Red light, green light, yellow light … green light!
Cultivating Resilience
in the Face of False Starts
With the new energy of Spring and the astrological new year, I feel refreshed. After all the working and growing, learning and unlearning over the cold of Winter, I feel like I earned this Spring!
Since finishing my Trauma Coaching certifications, I’ve had my head down in planning, creating, and resting. Last season was full of false starts, daydreams and delusions. It got frustrating, sure, but I’ve also gotten to know myself even better. This period was a deep study of myself, enjoying and reflecting on how far I’ve come on this journey, finding my edges, then stretching those edges, and then stretching the edges some more, shrinking in some moments, then stretching out further and further. Of course, there have been bumps and bruises along the way: and yes, there were moments of hopelessness, curled in a puddle of tears and self-doubt.
However, it’s in these moments when we’re able to build resilience for ourselves. The New Oxford American Dictionary defines resilience as “the capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.”
The topic of resilience has been on my radar as of late. So in this season of rebirth and renewal, I thought I’d celebrate my unofficial blog launch (because I’m making it shareable for the first time) by writing about some tips for cultivating resilience to help explore and expand our edges:
Embrace failure as a learning and growth opportunity. We’ve been conditioned to view failure as “bad,” or as a setback. As my mentor loves to put it, “be okay with being terrible at something,” especially when we’re just getting started. Use the moment to pause, reflect on where things might have gone awry, identify what can use refinement, and apply your wisdom on the next go.
Build a support system: My friend calls this her Hype Crew. Having a trustworthy cheer squad, a sounding board, and accountability partners means you’re spending less time in the thought spirals and more time in the flow of creation, action and rest.
Find pleasure in the process: Instead of getting caught up in the end result, focus on the small steps you can take each day to move closer to the goalpost. Celebrate every single milestone along the way, no matter how small you think it is. Fixating on the end result can be a trap, and it robs us of the pleasure of the present. Trust yourself enough to trust the process, and have fun doing the damn thing! *I’m celebrating the revival of my newsletter, website, and blog!
Be your biggest fan: This is about confidence and it’s a sticky one. I know it can be easier said than done, and culturally, confidence isn’t always seen as a positive. As a Pinay, it occurred to me recently that there’s no Tagalog word that translates to confidence that doesn’t have a negative connotation tied to it. “Ma-YA-bang”: it can translate to confident, but personally I’ve only heard it used to mean arrogant, conceited, full of themself. Isn’t that wild?!
And here’s the thing - when no one’s around to hype you up, you have to be able to hype yourself up. Sure, external validation is great, but it’s not sustainable if that’s all you have to go by. Validate how awesome you are every day. Choose yourself every day.
TL;DR: even false starts are part of the journey to success. What's important is how you respond to them. By cultivating resilience and staying grounded in our why, we’re able to stay on course, even when we’re pushing uphill sometimes.
