Resilience
A personal story
Alright! We have talked the right amount of details about the gloom and doom of mental disorders. Now let’s change gears and discuss about that one thing which allows us face everything with a smile. That is RESILIENCE.
Four years ago, I did a leadership study (a 360 degree wala) and I had to ask my peers, my direct reports, my old bosses (now that i don’t have one) and my clients on what they think about me and what are some attributes that they regard as positive and negative. It was a long questionnaire with more than 100 questions 🤕
It was surprising to see the results. 100% of my circle admired one single attribute in me and that was resilience. I had to go back to dictionary that day to figure out the real meaning. How could everyone point to one thing one hundred percent?
Resilience is the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties and come back to original form.
It took me 4 coffees that day to digest the result/report.
It made me jog my memory lane to figure out what made them say that because I throw tantrums, I am a rational ass, I don’t take no for an answer, I can debate and argue till conclusion, I become restless, I obsess over details, I can break down real bad to a point I can faint and worse I bleed (I have a congenital condition [a blood disorder], in which when my pressure drops below a point, i will start bleeding from my nose and mouth, I can’t contain it. If things get worse my ears will also start bleeding).
The condition is horrible to witness because it scares the hell out the people watching me go through this. It can make everyone in the room nervous. It can even make them feel guilty for what I go through. Whereas, I wake up from the episode in just an hour and I will continue from where we left, where the entire room will be in shock and totally mute.
Several times this has happened. They arrange an ambulance and take me to emergency rooms in that one hour. I had to carry a card with me saying don’t get worried, don’t give me penicillin and don’t medicate me with anything. Just allow me to rest and give me some cold water when i wake up. That card was there in my bag at all times. Touch wood, these days I don’t go through these bloody episodes so much. It has been almost 25 months since I had one recently. Everyone who answered that survey was right. I can get back up however crazy the fall is. Not just physically even metaphorically. I don’t give up so easily. I am a tough nut to crack. I can experiment and fail forever but I will not stop. So the best person to talk about resilience must be the crazy me inside me. I still don’t understand the obsession of not giving up.
Not that i am a super star. Actually, I’m far away from it. Average intelligence, not so great at anything, average background, average looks, poor health, easy to break, afraid of a lot of things, sensitive to society, hate being judged, can’t take rejection, will break if trust is broken, never had enough time at hand due to bad health conditions (as we talked earlier in the other series) but I know this much that I am tough to be beaten at any game. Throw me into anything, I can work harder, I can work longer, I can persevere, I can roll forever. I have the needed grit and resilience to complete the project. Let that be anything. Given a little time and space, I will beat anyone at it.
We must talk about this topic, as this has been a single most important attribute to beat all the disorders and negatives in life, personally. It is ok to have depression, it is ok to fail, it is ok to be anxious, it is ok to suck, it is ok to be obese, it is ok to procrastinate, it is ok to be afraid, it is ok to not have the needed skills, it is ok to not know much but it is NOT ok to be fragile.
The report led me to go and search more on resilience. Is resilience a habit or a gene or a circuit in the brain or a skill that can be developed? What is it?
I found some answers and that is what we will talk tomorrow. I reserved this topic specifically to talk on my birthday because there is nothing else that I could be proud of me except for resilience. If there is one secret sauce to my self care it is resilience. Let’s dig in more tomorrow.
🥂 to resilience!
Yo! Thanks for reading. Means a lot to me as attention is the hardest currency 🙏
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