Life is made up of many challenges, at first, it’s learning to walk, talk and feed ourselves. As we move through life, we have experiences, learning new skills. These shape the person we become. No two people are the same, our combination of knowledge, skills and experiences are unique. Have you wondered how some people seem to bounce back from problems easier than others? In this blog, I will discuss how you can become more resilient in life. This is something we all need now.
Let’s be honest, no-one is happy all the time. You go through challenging experiences that develop your inner strength and resilience. Inner strength is important, it helps you withstand life’s earthquakes. I use the term earthquakes because that is what they feel like when they hit. They shake you to the core and you may crumble. Events such as the death of a loved one, redundancy, serious illness, the break-up of your relationship, they all send shock waves through you. This is a time of re-evaluation. Who am I? Why is this happening? What is life all about? Am I living my best life?
These seismic moments in your life, hit you hardest, when you are out of alignment with your truth. They are knocking you back on to your path.
Self-development = taking charge of your life
Everything is evolving around you. Your life is about learning and evolving. Sit with that for a couple of breaths. What are you doing to support your own learning and evolution? Do you invest in your own development? I ask this because there will be times in your life, which are like being hit by an earthquake and I wonder are you evolving to meet the challenge?
Life’s not about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s about learning to dance in the rain. This beautifully illustrates that our perception is everything. Is it a storm or dancing in the rain? The same event, but different experiences created from two completely different perspectives created by different belief systems.
Are you a pessimist?
What do you say to yourself? Are you optimistic or pessimistic about life? How you experience the world is defined by your belief system. Are you feeling scared or anxious about the future? You can choose to think a different way if you want. At one point in my life, my optimism slipped into negative thinking. I was faced with redundancy for the second time in a brief period. This was the second earthquake going through my life. I was no longer positive about the outcome and this drained my vitality. This incident taught me the importance of changing my old beliefs.
How are you coping during the pandemic?
As someone that has walked this path, I’m showing you the map. It’s much easier to turn things round before they get out of control. What are your beliefs? Are they up to date or just old baggage you collected as a child? Have you spent any time looking at the belief systems that run your life? Are they flexible or ridged?
You may have the “it won’t happen to me attitude”. I’ll cope. I’ll manage somehow when it happens. Having been through that painful learning process, I have a different attitude now.
What is self-development?
If you can imagine life is a process of evolution, a bit like walking to the top of a mountain. There are different ways to get up the mountain, you choose your path. You can keep going along the same easy level for ages and then you’ll find yourself at a cliff face, you can’t go round you have to get over it. This is a crisis; you need to change and upgrade dramatically to move forward in your life. You may be stuck at that point for month as you work out what needs to change for you to be able to move forward.
Self-development can help you find the map of the journey. You can choose to walk gradually up hill on the easier gradient. All the time you are learning, emptying unwanted beliefs out of your backpack and making your journey easier. The way I see it, when I invest in self-development, I’m investing in myself and my future. It’s my risk assessment and I’m taking action to make my life easier in the long run. What do you think?
- How do you cope with a big life changing event?
- How have you coped during the pandemic?
- How could you learn to cope better?
What can we learn from places that have earthquakes?
Japan is earthquake prone. In this film you see a 41m pagoda that has stood for hundreds of years, when other smaller buildings have been demolished by earthquakes. Why are our modern concrete structures, the symbol of strength, being destroyed by the earthquake? How is this huge pagoda managing to stay upright?
In the center of the pagoda is a pillar structure, the shinbashira made out of straight trunks of Japanese cypress. The pillar runs the entire length of the pagoda. The wooden joints of the pagoda aren’t fixed, they can move and flex. The building is adaptable, it can flex and flow. It is not ridged and fixed and so it remains standing after the earthquake.
What can I do?
You need a grounding and centering technique. This is your pillar. You are connected deep into the ground and out the top of your head. When you are grounded, you are present. You are in the current moment, not the past, not the future. From this space of the now you have options, and you have choice. I teach people how to do this for themselves. This gives you your roots.
“Storms make trees take deeper roots.”
Dolly Parton
You need to resource yourself. Within the Grounding aspect of Discover Your Truth there are different aspects: stillness, home, embodiment, health, wealth, emotions, stability and freedom. If we take the pagoda analogy, each topic is a joint on the ground floor. These are the topics that everything else in your life are built on. You need good foundations for anything above it to withstand the crisis. It is often a lack of good foundations that brings you to your knees. Life points out where you need to improve yourself. The pandemic has shown every individual where they need to evolve.
Become more flexible
A pagoda joint is a refined piece of work, it isn’t basic and rough, its carefully created. Take time and invest in your learning, upskill to enable yourself to be able to react more elegantly to the challenges of life. Instead of just having one way of doing things, you now have several that you can choose from. You understand what works at a particular time. Having only one way of doing things, is like the concrete buildings in Japan, you can’t withstand the force of the impact as you have no flexibility.
Investing in yourself is the best thing you can do in your life. You create the pagoda’s flexible joints in your life. Changing your perspective, increasing your skills and knowledge allow you to flex and move in an earthquake, allowing you to stay standing. You’re adaptable, but you are grounded in what’s right for you, rather than following someone else’s path.
How can I be safe and resilient?
If we think about these Grounding topics: stillness, home, embodiment, health, wealth, emotions, stability and freedom, they are the ground floor of the pagoda. All of them, used in the correct combination, will enable you to have firm footings.
Each facet of us, is another level in the pagoda: passion, power, love, communication, vision and illumination. Each of these levels has many aspects which are the joints. For example, the joints on the Power level include strength, confidence, magnetism, courage, presence, leadership and coherence.
What does this mean in everyday life?
The joints in the pagoda symbolise the different aspects of yourself. If we take courage, there are different aspects to courage we can unpack and refine in ourselves. This allows you to draw on your courage and not be ruled by fear. Our courage is accessible in a healthy way enabling us the live the life of our dreams. We can access it with clarity, and know it comes from a grounded place not a knee-jerk reactive place.
What difference does it make?
This is growth, personal evolution and it transforms your life. No longer are you aren’t stuck with only one way of doing things. Maybe you only have a hammer for every job, instead you can develop a more flexile tool kit. The result is your life is full of better outcomes. Life is easier (you’re not trying to do everything with a hammer) and you have more vitality. You flow and flex with life. You’re no longer the ridged structure that falls when too much pressure is exerted.
Do you flow and flex with life? Do you find yourself anxious when things don’t go the way you wanted them to go?
You can find out more about how Discover Your Truth can help you to evolve and achieve more in your life. Give yourself time to be calm, creative and evolve. It is the easier path. Each month you look in the backpack of your life and find the things that you need to let go of.
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