September 2014

Revenge and Resilience

Two weeks ago, the long summer television drought got the better of me. I couldn’t wait a minute longer for the fall shows to premiere, so I logged on to Netflix.com and started watching the first show it recommended for me, Revenge. Revenge is a show about a young woman who arrives at a swanky Hamptons beach house to seek out justice (for what, we are about to find out.) I’m only two episodes in, but watching started me thinking about revenge.

 

We’ve been taught that revenge isn’t good for us. We know that it takes our time and focus away from more positive ventures. The best way I have ever heard it described was by a priest I knew in New York City: he said, “there are two dragons living inside you. One dragon is vengeance, the other is forgiveness. Every day you just have to decide which dragon you will feed, which dragon you will fuel. The dragon you starve will eventually die. Not right away, of course. But if you don’t feed it, it will die. So choose to feed vengeance, or forgiveness will die.” When we spend our energy on revenge, we are feeding the dragon and giving him strength, and we are feeding ourselves with negative energy.

 

But there’s another reason to choose to let revenge die its death. Revenge requires action. It requires present tense participation to stay alive. Most of all, it requires a nurturing of thought. Revenge and moving on can never exist in the same plane, because revenge insists that you constantly prune and nurture the terrible, hurtful past. Revenge requires your participation in an activity that wounds you. To stop being wounded, forget about revenge.

 

Knowing that revenge hurts us doesn’t mean we are required to forgive and forget, of course. There is a profound difference between seeking revenge and keeping ourselves safe from those who have hurt us before and might hurt us again. Once the immediate anger is cleared out of our vision, maybe we can see whether the object of our anger can ever be trusted again. But whether we choose to forgive and forget, choosing revenge is the choice we make for our own resilience. Let the dragon of vengeance die, and our lives can be lived with more happiness and fewer flames.

 

-Courtney

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Finding the Calm in the Chaos

When life gets chaotic, don’t you wish you could just “poof” yourself somewhere else with a click of your heels?

 

Finding the calm in the middle of chaos is a matter of shifting your focus. Have you ever heard people talk about how we often pay attention to the “urgent” stuff on our to do lists, instead of the important stuff? I know I do that all the time. You get an email or a phone call, and something has to be done RIGHT now, and before you know it, you’ve handled so many URGENT things that you’ve run out of time to do the things that were really important. Well, those urgent things are the chaos. And finding the calm in the chaos allows us to re-prioritize, and make sure we’re taking care of the important things, not just the urgent ones.

 

Finding calm in the chaos is important, because it means you’ll be less likely to make snap decisions, it gives you a longer fuse, and it makes you more likely to find creative solutions to problems. On a personal level, it also lowers your blood pressure and keeps you feeling like your head is about to pop off! The tips below will help you cut through the craziness when things start getting heated.

 

If you find yourself needing the calm in the chaos, try to remove yourself from the situation for a moment, if possible. Take a coffee break, a bathroom break, or just say, “I’ll get back to you on that.” While the stressor is right in front of you, it’s harder to shift your focus. If you can’t remove yourself from the situation for whatever reason, there are more advanced tricks you can try. Do you remember when you were a kid, did your parents ever tell you to try to count to 10 so you wouldn’t lose your cool? That trick still works! 10 seconds may SEEM like way too long to pause in real life, but if it helps you say the right thing or make a good decision, that time is worth it!

 

Another way to find calm is by breathing. Yes, I know, you’re ALWAYS breathing. But really focused breathing can have an almost-magic effect. When my husband and I were first dating, he was going through a really stressful period at work. He would always come home strung as tight as a piano wire, and I’d spend all evening getting him to chill out enough to fall asleep. One night we were staying at his apartment, and had just drifted off to sleep, when the fire alarm in his building went off! Our eyes snapped open and we lay there for a few moments, waiting for it to shut off. When it didn’t, we went downstairs to check. Nope, no fire, just a false alarm, but they couldn’t get it to shut off!

