WOW: Resilience - Sunday

A quick refresher: 

Resilience:

re·sil·ience

rəˈzilyəns/

noun

noun: resilience; plural noun: resiliences

1. 1. 

   the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape; elasticity.

   "nylon is excellent in wearability and resilience"
2. 2. 

   the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.

   "the often remarkable resilience of so many British institutions"

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   In choosing to become (or remain) resilient, it really all comes down to how you face a problem.  Allowing it to shake you or, worse yet, break you, is the equivalent of allowing someone else to micro-manage your life. 

   
   

   Something I realized years ago was that whenever I gave into the frustration or depression of a new problem, I was giving it free reign to take over every aspect of my life.  From morning to night that problem would settle right in, making itself at home. I would become irritable, distractable, unfocused...in essence, the worst version of myself.  I was allowing the problem to grow up and out, filling up all the space of my day or week or month.  And all my frustration and depression was merely fertilizer...feeding the beast until it kept me up at night and miserable by day. 

   
   

   The real issue was never the problem, though.  The real issue was my approach.  Instead of bending and making allowances, I was trying to tackle things with rigidity and force.  

   
   

   And I was breaking. 

   Left and right. Day by day. I was breaking. 

   I was overwhelmed and stressed out and losing little pieces of myself all the time.

   
   

   It took a couple of really hard knocks, to get through my own dense fog and realize that I needed to learn how to bend.  I needed to learn how to go with the flow, and roll with the punches, and become resilient.  

   
   

   Because force and rigidity are great for steamrolling through, but you won't learn how far you can stretch unless you allow yourself to try. 

   
   

   Choosing to be resilient means allowing for that stretching of what you thought your limits were. It's giving a problem permission to encourage you to expand your thought process and to find an acceptable resolution. Choosing to be resilient means, quite simply, growth. 

   
   

   And wouldn't we all rather grow, then remain stagnant?