Venture Into Resilience

The best way to thrive is the most ancient… and the most neglected

Anyone who wants to increase their resilience has surely read “Feel the fear, but do it anyway”. This is catchy and inspiring, but not very helpful. Why? Its negative first step is clear and resonant (though not appealing), then the positive follow-up is a) vague, b) makes us responsible for knowing what to do, and c) doesn’t offer an attractive alternative.

Try this innovative, actionable, appealing approach: “Embrace the adventure.” Adventurers are supremely resilient and resourceful because they expect obstacles and changes and know they have the deep strengths needed to overcome, learn from, and even enjoy them. They transform the unexpected from sand in the gears into a secret sauce.

I have lived thousands of varied adventures during my 60 years of asking “Why the hell not?” across five continents. I build some kind of adventure into every single day and have learned from seeing hundreds of other adventures in action. All this has taught me lessons I can offer to growth-minded people in every context.

Want to leap into every day, every challenge with energy and impact? Venture.

For an adventurer, reaching any destination… gaining any result… is important. Much more meaningful is the storyline of experiences that got them to that destination.

Weak people moan about problems; strong people chuckle about problems later; adventurers chuckle about problems as they arise, and are cheerfully solving them.

What could be more resilient than that?

How Deep is Your Resilience?

Of course, adventurers aren’t only on the Mongolian steppes or the backstreets of Calcutta. Anyone who resiliently deals with unpredictable, stressful events-- turning them into opportunities and success engines—has learned the rare, precious power of venturing. They know how to treat today’s path into the future as a stimulating, satisfying expedition in itself.

It might raise your eyebrows to learn that adventure and resilience are boiling in every cell of your body. Even wilder, the energy factory of each cell, mitochondria, originated from adventurous bacteria that started to merge with less-active cells about 1.5 billion years ago (search for “Origins of mitochondria”!). This energy lets our bodies explore, adapt, energize, problem-solve, impact, heal, and learn, and act. Every one of the 28 – 36 trillion cells in your body, and every tissue they form, is a resilient adventurer, ready to rock ‘n’ roll.

Our bodies are constantly under attack from external threats like viruses or injury, and internal threats such as cancer. We don’t simply HAVE an immune system—we ARE bundles of super-sophisticated, built-in immune capacities, packed into our bodies with a brain on top like a cherry. We have about twice as much protective lymph fluid than blood! The goal of each is to explore and survive. Our immune system makes Star Wars look like a sandbox!

Even beyond immunity, our bodies are resilience workhorses. Take the process called “hormesis”—it’s how our bodies turn stresses into strengths. This happens during exercise, fasting, hard thinking, etc. Neuroplasticity, or the brain’s life-long adaptive learning, is another awe-inspiring example of onboard resilience. We don’t grow when life is easy—we grow when we respond constructively to the tough stuff. Luckily, we’re piled high with resources to push past surviving to thriving. ?

Such qualities of physical resilience, against all odds, help us survive and lead meaningful lives. They've been keeping us alive over millennia of evolutionary twists and turns, building features that keep our species viable and robust despite—and thanks to-- countless threats.

Birthright resilience isn’t only physical. Each of us also has a deep team of instinctive, spiritual, symbol-generating, intellectual, and social strengths. They don’t just shield us from threats… they also help us succeed by benefitting and learning from them.

Resilience Busters

So why does resilience seem like an impossible dream to so many people? Very simply, because we’re instructed to psych ourselves out. Every child is a playground of resilience. As a child, you were hungry for adventure, growth and problem-solving. Then you were carried away in a river of “That’s too dangerous!” and “You can’t do that!”

Very simply, every one of us was born to be resilient.

Nobody needs to develop resilience. Only learn to release what they already have in spades. Oh, and clubs, hearts, and diamonds.

Our cascade of strengths aren’t all-powerful, but neither is any alternative solution to assaults and stresses.

The first priority is to recognize our inbuilt resilience, and reverse the pressure of the past century to ignore most of the capacities that Mother Nature spent millions of years developing and honing.

Our psychological “resilience metabolism” parallels our physical metabolism and strengths. Each of us is a pulsating showcase of both strengths.

Psychological resilience, like physical resilience, does more than protect us from threats. It lets us respond emotionally to stressors, while providing and increasing the flexible inner strength needed to use what's happening for effective responses and lifelong growth.

You already know how to improve your physical resilience: eat healthy food, exercise, have nourishing relationships, reduce chronic stress, breathe fresh air. In the same way, why not leverage your psychological resilience to ensure your success?

Imagine you’re in the middle of an aggressive, bullying phone call. Tempted to assert control by hanging up or arguing? But blaming and hating the attacker, or feeling defensive, prevents resilience because these make you weaker, not stronger. Instead, become centered by processing your emotions and thoughts. Examine the other person’s motivations (whether you agree or not), accept responsibility for your part in it, then use psychological hormesis to increase resilience and prevent future repetitions.

