forward 4 weeks, you’re driving home, the same exact circumstances occur again with really bad traffic. Only this time you happen to be listening to a comedy show on the radio or a fascinating podcast. And while it’s still taking you twice as long to get home, you aren’t frustrated or angry this time. What was different? The traffic wasn’t different. But your thoughts about that traffic were.

So let’s go back to that GOOD work day. When you were absolutely on fire and accomplished so much. What was on your mind THAT day? Let me suggest that your mind was on only one thing… the task in front of you. You were fully present and engaged. You weren’t distracted by thoughts about:

• A colleague that wasn’t being responsive.

• A significant change at work that you disagreed with

• An irritating comment from your spouse

• An argument you had with your teenager

• The really poor service at a restaurant that caused you to be late

Fill in the blank with any kind of negative or disagreeable thought you’d like. Once your thoughts start racing toward all those negative distractions, everything starts to look disagreeable. And it becomes incredibly difficult to focus on the task in front of you. Whatever that might be. Your entire day begins to be influenced by the emotions behind those thoughts, and everything starts to feel harder. That’s because the negative thoughts are blocking any innate capacity you have for creativity and problem solving. They can’t get through the noise.

Beneath it all is that innate resilience I mentioned. You have the ability to change that trajectory, and go from overwhelm to a more peaceful state where you can operate from a place of full potential.

You can’t control your thoughts. Our individual thoughts are created based on a whole host of influences. But you can choose how much attention you give them.

So the next time you find yourself feeling overwhelmed, take 60 seconds and take a breath. Then ask yourself… where is my head at? Take a minute to look at what your thought pattern has been. Then tell those thoughts that you’ll have to get back to them another time, and simply let them float past. This is a practice that can be used any time. You don’t have to wait for a bad day at work. When you find yourself in a negative mood as you’re leaving for work. When you find yourself responding sharply to your child who asked you a question. When you find yourself getting impatient with a cashier at your local grocery store. Your ability to summon your resilience and get back on track is always available to you. And it is only one thought away.