Rather than saying that you will succeed, allowing nothing to get in your way, mastering the art of resilience requires you to do whatever it takes, understanding that many things are going to get in your way.~ Carol Orsborn

Admit it.

You’re tired of spinning your wheels.

You try and try to overcome the thing that gets in your way – depression, anxiety, self-doubt, insecurity, lack of passion – and yet you still find it there blocking your path.

You think if you just try harder next time that you’ll finally win, you’ll finally be free of it.

Until it pops up again.

And there you are feeling as though you’re not getting anywhere in life.

Maybe you’re not making any progress.

Or maybe you think life is like a straight upward line instead of what it truly is, a spiral.

You see, there is a myth in our American culture that not only must we make progress constantly in our lives, but this progress must be linear and upward. We must always improve.

Notice that I said this is a myth.

It’s not true.

Life is not a straight line, it’s a spiral.

It’s moving forward, forward, forward but then sometimes finding that you’ve circled back to the same point again.

You feel that same sense of depression or anxiety or doubt.

You get stuck on the same bad habit or behavior that tripped you up in the first place.

If you believe the “life is a straight line” myth, you think that you’ve slid back or not made any progress at all.

But that’s not the case at all. You’ve been moving along as well as anyone, it’s just that you’ve hit that old familiar point on the spiral again and it feels like you’re stuck in the same old mud.

But you’re not.

It’s the same old mud, yes, but it’s further up your path than you were before. You are moving.

So don’t be discouraged when you hit those points. It’s not a sign of being stuck, it’s a sign that you’ve gone so far that you’ve come back around again to a bump that you need to continue working on.

That’s all.

You’re okay.

For more wonderful bits of wisdom on mastering the art of resilience, please read Carol Orsborn’s marvelous little book,  The Art of Resilience: 100 Paths to Wisdom and Strength in an Uncertain World.

Ready to get your bounce back? Download my FREE e-book, Bounce Back: 5 keys to surviving and thriving through life’s ups and downs.

Do you worry so much that it ruins your day?

And maybe your nights because you can’t sleep due to worry?

While worry is a common human behavior, too much of it can add unnecessary stress to your life which can cause health problems which can . . .

Wait.

I better stop before you start to worry about this.

Here’s a list of three reasons people worry and three ways to change for good.

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At 48 years old, I’ve decided to take up bicycling.

(Bear with me, I’ll be getting to the hacks straightaway! But we’re going to use bicycling as an analogy.)

My sister, who is a year older than me, decided earlier this year that she was going to compete in mini-triathlons, also known as sprints.

We talked about doing a sprint together next year, but since I’m a very weak swimmer and my knees can’t tolerate running anymore, we’ve opted to do a relay where she will swim, I will bike, and another friend will run.

So, here I am, a middle-aged former athlete who hasn’t ridden a bike since she was a kid, out on the roads pedaling away trying to get back into shape.

And you know what?

It’s hard.

It’s hard and it’s exhilarating and frustrating and invigorating. All in one package.

Just about every day that I ride now, I realize that my bicycle riding is very much like life can be when you’re trying to learn a new skill or break an old habit or just make it through a tough time.

Here are some of the lessons I’ve learned:

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Did you know that you were born resilient?

It’s true. And, while some of us are more resilient than others, we can all learn how to develop our resiliency skills so that we bounce back faster and better from adversity.

Nan Henderson’s new book, The Resiliency Workbook: Bounce Back Stronger, Smarter & With Real Self-Esteem, is a helpful, user-friendly guide that helps you not only learn new “bounce” skills, but also helps you elicit and identify the skills you’ve always had but may not have labeled as helpful in overcoming tough times.

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“Why? Why me?”

Those are natural questions to ask when you’re faced with a crisis in your life.

There are never any easy answers but it does help to have a framework – a way to structure events in your mind – for getting through the tough times.

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“I’m afraid I’ll say the wrong thing.”

Have you ever thought this before you call a friend who has just lost someone to death?

I’m pretty sure most of us have.

Especially if you haven’t experienced grief yet, it can be awkward and nerve-wracking trying to say the “right thing” and steer clear of something that will make the person feel worse. However, many times the very things we think will comfort the person only end up hurting them.

Let’s look at some ways you can help your friend start the slow bounce back from grief.

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Broken hearts. We’ve all had them, or will at some time. I hope these quotes for the broken-hearted will help you bounce back from heartbreak in the most healing way possible.

“Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.” ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

Remember that bouncing back from heartache is very much like bouncing back from other pain in our lives – you have to accept the loss in your life.

But remember this too: accepting something does not mean you have to like it.

One of the things I like about this quote for the broken-hearted from Edna St. Vincent Millay is that she has accepted the pain that accompanies heart break: I miss you like hell.

She is not using flowery, romantic language about the loss. She accepts it, but calls it like it is – a hole that she falls into every night, a hellish pain.

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Burn-out \ˈbərn-ˌau̇t\ : exhaustion of physical or emotional strength or motivation usually as a result of prolonged stress or frustration.

Feeling exhausted? Numb? Helpless? It may not just be from the end of a long school year or stress on the job, you might actually be suffering from a case of burnout.

3 dimensions of burnout

Most of the research on burnout has been in the domain of work, but burnout can occur in just about any area of our lives. The leading researcher in the field, Berkeley professor Christina Maslach, has defined three dimensions of burnout:

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Be clear about your goal but be flexible about the process of achieving it. – Brian Tracy

The more I study the research about resilience, the more I see the topic of flexibility arise.

In a literal sense, you can see how flexibility is important to bouncing back: a stiff board will not resume its shape once it is warped or stretched in some way, but a piece of rubber will.

In the same way, flexibility is essential to your ability to bounce back in life.

Why?

Here are a few reasons:

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Getting Past Your Past: Take Control of Your Life with Self-Help Techniques from EMDR Therapy is the newest book by Francine Shapiro, PhD, the founder of the Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy technique. It is “about understanding the ‘Why’ in your life, and in those around you. More important, it’s also about understanding what you can do about it.”

The book is chock-full of stories of people who have been helped by EMDR, but both the author and I want to make something very clear: All of the cases presented in the book were of people who were assisted by trained EMDR clinicians. Although one may believe from the title that you can apply EMDR techniques at home, it is essential to realize that the processing of painful and/or disturbing memories can lead to a very distressing emotional state and should only be done with the assistance of a trained professional.

This is really my only concern with this otherwise helpful and interesting book – that people with severe past trauma may try some of the techniques and be caught in the middle of a difficult emotional experience without support. However, Shapiro does state frequently throughout her book that the reader with past trauma must be approach the exercises with care and perhaps not even try them without help.

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