 

As 5 minutes became 30 minutes, he became increasingly agitated. “I’ll never get to sleep! What am I going to do?!?! I need my sleep!” he panicked. I started talking to him in a really soothing voice, telling him to breathe in and out, in for three seconds, out for six seconds. I had him count in his head as he breathed in and out, for ten minutes. The alarm was still blaring overhead, but I whispered in his ear, in and out. After 10 minutes, I looked over, and he had fallen asleep despite the fire alarm STILL going off! If he could find calm in THAT chaos, I know you can do it. Sometimes, it just takes some deep breathing.

 

For the next few days, see if you can find the calm in the chaos. When you feel things starting to swirl out of control, shift your focus. Step away, count to 10, take deep breaths, whatever works for you. Just do whatever you can to recognize that no matter how chaotic things SEEM, there IS calm there, and you can choose to grab on to that, instead.

 

-Courtney

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Why Saying “Thanks” Makes You Stronger

Expressing your gratitude as a way to boost your well-being sounds like one of those tired clichés. Count your blessings, and you’ll be happier! Sounds like something my grandmother might have said; sort of trite, and probably not really helpful in a crisis situation.

 

In actuality, however, expressing gratitude has been scientifically shown to boost your happiness. In many studies, people who regularly said “thank you” to other people, turned out to have a stronger resilience level than people who never acknowledged the help and support they received from others.

 

There are different ways to express your gratitude, and they all work to give you that happiness boost. You can say thank you right in the moment. You can write a thank you note to someone. Some people choose to journal (thanks to Oprah, that’s a habit that picked up steam several years ago and is still going strong). Journaling, like saying a prayer or a blessing, is a personal acknowledgement of gratitude, meaning you don’t actually even thank another person, you just recognize that you are thankful for the situation. You don’t have to even express your gratitude out loud for it to be a resilience-lifter.

 

What makes expressing gratitude so magic for your well-being, when it seems like writing thank you notes would be just another chore? Well, for starters, it’s an activity that reminds you that you aren’t alone in the world. Reaching out to say thanks brings it to the forefront of our minds that we’re interconnected with other people, and they happen to be other people who care about us!

 

Saying thank you also puts you in someone else’s shoes. You are thinking about what it cost them to do something nice to you, and you are thinking about how they would like to hear your express your gratitude. Even writing a thank you note for a gift – I always know who wants to hear me exclaim over how beautiful and special the gift is, and who wants to know all the practical uses I’ll have for it. To do that, I have to put myself in the shoes of the person I’m writing to. And for the moment that I do that, I’m reaching outside of myself, taking on someone else’s perspective, which is GREAT for my resilience.

 

I got the chance once to thank some people who had been instrumental in my life – my high school invited me back to speak to the graduating class, and several of my former teachers were there. I had almost forgotten, until I saw them face to face, how much it had mattered to have someone care about my life who WASN’T my mom or my best friend. These teachers didn’t have any stake in my going on to be successful or happy, they just wanted me to do so because they believed in me. It felt amazing to say thank you to them for supporting me, especially when I was an ungrateful teenager who didn’t even realize at the time how much they were doing to help me build my future.

 

Whether you say it out loud or just think it in your head, remember all the ways you are grateful this week. Having that gratitude attitude is good for you!

 

-Courtney

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The Group Cure for Fragility

Being part of a group has more benefits than just the social ones, it can actually help make you tougher and more resilient to stress and rejection, too!

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The One Person You Need in Your Life to Boost Resilience

As the big sister, I’m supposed to teach my little siblings things. And believe me, I have, whether they wanted to learn them or not. (Hey, there’s a reason “bossy big sister is a stereotype, okay!”) But when I started thinking about where I learned lessons of resilience, I learned that my siblings are actually great resilience role models.

 

Both my little brother and my little sister are great Resilience Role Models. Both have had great success in the big, wide world, and I’m incredibly proud of the way they handle themselves when things don’t go their way.

