Finding Invictus Within

My favourite superhero happens to be Superman. Ask me why.

As the shy and unsure Clark Kent, he gives the impression of being a complete walkover. Yet, every time he sees a crisis or difficult situation unfold, he steps into that telephone booth and emerges totally transformed and ready to take on the world. As if that booth is a crucible of fire that tempers him for the next challenge.

Over the years I’ve come to see Superman as a powerful and heroic metaphor for the unfathomable power that lies within each one of us to rise to a challenge. Most of us appear to be ordinary human beings from the outside but are so much more from within. 

And this brings me to a question that has always fascinated me - What are you made of? 

Let me share…

A personal story 

More than 2 decades ago I was stuck in a job that was making me miserable. I was a poor fit in the company that I worked for. The boss was driving me up the wall. The hours were long, and appreciation was, well, non-existent. Getting through each day was a thankless experience. It was taking a heavy toll on my physical and emotional wellbeing.

I had responsibilities. Though I was desperate to move on, throwing in the towel was out of the question. But I kept trying for new opportunities. Finally, there was a ray of hope when I got selected by a decent organization. Cut to a couple of years, I was career-wise born again, doing stuff that I loved to do, growing personally and professionally every day. That period of time turned out to be an inflection point in my career.

In hindsight, I took away many positive lessons from that ‘miserable’ phase of my life. The biggest one was, when you hang in there in a desperate and seemingly hopeless situation, something good is around the corner. Your most difficult times are often your most transformational. They can take you down a path that leads to new and fulfilling opportunities.

In the current circumstances triggered by the global pandemic, many of us are faced with possibly the most difficult and testing time of our lives. What can we do to break through to the other side stronger and wiser than before? 

Here are a few thoughts to chew on.  

Develop coping strategies

Manage your emotions:

If you are under intense pressure in the current situation due to a job loss, salary cut, your business being disrupted, or your career being derailed, it’s natural to feel a myriad range of emotions – helplessness, sadness, deep anxiety, anger, fear and what not. These emotions can be quite overwhelming for even the most resilient of individuals. It can be akin to the grief that one feels as a consequence of a great loss in their life.

What to do? Rather than trying to bottle up your emotions, a constructive way to manage them is to redirect and channelize them into activities that help you unwind and process those emotions. It could be talking to your loved ones, taking long walks, regularly playing a game, exercising, doing yoga, meditating, writing a blog, cooking, listening to your favourite music, reading all those books that you bought but never read, and so much more. Each to their own.

The important thing is to stay positively engaged and avoid negativity and that means, avoiding negative people and negative self-talk. Constantly looking at negative news will also subconsciously reinforce your negative thought patterns. Don’t dig a hole for yourself and jump into it. Instead, tap into people and resources that will nourish you with positive thoughts and motivation as well as provide you with a realistic perspective.

Live a day at a time but work on a future plan:

In times when the future is quite ambiguous it’s wise to focus on the here and now, in other words live one day at a time. This approach can help you gain some sense of control when the external circumstances are pretty much beyond your control.

Follow a day plan for the weekdays with manageable goals for each day. Concurrently, try and work on a future plan that is pragmatic and focused on important priorities such as your career, business, personal finances, children’s education and whatever else is of crucial importance to you and your family’s future.

Learn something new:

Learning something new can be an immensely rewarding experience. In the here and now, learning can be immersive and help you stay in a positive mental and emotional zone. So be curious, find new things to learn and jump right in. It’s an amazing way to cope with stress and gain useful knowledge or skills at the same time. Targeted learning goals during your downtime can also contribute significantly to your readiness for future opportunities. 

Seek help, offer help:

As the entire world reels under the impact of the pandemic, it is but natural that people will need some help or the other. There is no shame in asking for someone’s wise counsel, facilitating a connection or forwarding a resume and so on. Also, do not hesitate to seek professional help if you feel constantly under the dark clouds.

This is also the time to offer help in any way you can. Lend your support to a senior citizen, a small business, an NGO and whoever else you can in modest ways. It’s good karma and will keep your spirits high. You often end up building new relationships that become reciprocal support systems for you. 

Zoom out to search for ‘Meaning’ 

You may be wondering what this means. No, it’s not some nonsensical philosophy or formula. 

Almost all critical events in our life can be seen and interpreted through the lens of ‘Meaning’. Once you have delved deep into your condition it could lead to deep insights on your mental and emotional state, future intentions and course of action.

You could start by asking yourself…

Why am I going through this struggle, this terribly difficult time?

What deeper messages am I getting from this experience?

How should I interpret these messages to lend them meaning and help me move forward?

Are there any key insights and learnings for me that would hold me in good stead in future?

What needs to change for me to survive and grow from here?

Taking a simple example, imagine you are dealing with a significant salary cut and now all of a sudden you are under financial pressure. Why are you faced with this situation?

 Have you not planned at all for contingencies? Are you over-leveraged and have multiple liabilities to pay off? Do you love to live the high life? Are you a compulsive shopper or spender?

What’s the deeper message? Am I leading a life that is beyond my means or has no plan at all? Is it because of vanity, insecurity, hedonism, competition with my peers, a need to show off how good I am? Do I want to live the rest of my life this way? Is it worth it? What needs to change for a better future for me, for my family? What decisions and actions can get me there? 

The search for meaning is a powerful transformative force that can bring stupendous positive changes to our life and uplift us to new ways of thinking, doing and living. It is a process that helps renew hope, build purpose and develop resilience inside-out. Once you connect the dots, things often start to fall in place and move you in the right direction.

Spend enough time in reflecting on the meaning of what you’re going through. The insights can be life changing.

Make choices, Weigh implications, Take decisions

Once you are in a good space with your coping strategies and have spent enough time trying to understand the deeper messages and insights from your current situation, it is time to make some hard or soft choices, depending on your situation. This will demand a degree of decisiveness on your part and some decisions can be tough. You may still need to take them.

Factor in the risk and reward equation for the choices you make. These are best done with enough thought and reflection, not as knee jerk reactions and whims of fancy. Seek advice from people that you trust. Give enough thought to the short-term and long-term implications of each choice and decision.

If your decisions involve financial aspects, then do the numbers carefully. Given how long the current situation may last, it’s probably not a good idea to go out on a limb with your finances. At the same time, you may need to take some calculated risks and make some investments to move forward in a new direction. Aim to strike the right balance. 

Press reboot

Reboot is a symbolic start for the next phase of your life, career, business, relationships and whatever else that requires you to let go of the past and move forward to the next chapter of your life.

Pressing the reboot button in your life means you have accepted first and foremost that the future will no longer be similar in certain aspects to your present or past. You are then mentally and emotionally ready to move in a new direction. Once you have reached this personal space, the only way forward is to take actions that feed into the new direction and give it momentum. The thinking and feeling must now move into doing.

Reboots are obviously not easy. Setbacks, disappointments and hurdles are a part of the reboot experience. It requires patience, persistence, personal courage and deep reserves of intrinsic motivation to move forward to a new territory that may be unfamiliar for us. Once you have the momentum, it may take some time, but the results will start to appear. Hang in there, reach deep within and don’t throw in the towel too soon. In hindsight you might thank life for throwing you the challenge. 

For some inspiration, I’ll leave you with the last few lines of a favourite poem, Invictus by William Ernest Henley. 

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,

I am the captain of my soul.