I like this little video. It’s a good reminder about keeping perspective.
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Nugent Family Counseling Center
I really believe that part of being resilient is learning to get perspective. To get a different perspective, actually. My client who is struggling with the recent death of her mother feels guilty because she would have spent more time with her mother if she had known when her mother was going to die. Her perspective currently is through the filter of extreme grief where, because she knows now when her mother died, she feels that she would have, should have, could have done more. In awhile, after time has passed, she’ll gain a new perspective. She will realize that she could not have known when her mother was going to die and that she actually had a very are rich and meaningful last few days with her mother.
Many of the people I have talked with who are dealing with financial grief of some sort tell me that perspective has helped them as well. They have found new opportunities after losing a job, a house, or other precious assets. New and more meaningful careers, a simpler lifestyle, and renewed gratitude for life just as it is are some of the gifts born from what seemed to be tragic losses. “I never thought anything good would come from my being unemployed, Bobbi,” one woman told me, “But my relationship with my husband has become so much richer. It’s because we have more time together now!”
Awhile back, I heard an amazing show on Talk of the Nation on NPR. They were talking with people who, because of the poor economy, were in difficult financial circumstances and had to be on food stamps for the first time in their lives. Surprisingly, many of them enjoyed the experience! “I think everyone should have to do it at some time in their lives,” one caller said, “I learned a ton about budgeting, buying healthy foods, and how to cook well.”
One more example: Shortly before my late partner died, I emailed friends and family that she was in a coma. My aunt wrote back and said, “Bobbi, I think Ruth is not in a coma, but a comma. Just a little pause in the journey before she continues on.” This new perspective brought me peace and even some joy as I contemplated Ruth’s “comma” before she passed on to the new part of her journey.
It’s really easy to think that our current perspective is the only one or the true one. But this limits our ability to enjoy new learning opportunities and seeing gifts where we thought there were none. We think a beautiful thing that has become cracked is now ruined. Yet, as Leonard Cohen says, “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”
The common understanding of the word resilience is “to bounce back.” We most often use it to describe a person or thing that has undergone stress and been able to come back from it well. While this general definition is true, there is more to resilience than just bouncing back: It’s also possible to move forward when life throws you challenges and roadblocks. Not only can you overcome setbacks, you can experience the power of positive transformation even in difficult times. This new iteration of my newsletter and blog, Bounce, is dedicated to helping you transform into your best self by increasing your personal power, purpose, and perspective.
Here’s what we’ll explore together in upcoming issues:
– What Happened to Grief and Caregiving? The Healing Power of Resilience
– The Triad of Transformation: Gifts, Wounds, and Trouble
– Your Core Gift As Superpower
– There Is A Crack In Everything: The Light In Your Wound
– “Come To The Dark Side, Luke”: Choice and the Nature of Trouble
– Change Your Mindset to Improve Your Resilience
– Ancient Initiation Processes in Everyday Life
– Your Heroic Journey: Increasing Resilience By Heeding The Call
And more! I’m excited to explore this new path of resilience with you! How about you? Are you ready to bounce ahead?
With everything changing so fast right now, I thought this might be a good time to bring back this post from the archives. It’s full of ways to bounce back from everything from feeling isolated to being bored to managing the varied emotions that come with our experience with Covid-19.
Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall. ~ Confucius
By now, you know how life works.
We stand up and we fall down again, just like a toddler learning how to walk.
There are many ways to pick yourself back up and I’m presenting you with 55 of them to get you started.
Use one or two that you like the most or mix and match to your heart’s content.
Text in this color means that it is linked to a helpful article on that topic so make sure to check it out.
Okay, go get your bounce on!
1. Accept the reality of your situation. Face the facts – it’s happening.
2. Realize that change is always going to be in your life. Expect it.
“I always thought things would calm down and get easier. I’m beginning to think that’s not going to happen.” Phoebe Howard, age 99.
4. Be nice to yourself. Treat yourself as you would your best friend.
5. Remember that everyone has flaws. Everyone. You’re a part of the human race so you’re bound to make mistakes.
6. Practice mindfulness by noticing your thoughts and feelings, but have no judgment about them.
7. Resistance is like a Chinese Finger Puzzle. The more you struggle, the tighter you’re held in the puzzle.
8. Be flexible and open in your way of thinking. It will allow you to problem-solve more effectively and accept your reality more easily.
