Blog | Perils And Pearls

Welcome to my blog: Perils and Pearls

My heart's desire in this endeavor is to offer support and encouragement to the hearts' of women. That you would feel accompanied - not alone - as we travel together and find the jewels in our sometimes perilous journeys.

Part 5: Bend Not Break – A Resilience Practice for Everyday Life

21 minutes ago
4 min read

This is the final installment of considering the concept of resilience. (Go here if you would like to read the other four parts of the series.) I’d like to get practical in this post:

Since resilience is a trait that we can strengthen through practice, what does that look like in an everyday setting? How do you build a life that bends, not breaks?

Take a look at my title image. That guy holding the bent rod is our son, Nick. He has been fishing since he was three (right alongside his seven-year-old sister). Four decades later, he is a master fly fisherman with an unquenchable passion for catching every type of fish, in every different setting, all over the world - from the surf of an ocean, in a stream or a river, or from a boat.

And I can tell you this for sure: he has learned to pick the right rod for the type of fishing he is doing. He knows using the correct rod according to how it is made is one of the most essential parts of successful fishing. It’s all about the rod flex:

A fly rod flexes to store and release energy: as you cast, the rod bends under the weight of the line, then straightens to propel the line forward smoothly and with control. This flex also absorbs sudden strain from a hooked fish, preventing the line from snapping. As rod size (length and weight rating) increases, the flex tends to become stronger and deeper to handle greater casting loads.

In the realm of resilience, we could say, it is all about our flex

We store and release (body and brain) energy as we navigate the challenges of life – big and small – in hopes of bending, not breaking. When we feel the sudden strain of an event, we hope our resilience will absorb it, preventing us – our mind-body stress response - from snapping. As we practice and apply resilience, it becomes stronger and deeper, able to handle greater loads.

Before I dug deeper into resilience I had not realized the superpower of this trait. My newly heightened awareness compels me to pay attention to the development of it in my daily life.

From the thoughts we think to the stories we tell, resilience is a lifestyle—one we can nurture with intention. Here are a few of the factors I focus on for my resilience practice:

· Start with a perspective check: (Jeremiah 18) The image of God as the potter, reshaping marred clay into something new, reminds us: we are not disposable. We are redeemable. He is making something beautiful.

· Thought life can kill resilience – We can all distort reality. Here is a list of Cognitive Distortions to be aware of and identity in our thought lives:

· Disappointment management and sizing – This is not a one-time learning. Disappointments do not stop; improving our response to and sizing of them cannot stop either.

· The sky is always blue. Gratitude works. Magnify the positive. Go to the good – it is always there.

· Be receptive to a group narrative rewrite – In safe relationships are opportunities for telling our stories truer, and those connections can nurture our transformed selves.

As mentioned above, in the well-known passage of old testament scripture in the eighteenth chapter of Jeremiah, God is in the role of the potter, and we are the clay. He shapes and reshapes us as He deems best. When the pot is cracked, He creates something new and beautiful out of the same clay.

In a similar framework, I can see God as the kintsugi artist, expertly, painstakingly, lovingly putting the broken pieces back together, filling the fractures with precious gold, giving the brokenness one-of-a-kind beauty and emphasis, not hiding it or obliterating the whole vessel.

May I leave you with a question to ponder?

Which resilience practice resonates with you most? Choose one to try this week.

(And if you're willing, post one of your resilience practices with #BendNotBreak.)

*My offer of support: If you contact me via ‘chat w/ me’ on Perils & Pearls, I will gift you a thirty-minute coaching session to talk about how you might develop your resilience through the struggle(s) you are currently facing.

*And if you have been stirred to further explore your unique wiring – strengths, passions, challenges - & you would like to experience a strength assessment with a certified life coach, I invite you to contact me.

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Blessed to play a part ~

Part 4: Pancakes in a Snowstorm – How Creativity Can Emerge from Crisis

Aug 14
4 min read

Let's take a look at another aspect of resilience. (The topic I have been exploring in the last several blog posts. To read the other three on resilience go here.)

Have you ever considered how necessity can bring out creativity?

Coming from a family of eleven, the ability to make something out of nothing wasn't a nicety; it was a survival skill! And one that has served me through the various trials and tribulations of adult life as well.

Many moons ago, when my daughter was in Girl Scouts, I was one of the parent chaperones for an April camping weekend. The cabin was bustling and busting from the adolescent energy of about twenty-five eleven-year-olds and a handful of wide-eyed adults. The girls were prepared with buddy-burners to prove their fire-starting and outdoor cooking skills in hopes of attaining the prize of a Girl Scout badge that would then be proudly displayed on their uniform sashes.

But on the first morning of the campout we awoke to a shocking view outside the windows: Overnight the weather had a taken an unforeseen turn from spring temperatures to more than a foot of snow! The next telltale of impeding problems was the discovery of a loss of power.

Buddy Burners to the Rescue

With no power to the stovetop, what do you feed a herd of giddy girls who are not dismayed over the snowstorm shock, but rather biting at the bit to get out in it and make snow angels?

Well, my big-family training came forward in my prefrontal cortex to solve this problem. I inventoried our food supply and found pancake mix and syrup. Hmm...Why not use the buddy burners to cook pancakes for breakfast? The troop leaders and other chaperones gave me the crazy look, then moved aside to give me the con. I summoned the girls and requested they gather all the buddy burners.

