Handle hard better

Happy New Year everyone! Welcome to another edition of The Resilience Brief and the start of a fantastic year for us all. Here’s to making it the best one yet!

Our best years aren’t usually defined as the easy ones, they are usually defined by what we experience and accomplish, and that feeling of accomplishment usually compounds when we’ve overcome challenges.

Life isn’t easy, and it never really gets easier. We just learn to handle hard better.

So today is about going into 2025 inspired, but also with eyes wide open. Whether or not it is a challenging year ahead, let’s use these tools to best prepare ourselves to keep moving forward, no matter what.

I love telling my kids short stories when we are in the car. It keeps them entertained and their imaginations run wild. A few years ago, I discovered a particular theme to the stories that kept them engaged, all about gemstones. These gems were all different colours, each colour with it’s own special power. Yellow gems made you super strong, blue made you have ice powers, red meant you could shoot fire out of your hands etc etc.

The stories went all sorts of different ways, but there was a common theme - if you could somehow find a gem, you had the necessary tool to beat the bad guy. The Joker (from Batman) was a popular bad guy, and we always needed multiple gems to beat him.

The idea of a powerful gemstone to defeat the villain is not that different from real life. When we need to beat a villain, or overcome a challenge, we need the necessary tools in our back pocket. In other words, we need our own gemstones.

That way, when things get hard, we have the power we need to find a way forward. It got me thinking that we need our own resilience gemstones.

The Resilience GEMS:

G is for Gratitude: I talk a lot about gratitude, but that’s because it is the easiest tool we have access to. It’s free, takes a few seconds, and can instantly transform our mindset into a positive one. We can forget what we DON’T have for a moment and focus on what we DO have. And if you aren’t sold on gratitude, take a second to think about Oprah Winfrey. She grew up extremely poor, was sexually abused by a family friend when she was pre-teen, fell pregnant and lost the baby at 14, and had plenty of other challenges growing up. When she talks about how she managed to overcome those challenges and build an incredibly successful life, she cites gratitude as the thing that helped her get through the darkest times. Tips on how to practice gratitude are here.

E is for Empathy: This is our opportunity to shift our perspective and think of something outside of ourselves. It comes in particularly handy when we are in a bad mood. The other day someone purposely didn’t let me in when I was driving, and I nearly crashed into a parked car. They actually sped up to prevent me from entering the lane and I was furious. And then I took a second to think about their life. I wondered what sort of person speeds up to cut someone off, and I realized that they might have a lot going on. I have no idea who that person was, and I likely will never cross paths with them again. But at that moment I could choose to see it only from my perspective and remain angry, or give them the benefit of the doubt and immediately feel lighter. I chose empathy.

M is for Mindfulness and Mindset: The acronym doesn’t look as clean when I list them separately (GEMMS??) so I put them both under ‘M’. But it really comes down to the power we place on our mind. I put Mindfulness first because I think its the first step for us to take note of our situation us find the space we need. Any challenge that comes along can instantly generate a reaction, but if we are able to find that split second to pause, we give ourselves a chance to generate a response. 

Mindset is the lens through which we view and respond to the world. It shapes our thoughts, emotions, behaviours, and ultimately our outcomes. When we have a growth mindset, we look for new ideas and opportunities to succeed. A simple example is adding the word “yet” to the end of sentences. “I can’t do that” evolves to “I can’t do that yet.” The small difference makes all the difference! Suddenly our mindset is focused on growth rather than failure.

S is for Stoicism: For me, Stoicism was the jumping off point on my journey towards resilience. It’s an ancient philosophy that is immensely valuable for modern challenges. It’s also not rooted in any religion so it’s available to absolutely everyone. There are several concepts within Stoicism that can be powerful to use, but the most popular concept is to spend our time and energy focusing on what we can control.

These are all optional of course, and we don’t need all of these GEMS to beat the ‘villain’ in our life. I’ve found value in each of them at various times, but collectively they are even more powerful. As always though, it’s the practice that really makes the difference.

Until next time friends, stay resilient!

Carre @ Resilient Marketing Minds

PS - One of my evolutions for 2025 is to be more active on video. So if you want to come along on the journey, and if you are on Instagram, please give me a follow at @resilience.with.carre