 

My little sister is the baby of the family – she’s 10 years younger than I am. She lives in New York and is making her way as an actress. Now, I lived in New York as a teenager and young adult, trying to work in theatre, too. But I found after a few years that I just couldn’t handle the rejection. Little Sis, on the other hand, never seems to take it personally. Oh, sure, she gets annoyed when she is passed over for a part she thought she was perfect for. But she doesn’t question her talent, or lapse into a funk. In fact, it seems to propel her to work harder at the numbers game that is auditions. When I was in her shoes, I was full of self-doubt from always feeling unwanted. Little Sis takes every rejection in stride, and she absolutely has the attitude that it takes to be successful in the difficult business of performing.

 

Little Bro is only a few years younger than I am, and he had his shining resilient moment when he was coming out of college. He had read a book about microfinance and micro-lending, where citizens of developing countries (often women) are given small loans to start a business. The women are taught how to manage money, grow their business, and ultimately pay the loan back. Giving women stable careers benefits families and entire communities. Little Bro was on fire for this kind of work! He couldn’t wait to go to South America and volunteer. But it turned out that all of the nonprofit organizations in the field only wanted volunteers who already had their MBA. Email after email, Little Bro got turned down. And Little Bro isn’t the kind of guy who usually gets turned down in life! What he did next shocked and impressed me. He picked up the phone and started calling. He sold himself harder than I’ve ever seen him sell. And finally one of the organizations agreed that he could come to South America with them as a microfinance volunteer. (The rest of the story, by the way, is that not only did Little Bro prove he was as good as the MBA volunteers, but he did such an amazing job his first few weeks that they sent him back to the home office to help the staff rewrite the business plan!)

 

We need Resilience Role Models in our lives for two reasons – to show us great resilient behavior, AND to remind us that we’re not the only ones struggling with brick walls. Do you know who your Resilience Role Models are? Who can you look to in your life that handles challenge with grace? Keep your eye on them, so when life gets you down you can follow in their footsteps.

 

-Courtney

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What’s Your Attitude Toward Aging?

Since I just celebrated a birthday a few days ago (not one with a 0 on the end of it, but one with a 5 on the end of it!), I’ve been thinking about getting older. I have been told that this birthday marks my “real” adulthood. I have been asked if this birthday bothers me, because for others apparently this birthday can signify the start of feeling “old.”

 

We have a lot of attitudes and feelings about aging. For many years, we’re supposed to desire it. We can’t wait to hit 13 and be a teenager. 16 and drive a car. 18 and be an adult. 21 and drink. 25 and be told we’re not a kid anymore. Somewhere around 30, the narrative starts to shift, and we’re expected to start dreading birthdays.

 

No one wants their knees to creak and their necks to sag (or anything worse than their neck!). But resentment about getting older, while totally normal, is actually counterproductive. Fearing a big birthday is like trying not to think about a pink elephant, right? Once it’s in your mind, it’s all you CAN think about. And when you put all your focus on something negative like that, it builds up in your mind to be a worse tribulation than it actually is.

 

There are two main reasons you ought to shift your attitude about aging. The first is that – like it or not – you WILL get older. Studies show that focusing on something you can’t change is a happiness-killer. Don’t waste your time on a futile effort. You can’t change the fact that every 365 days you’re going to age 1 year. You CAN do things to feel younger, look younger, act younger… whatever you want. But you can’t actually stop time, and wishing you could is just going to make you frustrated.

 

The second reason behind this attitude shift is that aging has positive effects, too. You just can’t notice them if all your focus is on the negative. But getting older means you are more secure in life. It usually means you have stable relationships and friendships, rather than all the drama of youth. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t change that for the world! It also means you likely have achieved a measure of success, whether that’s in your career, or raising children, or giving back to the community (or maybe all of the above!) So instead of going to bed at night going “Why am I here? What am I going to do with my life?” you go to bed thinking, “Man, I’m exhausted from everything I’ve done.” (I know, that’s a pain, too, but at least you have found your purpose in life.)

 

As a cancer survivor, I have an extra, third reason for having a good attitude about birthdays: I’m just happy for each and every one. I thought I might not make it to 27, so each year is a little gift unto itself.

 

Focusing on only the negatives AND focusing on something you can’t change is a surefire recipe for sadness. I’m going to celebrate this year, and I don’t even care if you see my laugh lines while I’m doing it!

 

-Courtney

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