How Absorbent Are Your Shocks?

POOR SHOCKS
Recently I said goodbye to my Camry.  In many ways, it’s a great car but the back shocks are shot.  For what the car is worth we weren’t prepared to put the kind of money in to it that it would take to fix the shocks and the struts.

With the shocks not working well, it means that the riding experience feels more like riding in a boat on wavy water than driving in a car!  Every little bump and every pothole sends the car into serious ricocheting motion.  For the first few moments in the car I find this quite hilarious.  Then it gets very annoying.

Beyond the obvious annoyance level, this mechanical problem limits the uses of the car.  You have to be careful on the curves, i.e., slow down more than you would need to in a car with good shocks. We don’t want to take the car any distance.  It is okay for getting around town, on the roads we know and at reasonable speeds.  

The same is true in life when our resiliency tools are not working well.  We may still be getting through life but we live with some impairment.  The ride is not as smooth as it could be.  It is harder to get back on track after the bumps.  Our efficiency and recovery time are reduced, with significant implications sometimes.

I like starting with basic definitions.  Here is the entry from Wikipedia:
resilience [rɪˈzɪlɪəns]n
1. Also called resiliency the state or quality of being resilient
2. (Life Sciences & Allied Applications / Environmental Science) Ecology the ability of an ecosystem to return to its original state after being disturbed
3. (Physics / General Physics) Physics the amount of potential energy stored in an elastic material when deformed
Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003
ThesaurusLegend:  Synonyms Related Words Antonyms
Noun    1.    resilience - the physical property of a material that can return to its original shape or position after deformation that does not exceed its elastic limit
resiliency
elasticity, snap - the tendency of a body to return to its original shape after it has been stretched or compressed; "the waistband had lost its snap"
    2.    resilience - an occurrence of rebounding or springing back
resiliency
backlash, rebound, recoil, repercussion - a movement back from an impact

So, what is it that lets some people hit small bumps and return to normal so quickly?  Why do others get sent reeling from each and every bump on life’s road?

What is it that allows some people to live through horrific childhoods and go on to be highly productive, successful and well adjusted people?  How come siblings from the same dysfunctional family can grow up to be so different from each other – one sibling off to jail, one a lawyer, another living with severe addictions?

Is it personality differences?  Intelligence? How about birth order? Perhaps it is how they were treated in the family unit.  Maybe a special teacher or neighbour made a difference.
All of those things may indeed play a role and have an impact.  However, now as an adult, how much of that can you control or change? Not very much!

This book does not delve in to the “whys” of varying levels of resiliency.  Although I personally find that topic very interesting it is a much longer road to giving you anything useful for today.  As a coach I tend to steer away from the “why” question.  I find the question “What can I do differently that will make a difference?” much more helpful.
This book is about the really practical things you can do, now, to increase your resilience. ‘Personal Capacity Building’ is another term for this, a term I like a lot.
Even if you are one of those people that others look at as “strong” and able to just keep going, you also have times when it’s really hard to ‘suck it up’ and keep going.  Maybe right now is one of those times in your life.  

In general, I am one of those people that others see as very resilient.  People are often surprised to hear what I am or have gone through because I keep on functioning at a very productive level (generally).   I write this having recently come out of a very hard and long season.  Many times over the past few years  I didn’t feel resilient.  There were many occasions when what I felt like doing was hibernating in a secluded cabin for three or four months.  

Resilience is not about never getting knocked down.  It is about having skills and tools to get back up and the ability to get back up quicker.

It is my firm belief that our ability to bounce back can either be inherited (partly genetic, partly learned in our family) or acquired.  However, even those people who seem to get their resilience naturally are doing things in certain ways that keep them resilient.  

Resiliency is not about having an easy life.  It is about having tools for when it isn’t.  What are the habits resilient people have?  How do they think?  What have they learned along the way that has made them or kept them so resilient?
Interestingly, we could take some very resilient people and teach them some new bad habits and really reduce their ability to bounce back.  Of course we are not going to do that.  I mention it because our ability to be resilient is a direct result of how we think and what we do.  

As a coach it is my job and my pleasure to see the strengths in my client and help my client to see them and use them in their life.  Those of you, like me, who did not grow up in a palace, have already learned some useful skills already for coping with hard stuff and keeping going.  My hope in writing this book is simply to add some more tools to your toolbox.

We all have also learned and practiced some behaviours and thought patterns that take away from our ability to move forward successfully in life.  Those patterns shut us down, cause us to experience more stress, less happiness, feelings of failure, depression, burn-out, etc.  Let’s live a life focused on learning some new habits that bring richness and fullness to our lives!

Over the past few years I have had many friends tell me that I need to write a book.  I think that when you are in your own story, living your own life, it doesn’t feel like “a story” for others.  It just feels like life.  However, as a coach and leadership trainer I believe in the power of story.  To quote cognitive scientist Roger C. Shank, we are built for story.  “Humans are not ideally set up to understand logic; they are ideally set up to understand stories.”  We respond to real people, real life, is what we are built to respond to.  This is some of my story and some story from people in my life.  I hope it encourages your story!

FOCUS OF THIS BOOK
I love those books that you just can’t put down, don’t you?  This is not one of those books!  It is meant to have little nuggets and lots of thought-provoking questions.  In fact each chapter ends with questions for you to ponder and answer, followed by a “SHOCK Improvement Action Plan”.
My hope is that you put this book down often to do some thinking, to set a new goal, to do something for your resilience!  I also hope that you pick it back up often to keep working on your capacity building!
In fact, I would love