Emotional Resilience: The Most Essential Skill of the Decade
What does it mean to be a human being? What does this experience include? How do we engage in the fullness, in the at times unbearable intensity of this experience with skill, with passion, compassion and meaning? How do we navigate this fast-paced, information-overloaded, ever-more-demanding world of ours still connected to sense of heart and human-ness?
We are interesting creatures, we humans, hyper-aware of the external, very ready to dedicate our time, energy and resources to the study and arrangement of our outer worlds… and yet strangely, so often we are so very uneducated, unaware, ill-equipped, inept when it comes to navigating the inner experiences and drives that make up our experience.
But this isn’t totally our fault, were you taught this anywhere in your upbringing? Until I actively sought it out, I certainly was not. We aren’t taught to listen inwards nor how to respect, honour and respond skillfully to the messy, intense, at times utterly brutal inner world. We’re taught to shut off, or to ignore, or to over-indulge.
We’re taught that happy is right, positive is right, pleasant is right, functional is right. And while there is a certain wisdom to this, it is far from sufficient as a guiding principle to navigate skillfully forward when it comes to emotion.
What about those moments we feel dark and down, heavy, hopeless, lost, anxious, fearful, lonely? Why do we feel this way?
What do we do with these overwhelming messages? How do we get back to a place of positive functioning, not as a shallow veneer of coping but as a genuinely joyful and energized way of being? How do we find true emotional resilience in the face of emotional difficulty and an overwhelming world?
Something important to understand is that feelings are not just meaningless, random suffering. At the core of every painful state of being lies a deeper truth, lies a door to a more expanded understanding of what it means to be a human, lies the seed for your ability to process and move through these difficulties and get back to a place of joy and engagement.
The type of learning this requires however isn’t the type of learning you can get from words or ideas alone though. When fully embodied, it is the type of learning that affects and broadens your reality. It connects you to a deeper sense of aliveness and causes beauty to emerge around you. What it is not, is a veneer of polished, shallow ’prettiness’. Instead it offers a raw, real experience of this exquisite, precious, wondrous experience known as being alive.
Additionally, this ability, to process emotion, is a skill. A skill that most of us aren’t even aware is a possibility. A skill that takes education, practice and application, but thank frickin’ God, that is all it takes. And it is this skill, of emotional processing that supports true emotional resilience.
There are a number of facets to developing emotional resilience, however at the very core of this skill is the ability to tolerate and be present to discomfort - at times extremely intense discomfort. This isn’t necessarily the discomfort of physical hardship - though it could be very physically unpleasant - it is the discomfort of feeling vulnerable, broken, utterly sorrowful, of feeling like you are wrong or annihilated.
At this point, we also need to acknowledge that there is very little we won’t do to avoid feeling these feelings. They are that unpleasant and uncomfortable to feel. The beauty however is that as we learn to avoid the discomfort less, we start to understand that the avoidance itself makes everything worse. When we can at least begin to lighten or let go of our habit of avoiding unpleasantness, the whole process gets easier.
When we can face the discomfort and be fully present to the sensation or feeling - no matter how uncomfortable - it will naturally transform. It is when we avoid feeling the intensity that things get stuck. What we have to do is learn how to be present, how to lean into the discomfort. This is the core of emotional resilience. I don’t know about you - but in my mind I cannot think of a more important skill to develop then this one.
To learn how to be present and develop the resources you need to be able to face intense feeling, I’ve named three sub-skills - or what I call ‘Foundations of Emotional Resilience’ - that need to be developed.
Without these foundations as resources, we can very easily end up circling in our difficulty, not making any headway into a better state of being. We end up subtly (or not so subtlety) avoiding the discomfort of the unpleasant feeling lurking underneath, avoiding experiencing its unpleasantness fully and therefore unable to move into a different state. Not only is this uncomfortable, it drains our energy and focus - which then makes us even less capable to face the centre of our discomfort and constructively transmute the energy it is holding hostage.
If you’re curious about what these foundations are - click here to read more.
Out in the world of our day-to-day lives, our lack of skill at meeting discomfort - our lack of emotional resilience - shows up as anxiety, irritation, passive aggressive conversations, inertia. It shows up as resentments against that person who didn’t do what we wanted them to, unproductive meetings and dialogues that we are half present for and a thousand other unpleasant, un-constructive situations.
What difference would it make for your team or workplace if you and they had the information, support and structure to become truly emotionally resilient? How much less energy would get wasted on conflict, upset, anger, anxiety and frustration? How much more FUN do you think your staff could have? What would you be able to achieve together?
…why don’t we find out?!
Drop me a quick message or click here to schedule a quick 20 min call to find out what increasing the emotional resilience of your leaders, your teams, your workplace would have on your enterprise.
Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash