Jan 15
The ABC of toughness starts with us: Resilience is the root of all it is!
“Satisfy your psychological needs, and you’ll work harder than ever.”
How substantial is your autonomy?
Where do you feel like you belong?
What is that competency wall before you?
“Fake it until you make it!” has never made it for me. Let me explain. I am often self-conscious of my limitations. Hence each time I fake it, there is a shadow of me holding a mirror before my eyes and screaming to my ears: Really? So that is the path we are taking now?
About five seconds later, I back up and acknowledge that I cannot fake it.
It is not only with success that I struggle to fake it. It is also with relationships and being true to myself.
The more I get older, the more I am surrounded by reflectors that shine my shadow light back at me. There is no escape.
I have always struggled with handling what happens to me. I have been looking for the right puzzle to fit in. Unfortunately, I have been and still am a victim of impostor syndrome.
“Imposter syndrome, also known as impostor phenomenon or impostorism, is a psychological occurrence in which an individual doubts their skills, talents, or accomplishments and has a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a fraud.[1] Despite external evidence of their competence, those experiencing this phenomenon do not believe they deserve their success or luck.”
Source: Wikipedia
As someone who grew up in another continent, Africa, another country, Senegal, another culture, “Téranga”, I can see that I have developed a certain level of resilience. I can see that, compared to some people around me, Europe, France, and “Abondance,” I can move in the storm.
Indeed I have been familiar with scarcity, have been lonely in a new country, and have learned new skills and competencies.
I have just been able to nail down how to build resilience. After stumbling upon the book, Do Hard Things by Steve Magness, I can see it.
And I am learning the alphabet of resilience again:
- Autonomy,
- Belonging,
- Competency.
The magic is that I might have developed resilience in my private life. Yet I still need to build it in other areas like my workplace and bring up my children who will grow up in a different environment than me.
And I consider myself a student for life. So there is always room for improvement, change, and universes to discover.
1. AUTONOMY: WE ALWAYS HAVE A CHOICE — Seeking autonomy is the best way to start building our resilience. When we genuinely trust that we can do it independently, we move from procrastination to action. We move from problem statements to solution implementation.
And beyond that, seeking autonomy is also about reclaiming the role of being our superhero first. Often because we feel like we cannot do it, we quickly outsource our ability to be a vehicle for change to others.
We feed the autonomous being from within by trying, failing, and learning. We rely on ourselves first. Then we seek out help after. Not the other way around. We always have a choice to be in the driver’s seat of our lives.
Nobody is coming to save us but us. We are the first responders to our life’s challenges. We are the ones that will guide others to help us. We better have a clear blueprint of who we are, where we stand, and our values.
2. BELONGING: WE ARE ON A MISSION TO PAY IT FORWARD — In a world going at the speed of light, we often struggle to find our spot. Like Spock, we jump from one galaxy to the other, searching for a place to fit in.
We need help to give meaning to our actions and their impact at the grander scale of the space-time continuum. On the one hand, we are reminded that we are all impacting climate change. Yet, on the other hand, we feel like we are powerless.
We are our actions. We are not part of Nature. We are Nature. We are not just our country but our culture right here and now. We are the shoulders of the next generations. We all have red blood, no matter our skin color. We are candles that radiate the lights of our universe.
No matter how insignificant we feel inside, no matter how others think, we do not matter; the fact is that we have been molded from the universe’s matter.
We are all humans; we will get the dividends of our actions immediately or down into our bloodlines. We better pay it well. We better pay it forward. Eventually, it will come back. The Universe always pays back. We must be ready not to let the playback song of our life bleed us to the deaf.
3. COMPETENCY: WE ARE ALWAYS MAKING PROGRESS — We love to compare ourselves to others. “Comparison is the thief of joy.” as the saying goes. We can always find in life people who are doing better than us. Likewise, we can always find others who are having it worse than us.
The ultimate question regarding comparison is: Are we better today than yesterday?
Putting the bar high can be a double-edged sword. Either it is too high for our fixed mindset. Either will become the new standard for our growth mindset. The bar is as high as we are ready to grow to reach the next level.
Progress is the best measure of success. If we had become more today than when we started, then that objective served its purpose.
Often what is standing between us and our objectives in life is a gap in skill sets and competency. As a result, we might feel like the level we are at today is low. Yet we ought to remember the road so far. We must pause and reflect on whom we have become all along the way.
If comparison is the thief of joy, progress is the chief of toys. We must remember when we were kids. We must not forget the joy of progress when we start sitting, crawling, talking, and walking.
With competency, we create our agency. With belonging, we reclaim our spot in the greater scheme of things. With autonomy, we boost our autoimmune system to be our first superhero again.
With all those three pillars, we have a solid foundation upon which we can build resilience. We are not aiming to be an unmovable object. On the contrary, we aim to be antifragile.
If you find this newsletter of any value to you, please like it, subscribe and share it with one person to pay it forward.
#Dare2Care #Dare2Share
#BIOS #BringInyourOwnSoul #LeadHeartship #Leadership
You can read my previous article on Use these 4 steps to HEAL your FEAR! (Friendly link)
Photo by Alexander Suhorucov from Pexels
