Part 2: The Complexity of Resilience – More Than Just Mental Toughness

Resilience Is a Full-Body Experience

Picking up the topic from my last post... (Go here if you want to read part 1) Resilience can be defined as effective adaptation following adverse circumstances or traumatic events. Who doesn’t want and need a bucketload of that in this frenetic world we live in?!

Resilience isn’t just in your head—it can reside in your body, your spirit, your emotions, and your relationships. It’s a whole-life capacity, and the more we nurture it in each area, the more equipped we become to navigate both small setbacks and seismic shifts.

Appropriate Sizing = More Peace

The more we nurture or practice resilience, the better we get at appropriately sizing life’s struggles. This is a worthy practice that can affect our decision-making and change the trajectory of our lives, let alone improve our day-to-day experiences.

More and more study is being done on the concept of Post-traumatic Growth (PTG) as a positive outcome from coming through traumatic experiences – both acute and chronic. Resilience is a key part of PTG, and feeds the growth of hope in not only fully recovering from trauma, but becoming stronger because of it.

[If you would like to read more on this topic of PTG, my good friend Nancy Jernigan, PhD, discusses it in the e-magazine,Contentment, put out by the American Institute of Stress. Here’s the link to the issue containing her article: Post-Traumatic Growth: Finding Hope in Adversity.].

The photo at the top of this post is one of hundreds in my photo files, taken over the 20 years I (we) lived in SW Colorado and had the San Juans as our ‘playground.’ Something significant my husband and I have always had in common is our souls’ need for immersive outdoor experiences. In other words, we want to feed our mind, body, spirit, soul -and all of our senses - when we engage in God’s creation. So you can imagine the innumerable opportunities for that outside our door in SW Colorado!

What does that have to do with resilience? One of the best ways to nurture our resilience is through immersive experiences. Full-body activities that engage the whole person—mind, body, spirit, and soul— are those that are immersive.

Examples of immersive activities: dancing, hiking, deep conversations, yoga or mindful practices, making music, serving others, prayer or meditation.

Psychologists have recognized the multiple dimensions of resilience: emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual. And these aren’t isolated traits—they intersect. A sleepless night can short-circuit your patience. A broken heart can affect your body. And just as importantly, a grateful spirit can lift the weight of a stressful day.

Each Dimension Needs Attention

Along with the different dimensions of resilience, is the effect of each of our unique personality-traits mix on our resilience capacity. As a life coach, I utilize strength assessments with clients desiring to understand and embrace their wiring. It is really the first essential step for designing a plan for your next season, which is usually what brings a potential client to me. Over the twenty years of playing this role, I have observed:

Our wiring, which informs our perspective, has a significant effect on our built-in resilience reservoir. For example, those who lean towards a ‘cup-half-full’ view of life may find it more natural to see a problem or struggle as a possible opportunity to create something new – that’s what resilience looks like. But no matter our natural leaning, we can all build on our resilience with intention and practice, using the inevitable challenges in our daily lives.

The Artist Believes Something New Can Be Made From Broken Pieces

That thought brings me back to the Japanese art form of kintsugi (introduced in part 1 of this series). The artist creating a kintsugi-style piece, must bring into the endeavor the belief that something new – and desirable, functional and beautiful – can be created out of something broken – no longer useful, beautiful or desirable. Inversely, the artist would see opportunity or a new beginning in what others might see as a problem or an ending.

Stay tuned for part 3 in this series on resilience, when I will talk more about how our personality and relationship with risk can affect our resilience capacity.

Meanwhile, I invite you to take a moment to reflect:

Which resilience dimension (emotional, physical, mental or spiritual) needs your attention today?

What is 1 immersive activity you could engage in to nurture your resilience?

Journal it. Tend it. Share it, if you so desire.

*If you contact me, (geriswingle@gmail.com ), I will send you my  Whole-Person Engagement Worksheet for your intentional resilience practice.

*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. (geriswingle@gmail.com. We can meet, no matter where you are, over Zoom.) 

If you would like to follow me on this adventure, and receive notice whenever I post something new, please subscribe. (It’s simple – at the top and bottom of every page on the Perils & Pearls blog site. *No need to be a 'member.')

**A word about POSTING COMMENTS: I LV engaging with your feedback/responses to my writings! But, if you run into tech obstacles when trying to post a comment, please feel free to do as so many of you have done: Send me a private message using the "Let's Chat" option on the Perils & Pearls Home Page.

And if you know people who would benefit from the support, and/or enjoy the short writings, please share the site or a post with them. Heck, just share it on your social media…Let’s grow it together! 

Blessed to play a part ~

g

The Art of Resilience: From Cracks to Courage Part 1: The Beauty in Brokenness – Introducing the Kintsugi Way

Finding Strength Through Our Cracks

I recently wrote an article for the American Institute of Stress (AIS) e-magazine, Contentment, on the topic of resilience.

 [Go here  to read the full article: We Are All Cracked Pots: Strength and Beauty From Brokenness, (starting on page 18), & several other writings on the same topic from various perspectives.]

