I dream of retiring very early, moving to a tropical island, rolling into a hammock and living an unhurried life of perpetual bliss. It’s not going to work out like that though…
It could be that one day I will be reading a book and a giant coconut will fall from a great height onto somewhere very sensitive. Or maybe a cyclone will come along like the Big Bad Wolf and blow my bure down. Or perhaps after about an hour of swinging in a hammock I will get phenomenally bored and decide to start up my own hoverboard company, which will fail spectacularly.
Bad stuff is going to happen.
Life won’t be all ice cream, pony rides and songs by Plastic Betrand. There is going to be death, destruction and annoyingly long waits for Telstra technicians. Everyone has to be prepared for that stuff.
Throughout your life you will encounter many undesirable events. Some will be pesky and annoying. Others may shake you to the core. But with the right skills you will be able to bounce back.
Psychological resilience is not a fixed trait. It’s something you can develop over time… and considering that bad stuff will inevitably happen, developing resilience is something we should all be working on.
Unfortunately, a lot of us aren’t all that well prepared. As children many of us were taught precisely the wrong things about what to do when bad stuff happens. Our young, receptive brains may have absorbed all sorts of unhelpful phrases like “try not to think about”, “just block it out” or “Rover has gone to live on a nice farm in the country”.
For many of us, terrible coping strategies were handed down like family heirlooms and well-meaning attempts to shield us from life’s difficulties resulted in us being quite ill-prepared for them. Instead of developing resilience, we became conditioned to bottle up emotions, push away difficult thoughts and avoid anything which felt remotely painful.
We learnt to deal with the bad stuff the dumb way. Now when bad stuff comes along, it can feel like we’re trying to scale Mt Everest on roller-skates.
To take on all of life’s big challenges we need to be better equipped. At Mindarma our aim is to throw the roller-skates aside and set you up with a pair of sturdy crampons that will enable you climb any mountain.
In trials of Mindarma, survey responses have shown that users who have completed the program feel better equipped to deal with difficult thoughts, uncomfortable emotions and times of high stress. As well as having higher resilience levels, they have greater confidence in their ability to handle the ‘bad stuff’ and a range of practical strategies which they can put into action whenever the going gets tough.
After investing just a few hours to complete Mindarma, they are experiencing some real life-changing benefits (considering I spent hundreds of hours learning the recorder and I still can’t play Mary Had a Little Lamb, I think that’s pretty good).
No matter how hard we try to build a perfect, pain-free world, bad stuff is going to happen. Rather than live in fear, we should learn to develop our resilience. When we are confident in our ability to bounce back from adversity, we are also likely to feel empowered to take on big challenges, pursue a life of purpose and do what matters most.