Everyday Resilience: A Practical Guide to Build Inner Strength and Weather Life's Challenges by Gazelle MD Gail

Author:Gazelle MD, Gail [Gazelle MD, Gail]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Rockridge Press
Published: 2020-08-10T16:00:00+00:00

Accepting Life’s Obstacles

Life throws us lots of curveballs from all directions. We may be moving forward on a big life project only to have an unexpected turn of events take front stage: an aging parent needing care, a child struggling at school, understaffing at work, a public health emergency. How can we possibly stay on course and persevere?

Perseverance doesn’t mean ignoring reality. If anything, it’s the opposite: In order to overcome any setback, we first have to accept that it exists. It’s always helpful to remind ourselves that we all veer off our path—it’s just the nature of life. Recall the first mark of existence, which basically boils down to the fact that stuff happens. Though we may have decided it’s the right time to work on a big project, life may have different plans for us. If you think back on your life, you can probably see that your own journey has not been a linear one. In fact, on our way to visit a beautiful mountain, it’s not unusual to come across difficult terrain that lies between us and the peak. Maybe we didn’t plan for the difficult terrain and no one told us it would be there, yet we have to traverse it to get where we’re going regardless.

Simply accepting the reality of our circumstances can be an incredibly productive step. We can spend a lot of energy resisting or railing against something—whether it’s something internal, like a personality trait, challenging emotion, or physical pain, or an external factor, like bad timing or difficult circumstances. This reaction can leave us worrying, replaying events and conversations over and over in our mind, stuck and upset because of what’s occurring. We can’t move forward with perseverance because until we accept the situation, we’re just going around in circles.

That principle is underscored in a form of therapy called acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), which affirms that living our most vital life involves accepting reality as it is and working with whatever that brings us. With that acceptance comes the understanding that life is full of choice points.

Perseverance involves facing problems head-on so you can commit to choices that align with your values and decrease your struggle and distress. Here’s an example.

A successful fashion designer, Jacinta put her career on hold after a car accident left her with chronic leg pain. She’d been to doctor after doctor, tried medication after medication, yet the pain remained. On some days, she felt fine. On others, she felt like her leg was in a vise. She lived in constant fear that the pain would return, worrying what each day would bring. She frequently told herself that if only the pain would go away, she could continue to pursue her career, but that otherwise “I can’t do anything useful or enjoyable because of my pain.”

After working with an ACT therapist, Jacinta realized that many of her thoughts were amplifying her suffering and that she’d been caught in a life that was overly focused on the pain.

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