"It is easy enough to be pleasant, when life flows by like a song, but the man worth while is one who will smile, when everything goes dead wrong." ("Worthwhile", in 'The Best-Loved Poems of the American People, Sel. Hazel Felleman, 1936, 144, Ella Wheeler Wilcox)
Resilience \ri-‘zil-yens\ n 1 : the ability of a body to regain its original size and shape after being compressed, bent, or stretched 2 : an ability to recover from or adjust easily to change or misfortune (The Merriam-Webster Dictionary, 1994). The opposite of resilience is to be resistant to change. The purpose of this blog is to learn how to deal with change in a resilient way rather than resisting change, allowing ourselves to grow from all of life’s experiences. Imagine a lake behind a dam.
This lake represents your personal reservoir of energy which is replenished as it is used. From this lake, you are able to put energy into life situations. If change, or stress, enter into your life, the flood gates of the dam are opened and some of the water is drained away. If the changes or challenges are small, only a small amount of water is used. Bigger things drain more away. A rapid series of changes or a traumatic event can open the flood gates wide and the lake will run dry. This could be anything from a fight with someone you care for, job loss, an addiction you are struggling with, or things that are out of your control. Resources are depleted. No energy is left for life and you may experience “burnout” or fall into a depression. There is a lack of motivation and life seems dreary. To avoid such a situation you must replenish the water in the lake (your resiliency), or learn to control how much energy is being used (for the complete analogy, go to http://www.lessons4living.com/resiliency.htm).
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