We often talk about resilience as being a tool to aid us when we feel weak.
To be resilient though means so much more than just being strong. It’s a mental journey that asks us many questions to discover who we are. Let us go back to the mere fabric of our thoughts and discover why we need to be resilient. It is because we are simply human. To be human we build resilience to survive, our lives though mean so much more than just to exist. By being human, we look for recognition for the job we have done or through a simple acknowledgment. It’s almost like we forget that we are resilient, as when we come under threat the first thing we often think of is that we are not good enough.
What does it mean then to be resilient?
We can go back in time through history to the ancient stoic philosopher, Epictetus.
“I have learned to see that everything which happens, if it be independent of my will, is nothing to me”.
We will be surprised how much our mental effort goes towards things we cannot control. As by understanding the element of what is in our control and what is not becomes our liberation, that we don’t need to focus our worry external to it.
Therefore, to be resilient we need to discover the futility of our rumination and redirect our thoughts towards what we can control, and that is to build hope from our actions.
It is how we can approach our problems applying a level of creativity with the resources we have. You may have lost your job, your partner has left you, or you feel depressed & anxious for no apparent reason. As we often believe we are only bound from what our emotions allow us. Whereby being resilient, we can deliver ourselves into a higher level of thought into a broader dimension.