From "Why Me " to " What can I do about it "
How many times in the last month have you said to yourself, “I can’t take this stress anymore,” or “Why do I keep overreacting to such little things” or even “Is this all there is to life?” Think about it?
At the same time how many times did you tell yourself , “I would not have tried this otherwise” . How many times did you find yourself doing something which you would not have attempted previously. Well I can say every day I am doing something which I usually would not have done. For example , giving a haircut to my husband twice in last 2 months is something I would not even dream previously. Prior to this new norm , every month for a haircut, my husband would grumble and ask me, “ Why don’t you cut my hair in home and we can save Rs 450 ( ~ 7 USD)”. I have always mentioned him that I would be paying for his hair cut and he should not worry about it .
I started planting seeds in my balcony garden, I attempted planting a ginger to see if it would grow, it did. My happiness knew no bounds when I saw the first shoot grow. In spite of so many things going around, these small occurrences bring in joy in my life every day. Not that I am not aware of what is going on around, but I prefer to see good in the face of adversity. We all should do that. We all have a fortune cookie in our life and it comes in different forms , it is just that we don’t pay attention to it.
“Of all the virtues we can learn, no trait is more useful, more essential for survival, and more likely to improve the quality of life than the ability to transform adversity into an enjoyable challenge.”
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Greitens, 2015)
In the past 2 months, I started reading exhaustively, most of my late nights and weekends are spent reading. There are three books that I recently read which gives a whole new meaning to resilience . In this article, I will try to share my key takeaways from these three books.
Resilience is something that is within each of us, but how we use it, and how well are key determinants in our overall well-being and quality of life. So stop feeling helpless about situations, circumstances around you. Stop asking yourself “Why me” .
The first book that I started reading somewhere in March was “The Resilience Factor: 7 Keys to finding your Inner Strength and Overcoming Life’s Hurdles – Karen Reivich and Andrew Shatte”
Key Message : Resilience has transforming Power. It transforms hardship into challenge, failure into success, and helplessness into power. Resilience turns victims into survivors and allows survivors to thrive.
Increasing resilience does not come easy and it requires work on your part, and it will require your commitment.
The book will help you get a better understanding of who you are and why you behave in the way you do, than ever before.
The authors have grouped the seven skills of resilience into two categories:
Know thyself skills( helps you build your self awareness) and
Change skills ( helps you change your perspective, action towards situations/incidents)
The foundation of the seven skills of resilience is built on the simple realisation that our emotions and behaviours are triggered not by events themselves but by how we interpret those events.
- Learning Your ABCs: When confronted with adversity, listen to your thoughts, identify what you say to yourself when faced with a challenge, and understand how your thoughts affect your feelings and behaviour.
- Avoiding Thinking Traps: Don’t make mistakes that undermine resilience.
- Detecting Icebergs: Identify your deep, maybe hidden beliefs and determine when they help and hurt you ( see and identify your unconscious biases).
- Challenging Beliefs: Find new problem solving/thinking strategies so as to not pursue the wrong solutions ( age old method might not work, rediscover your ways).
- Putting It in Perspective: Stop thinking about “what if” and perceiving every failure as a catastrophe ( everything that happens is not a what if situation, don’t over relate things )
- Calming and Focusing: Stay calm and focused when overwhelmed by stress or emotion ( I usually practice this – I start counting from 100 to 1, or turn on the “Breath” application on my Apple watch).
- Real-time Resilience: Change your counterproductive thoughts into more resilient ones ( search for solutions keeping yourself fully aware of the problems).
The second book that read was “Resilience: Why Things Bounce Back – Andrew Zolli and Anne Marie Healey”
The book primarily focuses on why do some systems bounce back from a crisis while others fail? A wide range of examples from systems as diverse as coral reefs and international finance are taken to study and explain the power of resilience. They explain the nature of resilience and what factors contribute to it.
- Resilience enables a system to bounce back from a crisis.
- Resilience is a complex quality found in systems as diverse as finance and ecology.
- Systems can remain robust when expected stresses hit. However, they are vulnerable to new attacks.
- Resilience exists in positive systems – like the body’s immune system – and negative ones – like terror networks. You can learn from both.
- Diversity increases resilience and is often found in “clusters,” like cities.
- Resilient systems work in networks and can cooperate or not as needed.
- Supportive communities produce resilient individuals.
- Resilient systems continually reinvent themselves in a flexible “adhocracy,” a social structure that allows constant change within a set of “fixed values and purposes.”
In every form of adversity one thing remains constant - All of them acknowledge that resilience requires “continuity and recovery in the face of change,” particularly change imposed from an external source.
Resilient systems heavily use “tight feedback mechanisms” to tell when a sudden change is imminent and prepare your mind to adapt/face the change. Acknowledge the change , the more you ignore, the more you will feel helpless. Keep yourself calm, practice meditation, adopt a hobby , spend some time in silence. All this will help.
The third book that I just finished reading is “Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy – Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant”
The idea of the book is to focus on Option B instead of lamenting over an exhausted Option A. Everyone has a lot of plans, but the reality is not all plans work out. You might feel lost, sad, depressed when things don’t go the way you want them to be , but what is important is have you tried identifying what your Option B is?
Option B is a book of resilience. Resilience that enables people who went through periods of dark times like sexual assaults, death of loved ones and the violence of war to rediscover joy. We may not always get our Option A, and this book will teach us how we can make the best of our Option B.
Option B combines Sheryl Sandberg’s personal insights with Adam Grants ground breaking research on finding strength in the face of adversity. It goes beyond Sheryl’s loss to explore how a broad range of people have overcome hardships. Their stories reveal the capacity of the human spirit to persevere and to rediscover joy. Resilience comes from deep within us and from support outside us. Even after the most devastating events, it is possible to grow by finding deeper meaning and gaining greater appreciation in our lives. It illuminates how to help others in crisis, develop compassion for ourselves, raise strong children, and create resilient families, communities, and workplaces. It brings in hope, hope that not everything is lost, time changes, it heals people but we need to allow others to help us.
Helping someone cope up with their sadness can bring in immense strength in you. If you have not done it yet, start doing it.
Sadness/ Tragedy / Emptiness are not permanent and we should not hold on to them.
Sheryl says - “Tragedy does not have to be personal, pervasive, or permanent, but resilience can be. We can build it and carry it with us throughout our lives... we can all find strength within ourselves and build strength together. There is light within each of us that will not be extinguished.”
The book—Option B— is about recognising that light, and to hold on to it to overcome your grief. There is always a light, light of hope and strength to overcome adversity.
Accept the imminent change, change your perspective ( have a solution seeker mindset) , get to your Option B. Give yourself a chance to feel the joy of happiness in the face of adversity.
No comments:
Post a Comment