I believe this to be a timeless topic and a vital key to a healthy perspective on and response to the inescapable stressors of this life. For the next several posts, I will be sharing on the quality of resilience, offering both my personal perspective and experience, and as a professional life coach.

I hope to stir up your curiosity about your capacity for resilience, as well as discussions in the relational circles of my readers' lives; and offer my professional partnership if such would be helpful for a freshly acknowledged desire to develop your resilience.

Let’s start with defining the term: What is resilience?  

You might be like me, picturing the bounce back effect: a rubberband snapping back into place after being stretched, a tree straightening after being bent in a windstorm. And yet, as we use the term commonly, the basic dictionary definition of resilience is:

 the ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change.  

There is also the more specific psychology application of the word, used to mean the capacity of individuals to withstand, cope with, or recover from adverse, stressful, or high-risk circumstances.

Resilience is not about bouncing back. It’s about becoming something more — something beautiful, storied, and whole.

But what if for us, unlike a tree or rubberband, true resilience isn't about returning to our original shape? What if it's about becoming something more; transformed and transported forward by what could have stunted our growth?

Our resilience isn’t defined by how perfectly we recover, but by how intentionally we grow.

What I’m inviting you to consider with me is the object or person whose response to pressure, compression, stress is not just a bounce-back to its former shape or self, but the becoming of something more -  a more beautiful version of its former self; and yet, still retaining the marks left from the induced stress.

To help us visualize this process of positive transformation through pressure, let me use kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer mixed with powdered gold. Instead of hiding the fractures, it highlights them. Kintsugi is a process by which a vessel is returned to its former state before the breakage occurred. The process results in transforming the object by filling the broken places with liquid gold.

Share your beauty from broken pieces story on social media using #CracksToCourage

Psychiatrist and author Dr. Curt Thompson speaks of kintsugi as a living metaphor: an invitation to embrace our brokenness, to allow our wounds to shine, not shame us.

Kintsugi teaches us to celebrate and value the broken parts of ourselves, not disguise them.

I invite you to join me over the next several blog writings, in bringing our curiosity to this unique concept of our breakage being transformed into beauty. To get you thinking, consider this question:

What fracture in your story might hold the potential for transformation?

Comment below or share your kintsugi moment on social media using #CracksToCourage.

If you would like to follow me on this adventure, and receive notice whenever I post something new, please subscribe. (It’s simple – at the top and bottom of every page on the Perils & Pearls blog site. *No need to be a 'member.')

**A word about POSTING COMMENTS: I LV engaging with your feedback/responses to my writings! But, if you run into tech obstacles when trying to post a comment, please feel free to do as so many of you have done: Send me a private message using the "Let's Chat" option on the Perils & Pearls Home Page.

And if you know people who would benefit from the support, and/or enjoy the short writings, please share the site or a post with them. Heck, just share it on your social media…Let’s grow it together! 

Blessed to play a part ~

g

Spanish Seasonings of a New Life Season

Can a dozen different orders of patatas bravas change your life? For sure the quest for the best has got me pondering the deep questions:

How many times do they fry those starchy morsels to get that cravable crisp on the outside while keeping the inside pillow-soft? What kind of oil do they use to get that addicting flavor? And the sauce, what is in their sometimes secret, pale red condiment?

We just returned from an extended trip in Spain. It was a bucket-list vacay to celebrate my husband crossing the finish line on full-time employment. Yes, we are entering a new life season where we can use acronyms like AWA as a shortcut whem describing the changes that come As We Age...But we resist calling it retirement because we have no plans to stop doing the work we are made to do:

Helping men, women, couples and organizations discover and embrace their passions, skills and gifts; and then create a future plan that aligns their life decisions with their unique wiring.

Since I started life coaching twenty years ago, I have called that sweet spot the thing you can’t not do (TTYCND). Each one of us has that thing going on. If we take the time we can find the thread of it in all of our life stages and ages.  

Take a moment to consider and reflect on this...TTYCND showed up in your childhood, perhaps through the draw your early friends had towards you. It can be found in your teen years as you started to hone what came easy for you for acceptance, advancement or recognition in particular groups, classes, sports and activities.

A thoughtful look back into your early adulthood could reveal further development of TTYCND through the jobs and friends you chose or those for which you were pursued. If you are farther down the road of life, you may have by this point, consciously or subconsciously conceded or landed on what those who have known you knew years ago: TTYCND.

I could have titled this post The One Question that Can Uncover Your Life Purpose:

If asked of your close friends or family members, What are three words that describe you? I’m wagering the majority of answers would circle your sweet spot, or TTYCND.

Ok, that might be over-simplifying it. There are about a dozen elements on my list of what encompasses personal leverage - all the elements that make you, your journey, your contribution, one-of-a-kind. How others’ see your outstanding characteristics is only one of those elements....But I can’t cover all of that in a single blog post...

Let me touch upon an important caution I would give to those who endeavor to do the DYI version of finding your life purpose: Due to both my personal and professional experience, I am compelled to forewarn you here:

What you are good at is not necessarily what you are passionate about.