My almost subversive idea made them squeal with delight!

In the end, I and a couple of brave accomplices, had flipped about one hundred mini-pancakes on the surfaces of a couple dozen buddy burners. The girls assisted enough to get their badge credit and then ran outside without any winter-ready apparel to play in the snow.

Meanwhile, the adults went to the next problem to solve: How were we going to dig out our vehicles to escape the surprise winter wonderland? Hmm...

To analyze that comical campout now, I wonder, was it more nature or nurture that caused my brain to create an out-of-the-box solution to feeding the troop? Depending on where you turn for the answers, you can be swayed in either direction. What stands out to me now, in the context of resilience, is how my perceived deficits in childhood showed up as an asset in this snowstorm scenario.

My mother was famous for saying “Necessity is the mother of invention!” She was right!

Researchers agree that no matter the mix of genetics, personality traits, and early life experiences, resilience can be developed with intention. In fact, I was bolstered to learn:

Those of us who may have had something foundational lacking in our childhoods can actually have an advantage in regard to our capability to face and recover from disappointments and hardships.

The American Psychological Association has written much on the effects of early environments on adults’ ability to draw on and even strengthen resilience when facing the inevitable disappointments and adversities of all the seasons of life.

When children face challenges and disappointments in a supportive environment, they develop the emotional, social, and cognitive tools needed to navigate adversity, recover from setbacks, and even move on strengthened. On the other hand, children in unsupportive environments must tackle significant challenges in developing resilience, but they are not without hope. With the right interventions, positive influences, and opportunities for growth, many can overcome these difficulties and build the emotional and mental strength needed to thrive.

Crisis or lack can bring out creativity, and also become a catalyst for resilience.

As you consider my lighthearted example of the improvisation that came out of an unpredictable and uncontrollable challenge, may I offer some food for thought for exploring this topic in your own story?

Think back to a time you solved a problem creatively under pressure. What did you use? Who benefited? Share your resilience win, if you’d like.

Blessed to play a part ~

Part 3: Resilience Is Risky Business – The Role of Personality and Risk

Aug 6
3 min read

This is my third post on the topic of resilience.(Go here if you want to read Part 2.) We have established that resilience is a real-life response skill that resides in all of us, but our ability to bounce back from adversity can be developed by intentional practices. In this post, I’d like to share more about how our personality and relationship with risk can affect our resilience capacity.

Being in the business of helping people discover and embrace their wiring, I have noticed possible correlations between specific personality tendencies and risk-aversion levels with varying responses or reactions to adverse circumstances.

In my life coaching practice I have utilized a tool with clients looking to map out their next season of life called the LifePlan. The creator of this powerful process, Fortune 500 Business Management Consultant, Tom Paterson,(and author of Living the Life You Were Meant to Live), also employed a spectrum to illustrate the various types of thinkers. Included in the type distinctions is the relationship each type has with risk.

The Thinking Wavelength divides us into five types of thinkers:

· Grinders – those who get the work done

· Minders – those who use both people and organizational skills to manage a team

· Keepers – people who can manage ‘the whole store’ due to appreciation for both the administrative and strategic sides

· Finders – these are the entrepreneurs of the world with their more abstract than concrete thinking

· Theorists- those who belong in the research end of things rather than in business, majoring in postulating theories, rather than executing their large visions.

As you can see from the chart above, each type of thinker relates or responds to risk differently – from the most concrete Grinder who is notably risk-adverse, to the abstract Theorist who embraces the risk necessary to bring about disruptive breakthroughs in their field of passion.

My experience has been the less risk-averse a person is the more likely he or she possesses the tendency to see uncertainty and risk as opportunity,

about which Happiness podcaster, author and Harvard Professor Arthur C. Brooks, writes and speaks.I believe Dr. Brooks would agree:

Every problem or struggle can be an opportunity to create

Back to where I started this resilience discussion...The Japanese art form, kintsugi, is a beautiful illustration of this principle: an unfortunate circumstance results in a valued vessel breaking into pieces. With a vision for what it can become, the artist increases the broken vessel’s value and beauty by accentuating the breaks by filling them with liquid gold.

A problem can become an opportunity to create

Thus, the problem becomes an opportunity to create for the inspired artist.

If you follow my writing at all, you know how strongly I believe discovering and embracing your unique, God-given wiring is the first step to finding your ‘sweet spot’ for living a fulfilling life. What kind of thinker you are is yet another way of understanding your natural internal framework.

This matters because how we relate to risk often predicts how we respond to adversity. Are you energized by uncertainty? Or do you need structure to survive it? Neither is better—but knowing your pattern helps build resilience your way.

Curious about your wiring? I invite you to reflect on how you handle risk...

· Where would you place yourself on the Thinking Wavelength?

· What’s one time your relationship to risk helped (or hindered) your bounce-back?

· What is one takeaway from exploring this topic of risk that you could turn into an enlargement of your resilience capacity?

*If you contact me via ‘chat w/ me’ on Perils & Pearls, I will send you my Whole-Person Engagement Worksheet for your intentional resilience practice.

Blessed to play a part ~