Do You Know How to Cultivate Resilience for Yourself?
This week I’m continuing to blog on some of the ideas in Brené Brown’s book, The Gifts of Imperfection. Today I’m thinking about the 3rd Guidepost for Wholehearted Living, which is so incredibly important that I plan to blog on it for at least a couple of weeks.
So what is the 3rd Guidepost? “Cultivating a Resilient Spirit: Letting Go of Numbing and Powerlessness.” That’s quite a mouthful. Let’s start thinking about the first half of this guidepost: Cultivating a Resilient Spirit. How would you go about cultivating a resilient spirit for yourself? Cultivate is an active verb. In gardening it means to do all the necessary tasks over time to produce your chosen crop as a bountiful harvest, whether that’s beautiful flowers or a delicious food crop. That's the verb, the activities involved in creating and maintaining a resilient spirit.
How would you define the word “resilient?” What comes to my mind is being able to bounce back from some sort of event that could have placed you solidly in the doldrums or worse. But instead, you found the resources inside of you to “bounce back.”
Sure enough, Brené defines resilience as the “ability to overcome adversity and to transform trauma in wholehearted thriving.” “Thriving:” There’s the next really big concept. To thrive is to flourish and blossom and bear fruit. That’s ever so much more than merely existing from day to day. When we thrive, our spirit soars, and we find joy and hope.
How would you define “hope?” Looking forward with eagerness for some future something to happen that’s perhaps out of your control? That’s how I’ve usually defined hope. Here’s what Brené says: Hope is not an emotion. It's learned. Hope happens when we set realistic goals, figure out how to meet them, stay flexible in the process, have a Plan B, and believe you can do it. This tenacity is at the heart of hope.
Wholehearted thriving. Flourishing. Bouncing back. Flexibility. Tenacious belief in yourself that you can meet whatever challenges come your way. All this is Resilience with a capital R and Hope with a capital H.
Perhaps that’s enough to reflect on this week. Let’s all see if we can do a reality check to see if our current mindset includes any of these ways of being in the world.
Leave me a comment.
And remember, you're awesome! And God holds you in the palm of His hand.
2021 © Dorothy Gremillion
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