Certainly part of what makes your contribution a unique asset in your field of influence has to do with your God-given gifts, skills and talents; but it will take a deeper dive into the package that is you to differentiate the long list of your natural abilities from the one or two passions that feel like fire in your belly when you think or talk about them.

Let me use myself as an example. Since I was young, I have always been called upon for tasks that require organizing and/or optimizing. I can see the order that can be made from disorder and find it easy to get there. Becoming a wife at 19 years of age and a mother at 20, those skills helped fill in for my lack of experience at those roles.

But running a household did not light a fire in my belly. I did not feel fulfilled by having an orderly home. This was one way I loved my husband and children, and for that I am grateful to have had the opportunity to be a stay-at-home mom while the kids were young.

Once my children reached their teen years, I had the desire to spend some time pursuing something outside of running a household. My husband and daughter were brainstorming ideas with me...But their view of what I would be good at was weighted heavily by their experience of me as the manager of the home. Yet, doing more of what I had been immersed in for almost two decades didn’t get me excited.

As the two of them shared their description of me, I realized they were right about what they saw as my natural skills. But in that moment, I had the aha: Just because I’m good at these things doesn’t mean I’m passionate about them. I saw my organizing acumen as the means to an end – that is, get the household tasks done efficiently so I could engage in what I was passionate about: supporting and encouraging my growing family.

It took a couple more years for me to sift through my natural and practiced skills to uncover a pursuit about which I could be passionate. Eventually, I decided to try my hand at something that had become a part of my life in my twenties. I loved strength-training. I started going to a gym to lift weights when seeing a woman bench-pressing was still a rare thing.

I wanted to get more women comfortable with sculpting their bodies with muscle grown in a weight room.

And so, I investigated and pursued what was required to become certified as a personal trainer. I went on to have my own business, working with clients one-on-one in their homes. I did that work for a dozen years, loving the opportunities to impact people’s lives for good through education and encouragement.

When a consulting job called for my husband to spend some extended time in San Diego, the only way I could accompany him was to stop my PT business. I was ready...What I did not expect was the next thing to reveal itself while I was in SoCal. I happened upon a book about life coaching, specifically, Life Purpose Coaching (LPC).  As I took in what a Life Coach is or does, that fire in the belly heated up! I said to my husband, “That’s who I am!”

I recognized that when I was personal training my clients – especially in the personal context of their homes – I was impacting more than their physical fitness. I was coaching them in various domains of their lives, a lot like being a life coach. And when I went to my first round of training in Laguna Beach and the author who was instructing this first-ever class of future LPC’s asked each of us: Why do you want to be a Life Purpose Coach, it just popped into my head and out of my mouth:

Because it’s the thing I can’t not do! 

That was twenty years ago. Since then I have grown my credentials and toolbox as a professional life coach. I have also played the roles of coach instructor, a LifePlan facilitator, a retreat speaker, and administrator of several strength assessments – such as The Call, the Myers-Briggs and the Enneagram. But the essence of all of these roles is the same:

I am made to encourage others forward in their journeys. That’s TTICND!

My hope is you will be able to transfer my personal example to your own journey. To take a look back over the stages and ages of your life and see the common threads re: your impact on the people in your spheres of influence – whether that was the first friends you had in grade school, your family settings, your teen years and early adulthood, the years of your career(s)...There are repeatable themes, characteristics that repeat, rise to the top, stick in the minds of those who encounter you.

Since I was made to encourage and support, I offer both to you. Contact me if you would like a professional partner at this point in your pathway, or if you would benefit from experiencing a strength assessment.

Another TTICND is to take in every new experience with all five of my senses. Our trip through Spain was no exception - I saw it, smelled it, felt it, heard it and ate it! As my final encouragement, if you have the opportunity, don’t hesitate to explore España with all of its sensory experiences – not the least of which is their food! Here are a couple of shots from our paella cooking class in Valencia.

Hasta Luego!

A worthy pondering:

What’s the thing I can’t not do? What was I known for, even back in childhood? What not only comes easy for me, but lights up that fire in my belly?

If you know TTYCND, do you currently have an expression or outlet for it? Might you consider making a change to make room for such an outlet?

If you are looking at a new season approaching, how might you incorporate TTYCND into your day-to-day life, whether through a vocation or avocation?

 If you would like to follow me on this adventure, and receive notice whenever I post something new, please subscribe. (It’s simple – at the top and bottom of every page on the Perils & Pearls blog site. *No need to be a 'member.')

**A word about POSTING COMMENTS: I LV engaging with your feedback/responses to my writings! But, if you run into tech obstacles when trying to post a comment, please feel free to do as so many of you have done: Send me a private message using the "Let's Chat" option on the Perils & Pearls Home Page.

And if you know people who would benefit from the support, and/or enjoy the short writings, please share the site or a post with them. Heck, just share it on your social media…Let’s grow it together! 

Blessed to play a part ~

g