Episode 216: Resiliency – What does it take to bounce back?

Episode 216: Resiliency - What does it take to bounce back?

Welcome to the Love Your Story podcast.

Today we are talking about Resilience - let’s define it: Resilence is “an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change.”

Lynn G. Robbins, a leader in the LDS church shared, “During my visit to Brigham Young University–Idaho in the fall of 2017, the school’s new president, Henry J. Eyring, told me that his foremost concern was the high dropout rate of college freshmen. Students leave college for a variety of reasons, but a lack of resilience is one of the leading reasons that many universities across the United States are experiencing this same challenge.”

He then mentioned that the military is noticing the same thing:

“Discovering a lack of resilience among its recruits, the U.S. Army started offering the Master Resilience Training (MRT) program to fortify soldiers against the stress, demands, and hardships of military service.”

Colleges, military, these are just a few places where this lack of resilience is being noted among us.

So let’s have a conversation….

University, the Military, Covid - these things are not causing the lack of resiliency, they are just exposing it. How do we become more resilient?’’

Stay tuned for a look at resiliency and the keys we need to help us bounce back.

Lower resilience among today’s youth may be caused by a number of things - I’ll throw a few out:

1. Less physical activity (read too much device time), so the don’t know how to push through resistance.
2. Impatience in a world of instant gratification. Resilience is developed in great part through the virtue of patience.
3. Protection from rough seas. “Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors.”

While the reasons are important so we can start making changes, what I want to talk about today is what resiliency looks like.

Is it just me, or have you also noticed, as we listen to the incredible life stories shared on this podcast, that one thing constantly pops up, a cross roads. This cross roads, in all our lives, may come up over and over, but that’s why it’s even more important to be aware of it. It is the cross roads of choosing victimhood/blame/depression and giving-up OR choosing growth/overcoming and keep on, keeping on.

This cross roads is a sacred place. It’s a place where the human soul does its hardest work. It is not a place to be taken lightly or to be talked about lightly. It is not the cause of the struggle, it is the choice in the struggle.

Today we talk about resiliency - because as Steve Goodier said, “My scars remind me that I did indeed survive my deepest wounds. That in itself is an accomplishment. And they bring to mind something else, too. They remind me that the damage life has inflicted on me has, in many places, left me stronger and more resilient. What hurt me in the past has actually made me better equipped to face the present.” 

I start out with this quote because I think when we are deep in the struggle that this becomes and important thing to remember. It might feel like life is unfair and you’re getting the shit kicked out of you, but someday it will be this process and what you do with it that create your character and your strength.

On today’s show we’ll hear from 3 people, clips of their stories and how they navigated the horrible spaces of paralysis from a rodeo accident, walking again after a bike/SUV collision, and taking back life after sexual abuse, and a deep emersion in alcoholic households. 

We all have our own path with our own difficult struggles - no one’s is the same….but what is the same is the importance of resiliency. This one thing determines whether you make it through, and how you show up on the other side. 

What does resiliency look like? It’s always best to look at real life examples: So I’m dipping into 3 past interviews.

We’ll hear some tips for sure, but as I listen to stories on the podcast, over and over, ONE thing that pops out front and center - ALWAYS —as the key to resiliency— is ATTITUDE. Resiliency is determine by how we respond to hard things.

Dieter F. Uchtdorf said, “It’s your reaction to adversity, not adversity itself that determines how your life’s story will develop.”

“I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.” -- Maya Angelou

“Persistence and resilience only come from having been given the chance to work through difficult problems.” -- Gever Tulles

There is no end to the quotes about this fact of life - when we are beat down to the very bottom of what we feel we can handle, that is the time where the choice becomes crucial. Attitude, even if you can only start with a small hope, will put us on the path of residency.

In Episode 166 - Braxton Nielsen - Born to Succeed, was always interested in rodeo, Braxton placed 8th in the nation in 2017 and then went pro. His dream of becoming a world champion bareback rider was getting closer and closer, but life happened and after the accident Braxton was given less than a 5% chance of walking again. 

Five fused vertebrae’s, two rods, eight screws, numbness in his right leg and can’t feel his left foot. Recover is a long road, but stay tuned today to hear about his journey and to soak in some of that positive attitude that Braxton exudes as he talks about life.

Tune into the audio program to hear his clip

In Episode 168 - Michael O’Brien speaking about how he survived the morning of July 11, 2001 (more about that in a minute) said,

 “If we want to create the lives we want to create, it is all emotional labor.” —Michael O’Brien

So, on the morning of July 11, 2001, Michael O’Brien, an avid cyclist, was riding his bicycle on a New Mexico road when an SUV hit him head-on going 40 mph. The crushing accident left him near death as the mede-vac helicopter descended to take his broken body to be pieced back together. Today Michael is with us and will take us to the darkness of his accident and the long, slow road to recovery, but he’ll also take us to his shift – the moment when he decided it was the power of his mind that would decide the rest of his life. It wasn’t the tragedy that would define him, but how he responded to the tragedy.

Tune into the audio program to hear his clip.

Bethany Wallace in episode 151 - Finding Your Way to Healing, talks to us about her story of how she overcame, forgave, learned and took action after being sexually assaulted multi times and living in Beverly alcoholic households. 

Tune into the program to hear her clip.

Her journey in resiliency was supported by gratitude and the power to choose. She has spent the past 12 years taking actions, often in spite of her feelings, to become a healthier person.

As we close this discussion, let’s revisit the what it takes: 1. A positive mindset/attitude 2. hard work - a willingness to not give up. 3. Support from others. Don’t forget to reach out, to get support, to allow the humanness of the process

Your challenge this week is to look at your challenges and your attitude about them. Where are you and how can you shift it to a more positive space?

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Have a great 2 weeks, until we meet again.