When you see the word failure, what response does it elicit in your body? How do you feel? Does it feel like the world is falling apart or do you have a positive response to the word?
I believe learning to celebrate failure is what makes us resilient and capable of brushing ourselves off when we have huge disappointments.
If the plumber is delayed by a day because she’s been called to a bigger emergency and we respond by crumbling with disappointment and freaking out at the contractor (and of course texting all our friends about how upset we are because we didn’t get what we expected), that’s a sign we haven’t developed the skill of calm disappointment and resiliency. Being able to see a problem or a failure as an event instead of a devastating experience allows us perspective. We get to choose whether ‘this is here to teach me something’ instead of ‘this is the worst thing in the world’.
When we resort to the latter thought, we dismantle the harmony in our body and dive into survival mode, which triggers stress and anxiety. One response leaves us feeling capable and patient with ourselves and the situation, while the other is a reaction that is guided by mistrust in our capacity to deal with the situation. This last response can send us into panic. It disables good feelings and makes us reactionary; it leaves us feeling like bad things always happen to us, as they do, because systematically that’s how we respond to the world.
Resiliency is the ability to be elastic and bouncy. It allows us to maintain our shape when pulled in any direction, good or bad. We can simply find a way to wrap ourselves around the situation. Like rubber, we can hold things together when support is required. We bounce with the situations that come into our lives instead of hitting the pavement like a rock and smashing into bits, unlikely to go back to the way we were.
I think that we can build resiliency by developing a healthy response when things are hard and failing. I imagine we all know someone either in our social lives or professional worlds that is a brilliant problem solver, someone that holds it together when things around them are falling apart. Perhaps this is someone you turn to when you need a new perspective or guidance. We’re drawn to people like that because they are calm and have perspective when dealing with challenging situations or people.
These individuals have learned how to harness perspective, which allows them to maintain a healthy nervous system response. This means they understand that this will pass, and they just need to look at it in a way that allows for a clear minded response. They don’t need to isolate or react, or feel fear or anxiety.
We can learn this skill by first taking a few deep breaths. Conscious breathing calms our nervous system and helps remind us that everything is fine – right here and now. You might need to ask yourself if this problem is actually devastating, or is it just your perspective? If I pull back from the situation and imagined threat, can I see that if I choose different thoughts, (such as, “This will be fine”) can I respond in a way that maintains my well being? It’s simple, but takes work to start to learn the response, so be patient.
There’s an amazing opportunity that’s being offered in this challenge. We can anticipate with excitement these challenging experiences as we start to understand the opportunity to keep ourselves grounded and not stressed. We will then be able to experience joy and pleasure as a more regular experience instead of feeling the negative impact of consistent stress. Wouldn’t that be fantastic?
With love
Noelle