Resilience
What is productive thinking? Productive thinking is thinking that creates the results that you desire.
Unproductive thinking keeps you feeling sorry for yourself and wishing, hoping, praying that the circumstance and other people will change.
I am so grateful for the tools and skills I have learned. Without them I am fairly certain I would be wallowing in a sorry puddle of my own tears. Instead I am sitting in Panera writing this to you.
I’ll back up and tell you a quick story of how I got here. Yesterday evening was….challenging and did not end well. The details don’t matter, but I was feeling really discouraged. I can’t believe this, this is miserable, why isn’t it working. I tried to move on and ignore it and enjoy a restful evening with my husband, but ignoring never solves the problem. It just comes back with a vengeance. And so it did. So then I reached in and pulled out some tools:
Asking for Help
Emotional Responsibility
Immediate Gratitude
Choosing Commitment
A few years ago I would have gone to bed with a headache from crying so much (and probably keep myself up still shedding tears), I would be blaming everyone around me, pitying myself and playing the victim, expecting and waiting for my husband to comfort and take responsibility for my emotions, focusing on lack and everything that wasn’t going right and staying discouraged by ruminating and convincing myself it’s not working.
Instead -
I Asked for Help. I called an audible and asked if my husband could take the kids for the following morning so I could go to adoration and work. I took Emotional Responsibility. I owned my emotions and knew they were coming from me, not anyone else. I told that self-pity to go away and chose Immediate Gratitude. I thought about all the things I could be grateful for in this present moment. And I committed to getting the result with my children I’m working towards. This means patience with myself, others and the process. This means continuing to put more into the value bank than I take out with my mistakes.
I can’t tell you that I have achieved the result yet, in fact I am very much in the fight. But I am willing to be patient and I am excited to share the news with you when I do. I CAN, however, tell you assuredly that I am a resilient woman. We must be able to pick ourselves back up. Resilience is necessary for growth.
Come train with me! I can teach you these tools and help you to become a resilient woman.
P.S. Update: This post was written in December 2021. I am happy to report that by April of 2022 I achieved the result I referred to here. In addition to asking for help from my husband on that particular day, I later got some coaching that changed the way I saw the problem and the solution that helped me to overcome the particular behavior challenges. It helped my children too. In order to help our children we MUST help ourselves and change the way we show up for them. You can do it too! I look forward to coming alongside you.