Life can sometimes be a four letter word.
There are moments that challenge all of us during our lives, but these moments are rarely shared on the candy-coated world portrayed in people’s Facebook and Instagram posts. The truth is sh*t happens, and lots of things are out of our personal control. The challenge is how to rekindle your optimism, how to keep living life in a positive way after a disaster, after an emotional bomb, after a huge mistake, after a terrible disease or a devastating loss.
The short answer is that you have to develop great resilience because odds are good that you will be challenged sooner or later. It is easy to say ‘develop great resilience‘ but much harder to implement in your life when you need it. I found this video on TED that I think illuminates the path, shows people that there can be hope, there can be a new dawn after that all too dark and stormy night. This is not a happy story, but for me, I find it full of hope. I think it is well worth watching, especially if you are suffering through challenges right now:
My takeaways from Lucy’s story for becoming more resilient are
1) to understand that bad sh*t happens to almost everyone,
2) to focus on the things that you can control,
3) to look for the positives, no matter how small they are,
4) to be grateful — for gratefulness is the key to happiness, and
5) to ask yourself if the daily choices that you are making are helping you or hurting you.
If you think you can, you can. These five steps can put you back on track if you believe that they can and commit fully. I personally believe that two additional aspects are important and help a lot:
a) trusting that God exists and that God will help you adapt and overcome, and
b) investing the time and energy to build strong social bonds and friendships
but these were not part of Lucy Hone’s perspective.
No one said life would be easy, or fair, or perfect, but life is good — if you are grateful for what you have.
I.M. Optimisman
