The Art of Resilience: Calm Minds, Compassionate Hearts, and the Wisdom of Mistakes

This week has been freezing in the New York of Belgium. My feet and all other ligaments literally lost touch with their source of heating. Even though I wanted to complain, I felt guilty and grateful at the same time.

Guilty because so many people and kids are sleeping outside in harsh weather conditions, in thin tents with no shoes or socks.

Appreciative because, even if I had spent quite some hours out in the freezing cold, I got home to a warm radiator.

I know we probably should not do this to our own offspring, but whenever my son started to complain about the weather, I reminded him how lucky he is to be clothed and to sleep in warm bed sheets. Some days he showed his angelic side; other days, it was as if I was talking to a brick wall.

We both are quite stubborn, he unfortunately more than me. It is as if the universe gave me a taste of my own medicine from my time growing up.

On the agenda for last week was a day in the communal swimming pool, something I avoided for as long as I could. I am more a woman of the sea, not of swimming pools with God knows what and who has been in there.

But a promise is a promise, and no matter how much I tried to get away from going to the swimming pool, my son is a master emotional manipulator.

As an obedient mother, I prepared our backpack, the swimming clothes, made sure I looked bathing suit proof and not to scare any kids or adults alike, and off we went!

It was so cold we took the bus this time, as normally we walk. We got off a few stops later.

As I was sharing anecdotes from his childhood, approaching the swimming pool entrance, I noticed he did not have his school backpack.

Panic in my eyes and in his, we realized that the bag was on the bus, driving around somewhere in the New York of Belgium.

"F from Foxtrot" was the first thing that came to mind!

A few years ago, I would have panicked and perhaps taken out my frustration on him. Knowing my son, he would have doubled down on the frustration, and we would have made for quite an epic family quarrel in public.

Instead, I asked him to stay silent for the next few minutes to let me think and focus on what to do next. I called the home base of the Brussels buses company and the guy informed me that they have no contact with the drivers and there is nothing he can do.

I don't take no for an answer and kindly asked him to help us as we had just left the bus 10 minutes ago.

Kindness is key here because I needed him more than he needed me.

The last thing you want to do is to piss off the one person that can help you in that moment.

He checked the driver's schedule and said he would come back around at the same place we dropped off, but at the bus stop across the street, in one hour and a half.

I loved how he emphasized "across the street" because he assumed that my level of intellect was on the lower side, seen as we left my son's school's essence on the bus!

I informed my son that we were no longer going swimming and we would wait for the bus to come back around.

Of course, for my son, it was the end of the world and tears started rolling off his eyes in large quantities. He started to talk down to himself and blamed himself, and that's not easy to manage when kids are in a stress response.

But staying calm is the only way that helps me calm him down. Because at the end of the day, they have to feel the emotions of what they think is the end of the world, while parents hold space for them, only to realize when they are calm again, that life is bigger than the communal swimming pool of the New York of Belgium.

Two hours later in the freezing cold, having stopped every bus asking them for my son's school bag, we could not move our feet. He wanted to give up, but something in me kept flashing the license plate in my mind which I happened to remember.

And sure enough, the bus with the license plate I remembered stopped, and he had his schoolbag!

We both were relieved, he found meaning and purpose in his life again as soon as I bought us some warm chicken legs to eat and warm our internal heating system again.

There are several lessons to draw from this experience which I would like to share with you today.

Lessons you don't necessarily learn in school or in self-help books.

As parents, as human beings, we do get emotionally triggered for various reasons.

Sometimes it is because we value something or someone so much that we act from a place of emotion, not reason.

Other times it is because we have not addressed, felt, and processed our past intense negative emotions. So they always pop up when we feel pressured, cornered, or panicked.

That was my case for several years. I had an unhealthy relationship with the emotion of anger as I grew up learning to suppress it. Whenever it became too much, the anger erupted in front of those I loved the most. Because it felt safe to do so.

Or emotions of feeling invisible and not having our emotional needs met. Those emotions also erupt often at the wrong time with the people who make us feel the safest.

The inner work I did on healing these emotions has led to a sense of inner peace, most of the time. I still get triggered, but not in the same way I used to. Not with the same intensity as in the past.

Our swimming pool adventure reminded me of how I used to react in the past, and how different it is now.

More importantly, it taught my son the following three most important lessons when we feel panicked, stressed, or cornered in any life situation, which I would love to share with you.

Calm down your mind so you can respond, not react.

When we act from a place of calmness and presence, our brain often knows what to do. This concept is eloquently explained in the bestselling book "Psycho-Cybernetics" by Maxwell Maltz, MD, PhD. He details how, when we are relaxed and present in the moment, our brain is wired to help us improvise and choose the right course of action. Conversely, if we are stressed and overwhelmed with negative emotions, our clarity and decision-making abilities are significantly hampered. The stress we feel can make our response option worse than when we breath, calm down our mind and move back to our rational decision making process in the prefrontal cortex. Being present in the moment, allows you to see the situation as it is without emotional clutter or bias, which brings you the clarity and confidence you need to move forward with inner strength.

The other person feels bad enough as it is.

In our situation, my son was already quite hard on himself. Attempting to make him feel worse would have been emotionally damaging to his self-esteem. Instead of blaming him, we both accepted the consequences of our actions: no swimming in the pool and two hours in the freezing cold. These experiences are not fun, but we have a choice on where we place our focus. If we had placed our focus on all the negative facets of our experience, we would have felt much worse, more stress and create more therapy material. But when we choose to place our focus on what is going well, and not take ourselves too seriously, the negative emotions are less intense. The humour in this situation even helped us feel positive emotions whenever we forgot that our feet were frozen!

It's okay to make mistakes; no one is perfect.

Everyone makes mistakes: parents, kids, everyone. The essence of life is to learn from these mistakes. Biologically, our brains need to make mistakes to recalibrate and find different response options, understanding that the previous choice led to an error. Emotionally, making a mistake can be painful, akin to physical pain.

However, we don't have to turn this emotional pain into prolonged suffering by dwelling on the mistake longer than necessary.

By accepting what happened and learning from it, we can move forward. This transforms the experience into wisdom rather than a painful memory.

I hope those who resonated with this week's reflections found value in our little adventure. A swimming pool trip is still on the agenda, but now I have more time to mentally and physically prepare!

Love, Nadja ?? ?? ??