9. Have a tribe. Social support is absolutely essential in bouncing back in life.
10. Talk about your difficulties with trusted friends and family members. You don’t have to tough it out. Talk it out instead.
11. Let go of judging your thoughts and feelings. Just notice them. Read Taming Your Gremlin.
12. See if there is a gift hidden within your troubles. The sand that irritates the oyster eventually becomes a pearl.
13. Develop post-traumatic growth. The basics are being optimistic and framing your struggles as meaningful (finding the gifts and opportunities in them.)
14. Look at problems from different angles.
15. Remember that you’ve made it through tough times before. And you’re still here to talk about it.
16. Instead of wasting energy resisting what’s happening in your life, accept what is and use that energy to enjoy the good things in your world.
17. Think about kaleidoscopes. The pattern is beautiful, but when it gets shaken up, a wonderful new pattern can emerge.
18. Take a break.
19. Find something that makes you laugh really hard.
20. Have a mentor. Find someone you trust and admire and use them as your go-to person for advice, support, and guidance.
21. Remember that your thoughts aren’t always true.
22. Remember that it’s okay to have fun, smile, and laugh sometimes even when you are in the worst of situations.
23. Just because you struggle with something doesn’t mean you’re not resilient. It means you’re human.
24. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone.
25. Sometimes things really do suck. No one said you have to like the difficulty in front of you.
26. Look up. Get out of your head and actually look up from time to time. What do you see that you didn’t notice before?
29. Practice acts of kindness.
30. Once a week, write down what you’re grateful for.
31. Take action to solve the problem rather than just ruminating about it.
32. Stop ruminating.
33. Savor the good stuff. The next time you see a beautiful sunset, stop and really see it.
34. Don’t resist.
35. Drop your struggle against change. We want to feel like we’re flexible and open and yet, when change arrives, we resist it as though it were the devil.
36. Do what is in front of you.
37. Embrace your shadow. We all have a dark side – don’t run from yours.
38. Remember that falling apart means you can put yourself back together any way you’d like.
39. Express yourself. Don’t try to stuff your negative thoughts.
40. Focus on the positive rather than predict the negative.
42. Distract yourself from your troubles for awhile. Healthy stuff only!
44. Remember that this is how it feels today. It won’t be like this all the time.
45. Get over fear of failure. Learning from failure is one of the best ways to bounce back when we don’t quite meet our own expectations.
46. Remember that Suffering = Pain x Resistance.
47. Adopt a growth mindset rather than a fixed mindset. See failures as opportunities to learn rather than unmanageable setbacks.
48. Believe that life is meaningful. “Those who have a ‘why’ to live for can bear with almost any ‘how.’” Frederich Nietzsche.
49. Don’t take things personally. That’s what pessimists do. You’re trying to be an optimist, remember?
50. Increase your creativity to be able to improvise solutions better. Read A Whack on the Side of the Head.
51. Be willing to grow.
52. Let it go.
53. Stay away from shame. Watch Dr. Brene Brown’s Tedx talk.
54. Change what you can, accept what you can’t.
55. Breathe.
Which of these works best for you? Or do you have other ideas that I may have missed?
Here are six more ideas to manage coronavirus anxiety.
As we saw in Managing coronavirus anxiety,Part 1, there are a lot of things that can be funny about this pandemic. But there are also lovely things that can inspire and encourage us.
Witness these quarantined Italians singing with each other or this man in Spain leading his neighbors in an exercise routine.
And there is this lovely sentiment from out in cyberspace:
“Try this perspective shift.
“Instead of seeing social distancing and travel bans as panic, try seeing them as acts of mass cooperation intended to protect the collective whole. This plan is not about individuals going into hiding. It’s a global deep breath . . . an agreement between humans around the planet to be still. Be still, in hopes that the biggest wave can pass without engulfing too many of the vulnerable amongst us.” – Dr. Lindsay Jernigan
Positivity researcher Barbara Frederickson writes that one of the best ways to produce positive emotions in ourselves is to help someone else. How do we do that during this time of social distancing? Here in California, we’re currently on a three-week shelter-in-place order with instructions not to gather and, if we’re around people, to stay six feet away from them.
How do we help each other when we can’t be together?
[Read more…] about Managing coronavirus anxiety, Part 2