As a blogger, I am subscribed to many blogs and I read quite a few of them on a regular basis. I was reading GoodLifeZen and read a guest post by Gail Brenner named Why Some People Thrive No Matter What Happens.
Resilience:
- People who are resilient accept what happened, but resist defining themselves by it.
- Resilience is about engaging with life.
- Being resilient means understanding that we cannot control what happens to us, but that we can control how we relate to what happens.
Boy, does Gail know how to highlight a post. These are the emboldened words throughout Gail’s GoodLifeZen guest post. They stand out for me for more reasons than Gail’s good copy skills. They made me realize something that has been going on in my own life. Something that I have been talking about on this blog quite a bit.
I have been a victim. [Oh, no!!!] I have been a victim in denial. I say to myself and others that I am in control and I can and will make changes in my life. My thought life has not reflected this “lip service.”
My Story
In 2006, I became a semi-truck driver, because I was struggling after another failed business attempt. Plus, I was single and lonely. Maybe, I could drive my problems away. Well, I didn’t drive them away. Being a truck driver were the toughest two years of my life to date. In 2008, that career was ended by a terrible accident in Tucumcari, NM.
At the end of my truck driving career, I was in a horrible relationship. The man was okay, but he had anger issues that I could do nothing about. His anger pulled out my anger. I am thankful for that, because now I am dealing with those anger issues, instead of hiding them under years of added pain.
That horrible relationship ended, only a few months ago.
Even though, I have been saying that I was okay and strong and I would bounce back. I have actually been out of the game for almost 4 years now! I thought it was only 2 years, because I’ve been living with my parents since the accident.
I’ve actually been playing a victim in life since the first day that I signed up for truck driving school. [I am thankful for all my life experiences. I was never meant to be a truck driver, though I learned a lot of life lessons from that experience.] I wasn’t taking control of my life at that point, I was distracting myself from my problems and doing something I had no business doing, just to make some money.
You can run, but you can’t hide…
When things get tough, its a natural response to want to run away. This is part of the fight or flight response. I felt that I had fought for so long, maybe it was time to run. (Hmmmm….)
Running is not engaging in life. When you take flight from your problems, it is like running away from oxygen. It is all around you. Where ever you go, life will be there. You will always take your problems with you. No one else is the cause of any of your problems. It all stems from you.
It is not merely the problem that is the problem. It is your outlook/view, response, reaction and feelings about the problem that is the problem or even possibly the solution.
Okay, read that one again and again. Mediate on that until you get it. You can control how you relate to any situation. You can choose to respond to it or constantly worry about it and do nothing. You have a choice.
So choose…
I have a choice. I too, can be resilient. So, I am going to practice some resiliency. I am going to indulge the situation that I am in. Feel how I feel. Create a new situation and move on. Let’s see how it works.
I am going to add another category to my blog. I will call it The Resiliency Project. I am going to be okay with where I am and from there move on. I won’t identify with my situation, but finally accept it for what it is.
That is what this blog is about growth. I hope that we can help each other grow through this community.
