THE STRATEGY FOR RESILIENCE

There are lots of variables that play into the experience of being resilient as noted in the last post. And also noted in that post was the question about the strategy? Which variable comes first, then second, and third? Which variables are critical and which are secondary? These are strategy questions and they are the questions that enable us to create a model of resilience. After all there is a structure to resilience and if we want to replicate the experience of healthy resilience in our lives and in the lives others, we need to know how to put the structure together. It’s like a formula or a recipe.

When I first began modeling resilience, I worked from the assumption that it was a primary state and like the NLP “Circle of Excellence” pattern, it was a matter of putting all of the variables into the space of the experience, step in, and “Whollo!” the experience of resilience! But it does not work that way. No long-term complex state (gestalt states) work in that manner. If they did, then we could do the following:

• Imagine the state of being healthy, fit, and thin. Identify every variable that plays a role in that state of being, see, hear, and feel it fully, step into it. Presto! You are now healthy, fit, and thin!

• Imagine the state of being wealthy, financially independent, with passive sources of income, able to budget, save, increase income, see and seize opportunities. Imagine it fully in all of the visual, auditory, and kinesthetic systems, step into it. Aha! You are now a millionaire and have the mind of a millionaire and financially independent!

• Do the same with leadership, with self-discipline, with entrepreneurship, etc.

Obviously, and perhaps sadly, reality does not work that way. “State induction” in that manner does not, and cannot, create the experiences you want. When an experience is complex in that it has multiple layers of states-about-states, belief frames that hold multiple belief-systems in place, and that occur over a period of time (usually weeks and months, maybe years), you cannot just “access” it so that it enters into your neurology. These kinds of experiences have to be developed over a period of time as you go through the steps and stages of its creation. That is, first you take X and Y actions and that creates the state of A, and then you repeat that for the next action steps so you get into state B, and so forth.

For the experience of the resilient state there are several stages that you’ll have to go through. Using the grief stages that Elizabeth Kubler-Ross identified, we potentially have these:

• The Set-Back Stage: An event occurs that knocks you down that triggers a sense of loss, disruption, upset, block, etc.

• The Shock Stage: You inwardly are shocked, surprised, in a state of dis-belief, amazement, disillusioned, can’t believe it, etc.

• The Bargaining Stage: You look outside yourself to a supernatural source (God) or to some other person (boss, wife, husband, etc.) and beg that you will do anything to get your life back the way it was. You placate, beg, show remorse, confess faults and sins, etc.

• The Anger Stage: You yell and scream, you threaten, you throw a tantrum, you are as mad as hell, you curse, you blame.

• The Depression Stage: You give up, press down your hopes, expectations, and energies, you resign to your situation, you feel like a victim, you stand in the rain and let it rain all over you.

• The Acceptance Stage: You acknowledge what happened and face it by thinking about what you can do that will move you forward.

I say that these are potential stages because it all depends. The greater your ego-strength in the first place, the less you will go through Shock—Bargaining—Anger—and— Depression stages and move straight forward to the Acceptance stage. That is, the stronger you are inside yourself, the more meaning and bounce you have inside you, the less you need to go through those emotional roller-coaster stages. The more reality-oriented you are, then the less you will be shocked. You will have anticipated potential problems and take them in stride with a more philosophical attitude. The more realistic your expectations and the less demanding you are that everything go your way, the less shock and anger.

All of that depends on the meanings you give to your maps about what’s real and what could happen. The more childish you are, the less developed, then the more cognitive distortions will govern your way of thinking and feeling: you will personalize, awfulize, catastrophize, emotionalize, over-generalize, demandingness with shoulds and musts, and so on. This will make you more susceptible to being “throw for a fall.”

The emotional roller-coaster stages of upset make perfect sense depending on how close or how far your expectations are to reality. The more demands you make on reality, the more you can be knocked- down. The more unrealistic your shoulds and musts, the more of an upset you’ll experience and therefore the more intense the emotional roller-coaster.

What stages you will go through therefore depends upon your preparation for facing life on its terms, rather than your. In terms of the stages that we all go through, then the basic

• The Set-Back Stage: Some event occurs that interferes with your goals, hopes, and wants. Now there is something blocking you that you have to deal with.

• The Emotional Roller-coaster Stage: The amount of emotional distress that occurs as you deal with the upset. This depends on how mature and accurate your expectations, your meanings, and your resources for handling the set-back.

• The Coping Stage: The required skills for handling your basic needs and getting through the set- back and putting your world back together. What you need to know, understand, believe, and do so that you can get your feet back on the ground.

• The Mastering Stage: The ability to not merely get through it and survive, but to use the set- back for learning, development, and opportunities. In the book, The Art of the Comeback, Donald Trump says, “Take adversity and make it an asset.” (p. 68). Mastery involves rising above the set-back to such a degree that you make good use of it— That’s what Viktor Frankl did with his experience of Hitler’s Concentration Camp.

• The Recovery Stage: You are now in the stage predicted by Arnold Schwarzenegger’s famous line, “I’ll be back! You’re back! You are back in the swing of life— living with passion and vitality.