To start off, I like to reflect a little on resilience and how to build it.
The first thing I need to acknowledge is that life is hard, often seemingly unfair and many of us experience times of hardship and mental struggle. However relative the circumstances are, people’s struggles are real and I hope this message may in some way help.
Years ago, I suffered clinical depression and was medicated for it. This went on for a very long time and I can only say that it was terrible being that disconnected from my environment, family and friends. However, none of the medication, support and counseling actually cured or changed it, for me, I had to realise that I myself needed to change my thinking. I realised that ultimately, I was responsible for my own mind and the only one that could actually make real changes to my thinking and thus the way I approached and experienced life. There was – and is – no magic pill.
I think that is an important lesson to learn for all of us. That ultimately you are the only one in charge of your own mind and life. As parents we know that our children will go through hardship and come across experiences and opinions of others that are uncomfortable. We ourselves find out we are not so perfect and need to come to terms with the need to improve and shed some terrible and destructive habits. No person is exempt from that!
Therefore the best preparation is for individuals to be, while growing up, progressively exposed to the world and learn to stand up for themselves. Because sheltering our children from themselves and reality, will not allow them to learn the mental tools to become resilient, useful and dependable human beings capable of having their own rational will or purposeful intent. Exposure and practise is the only mechanism to build resilience and avoid a permanent state of victim-hood.
Let me also give you, from my perspective, and at risk of overly simplifying things somewhat, a great lesson I have learnt through my life experience. This is particularly aimed at those who are suffering states of anxiety or depression:
First is that you do have a choice even though it’s really hard now or seems impossible or improbable to grasp and accept. As said before, only – and I mean only – you can determine what thoughts you accept and how you want to live your life. I understand the difficulties, but that is the harsh reality I found out for myself. We are not our thoughts and I will say a little more on that in a minute.
The second is that dwelling on the past can really cause anger and depression, while fretting about what not yet is is definitively unhelpful and often creates states of anxiety.
About the past
The immediate conclusion of logic of course, is to realise that there is no way you can change the past. No matter how much you wish it to have been different, you’re going have to accept it!
And that acceptance needs to come in two ways I believe:
- There’s no way you can hop into a Tardis and travel back in time – rescuing yourself from whatever it is that is keeping you trapped in your emotional or mental prison.
- And if you’re not happy where you are at, you can – and should – make choices to change that feeling going forward, but if your happy where you are now then you also – in truth – really need to accept the past (not that that is a choice), because it has shaped the path to your current situation.
It will change the mental perception where you find yourself today.
Often this kind of thinking is tied with blaming, judging or criticising others. It is actually making you feel depressed, helpless and defeated. It will always end up in defeat, because there is no way to change and conquer the past so to speak. And neither can you actually change another person.
So if you believe certain things about what other people think about you or how their actions and intentions have affected you, whether true or not true, you need to let that go too.
About the future
If you look at the future – these things that haven’t happened yet and may never ever actually happen either – you need to realise that nothing is ironclad and none of us control reality to make the future certain. The more you spent mental time there, you can really become anxious and reduce your ability to actually engage in the present and enjoy the moment.
You are setting yourself up for disappointment too, if things ultimately do not work out as you had planned. Again, this fretting is unhelpful and will always cause unnecessary angst. You shouldn’t worry, feel threatened or be anxious about things you can’t control, because that is seriously unhelpful. In fact, it is destructive and nothing good can ever come out of that sort of thinking. Only productive positive change can help.
You can’t make any positive change or be useful in the past or future, you can only be useful now. Its only when you are present in the moment – right now – that you are able to be immersed in being, able to relax and be content. This, of course, is easier said than done, but recognising the truth of it is the first step.
Resilience comes only through practise
If you have a problem with your emotions and your thoughts you need to learn how to deal with them. You must cast off the unwanted thoughts, such as depression, self-aggrandisement, egotism, et cetera, in order to have control over your mind. The only way healing from mental anguish comes about, is by taking responsibility and exerting control over your mind. Nobody else is able to do it for you.
When you have control, you have a choice of practically engaging with the emotions you take on, accept and dwell on, in that sense then you do have the actual power to choose. This leads to one very helpful realisation and truth that I can offer to you: YOU ARE NOT YOUR THOUGHTS.
However hard that may seem, thoughts aren’t physical and they aren’t part of you unless you make them so. The same goes with feelings. Thoughts and feelings come and go, which make it obvious that they are not you, so allow me to offer you the following propositions:
- We are not our thoughts and feelings, but these flow into us. We don’t have conscious control of these coming in – they are not part of us. Emanuel Swedenborg – a 17th century philosopher – calls this influx.
- We can, and must, however, reflect on these thoughts and feelings and decide which thoughts and affections to hold on to and own and which to reject, because the thoughts and affections underpin our behaviour, our deeds and words and so shape our character.
So many people seem to identify with their feelings and emotions as if these make them who they are. Well doing so puts you immediately into a victim state – being at the mercy of the thoughts and feelings flowing in. How can you have any freedom and peace of mind, when you are held ransom to your thoughts and feelings – being unable to determine your own course of action? I want to urge you against such thinking, because that is where we end up either depressed or anxious or both.
Those who don’t choose to own or reject their feelings and emotional responses or are never forced to, cure within themselves a lack of resilience and an inability to control themselves. This then leads to them expecting that everybody else must be controlled. The weird thing is, people believe this and cannot see the illogical nature that not everybody can work around everybody unless we become homogenous automatons.
We cannot expect the world to acknowledge and accept our way of life and the way we behave indiscriminately, because we ourselves are out of control and order. I have noticed that those who believe such, also see a rejection of those feelings and attitudes as a rejection of them as a person – their personhood itself. Which is a very unhealthy way to think.
Another way to express it is to say that if you’re not in control of your feelings that you become a kind of victim. A victim (or perhaps better: slave) of your thoughts, which immediately flows to not having any control over any impulses of your actions, because your emotions and your feelings, the ones you choose to accept, engage with, are the ones that drive the value behind your action and its physical response.
That’s a really dangerous place to be in and in terms of rationality, turns you into some kind of animalistic or inhuman state. You are removing the sapient element from the homo sapiens. Just acting on our impulse, removes our rationality and is ultimately dehumanising. We can’t blame anybody else but ourselves, because that is where we find the control centre of our mental state.
I may also, just make a brief side note here that perfectionism and being too demanding of yourself is also quite unhealthy and unrealistic. Such idealistic thinking sets your mind up to fail because such approach is ever incremental and places us into thinking it is never good enough. I can attest to this too from personal experience.
“Whoever comes to Me, and hears My sayings and does them, I will show you whom he is like: He is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently against that house, and could not shake it, for it was founded on the rock. But he who heard and did nothing is like a man who built a house on the earth without a foundation, against which the stream beat vehemently; and immediately it fell. And the ruin of that house was great.” (Luke 6:46-49)
Blessings and Peace,
Cor
NB: this article is based on the author’s 2018 script used for a YouTube video recording (now deleted)