This will make you more proactive than reactive (it will do wonders for your blood pressure, too!). Make a game out of being the cheerful nightmare of bullies and manipulators: push them off-balance, confuse, and maybe prank them. Resilience isn’t just beneficial—it can be a blast! Just ask an adventurer…

Anyone can tap into and build their resilience. It's not just worth the effort— our lives and growth depend on it. The easiest way to do this is by venturing, which includes turning problems into solutions.

How can we do that? I’m so glad you asked!

The Venturing Model

To return to the first paragraph’s liberating invitation, “Embrace the adventure.” I can’t recall a single activity or adventure that turned out much like what I planned on. Many were far better than I hoped for; venturing involves being alert to and flexibly making the best of unexpected opportunities. Some were disasters that left me with scars but also valuable lessons and memorable, often humorous, stories. But most have been moderate or dramatic departures from the original idea. Nothing is more satisfying than achieving better results than expected, because this lets you celebrate both your achievement and also your inner Indiana Jones.

True control doesn’t mean trying to impose your initial expectations onto a usually unaccommodating world. Under the old-school idea of success-as-control notion, every surprise is a failure or diversion. It's much better to have the flexibility, resources and, yes, resilience to identify clear but relaxed goals and see success as a cumulative, unfolding, intriguing, creative process. The result, virtually always more positive than we could imagine, rewards us on many levels.

A major problem with choosing dominance over venturing is that this shuts down our senses and imaginations. Insisting on a pre-ordained course of action makes it impossible to explore our warehouse of options, opportunities, and solutions. We always respond best when we are mindful, open, and have “immanent awareness” – immersing ourselves right now in the richness of obstacles, instead of hiding or retreating from them. ?This comes naturally when every situation is an adventure, not a challenge.

Our logical, analytical, verbal mind is powerful, but far too limited to solve every problem. We each have a “driveset”, or workshop of motivators, that overwhelmingly powers our actions. Instinct, intuition, and creativity give us the resilience that taps fully into these deep strengths.

Another essential part of productive venturing is unleashing and celebrating the power of play. Regular playfulness is effective, and also stress-busting and reinforcing. Play ends procrastination because it lets us relish the next activity and adventure. Nobody is more resilient than someone who’s playful.

I’ll briefly mention a further aspect of venturing that deserves (and will soon receive) its own complete exploration. Society atomizes us—isolating and disjointing one human from the other. Venturing, despite the Hollywood images, is supremely social and collaborative. Look for and explore new social opportunities. Just think of the incredible strength of those protecting family and friends. The surest sign of a true leader is someone who encourages and celebrates the adventures of others. And, of course, social connection is recognized as an essential part of resilience.

Venture into resilience by accepting that you have a palette of qualities and strengths that, if limited, is ancient and spectacular. Then, see your decisions and actions not as dominance but as a collaboration with a world that’s much richer and more amazing than any individual can be. Listen to the world, events, and others. Actively invite at least three solutions or next steps, then choose the best—trusting your intuition as a wise guide.

Resilience Recipe

Here are some venturing ways to re-discover your resilience.

First, recognize that we are physically and mentally equipped to not only survive but strengthen from stress.? I know many resilient people with terrible diseases but see them as blessings because of the growth they lead to. Any doctor will tell you that these are the survivors and success-stories.

Second, accept that life is constant change, from the cellular to the spiritual. Everything we do, experience, say and learn slightly rewires our bodies and minds. Options for change are always much more varied and numerous than we suspect. As resilience makes us ?more confident, we are ready to grow.

Third, tap into those many inner strengths that few people fully use or even recognize— our treasury of experiences, wisdom, intelligence, and resources. Anyone who accepts these can be centered and make their locus of control much more internal. We are all far stronger and tougher than we realize… unfortunately, we’re taught to depend on external resources and encouraged to feel self-pity and “learned helplessness.” ?

The fourth step is seeing every experience as an opportunity to learn and change. Of course, use your logical mind to break down threats into their elements.? But even more, use your positive emotions, intuition, creativity, wisdom, and sense of purpose to find resilience that helps you go beyond survival to success. Feel free to contact me for free sheets on how to release the deeper strengths that society tries to suppress.

These will strengthen your resilience metabolism. Recall the earlier example of a bullying phone call: decide to use it to become stronger…. “pre-experience” (don’t just visualize) a call when you are calm, effective, and flexible. ?Examine what can be changed in the other person, your relationship, the situation, your qualities, and your responses. Learn all you can to dramatically improve a similar future encounter.

This process will help you deal positively with whatever life throws at you, pick it up and find a satisfying way to use it as a resource. You’ll build from strength to strength… adventurously!

I hope you enjoyed this mini-adventure, and look out for future Newsletter posts. I’ll gladly send a free PDF of my related book “The Power of Adaptive Goalsetting” to every subscriber. Please consider reposting this to someone you know who could use an armory of resilience.

To learn more or chat personally, and ask about my “Venturingpowered” programs, please respond here and contact me at [email protected].

If you contact me, you won't need resilience, but I'll work to make it an adventure.