The Link Between Resilience, Life Satisfaction, and Happiness
Resilience is your superpower for handling what life throws at you
In the fall of 2021 I spoke at a conference for professional event planners, as they were preparing to finish out the year and look towards 2022. My speech — “Live Your Front Row Life” includes the acronym ARC — with Resilience being the second speech point.
More than ever, resilience is a necessary ingredient to learning how to cope with what life hands us.
In part, this is achieved by choosing to see how even difficult experiences are acting “ for us” rather than “to us” it’s clear how your experiences develop into your personal stories of resilience. It’s those stories that you’ll go back to, for your own courage to use resilience or when you need to provide encouragement to others.
For instance, when I talk about the road to recovery from a back injury and the turning point to my healing, this is a real lived experience.
It’s not learning achieved from a course or a textbook, but the reality of having what amounted to an individual and very personal “lifestyle lockdown”. Unable to work, attend events that brought me joy, or even leave my home to see my friends, I experienced what the world experienced in the last 18 months. But I did it alone.
Those kinds of experiences mean you must face your own truths about your life, who’s in it, and what’s important. You must dig deep, and it’s how you come to understand that the heart of resilience is about learning what’s in your control and what’s not. When you know that, you can make decisions based on your own internal compass.
From your relationships to your career, where you live to how you live, the choices are endless. More importantly, is how you decide to feel about all those things. If you realize the tremendous power and freedom you have, simply by choosing how to frame even a difficult situation, you won’t simply bounce back.
You will change.
Resilience means growing beyond the person that entered those circumstances and seeing and living a brand-new way.
Which is exactly when you’re able to embrace the idea that life isn’t happening to you, but for you.
The event planners I spoke to, have, like many of you, spent the last 18 months trying to find their way through all the effects of the pandemic. From money to relationships, their future, and current day-to-day living.
This message, this idea that life happens for you isn’t just a clever concept, but one that will change your life. Yes, life can be challenging, confusing, and full of conflicting possibilities. It’s when all of that is going on that understanding how using your resilience is the key to getting you across to the other side and into the next chapters of your life.
I care deeply about sharing what I’ve learned about personal power, Self-Leadership, and the skills inherent in each of those. Which is why I keep doing the work I do....
…. Because every time I step up and share my truths about what resilience really is, then people, like the event planners can feel their internal truth shift to knowing that difficult doesn’t mean impossible. And, perhaps more importantly, who you become by facing your circumstances will help you in every area of your life.
Those big D’s that I’ve experienced — death, disease, and divorce have all served me to become clearer about the who, what and why of my whole life. Resilience helps me stay the course because I can see now how many people need this guidance and expertise.
If you’re in need of a resilience boost, contact me and I’ll happily respond. If you’re interested in more information about my speaking for your organization please contact me.
Originally published at https://www.francesfound.com.