On Finding a Path Through the Mud
4-year-old-child wisdom for an uncertain world
It was a bitterly cold but beautiful day yesterday, the kind of weather that begs to be made the most of. I’m staying with my brother, his wife, and two girls this week in the middle of the Welsh countryside, so we decided to take a walk.
My four-year-old niece and I were holding hands as we marched down a grassy hill. Towards the bottom was a quagmire-like patch of mud, churned up by enthusiastic walkers and their dogs.
“Urgh, why is it so muddy?” I exclaimed (living outside the UK for 15 months has rendered me useless with situations that as a Brit, I used to take for granted, like rain, cold, and mud.)
Don’t worry Auntie Charlie, my niece told me in her serious voice. We just need to find a way to go around it.
Walking a couple of meters up the hill, we found firmer ground. We skirted around the mud towards the stile at the end of the field.
Words to live life by
It was a simple, fleeting moment, my niece no doubt parroting what her parents advise her when she comes across problems in her life.
But there, in that mud-filled field with the weak Winter sun lighting our path, it felt like the perfect words to sum up many people’s lives right now.
In uncertain times, we have to be flexible. We have to find a way around our problems. We have to be resilient.
Exercising our resilience muscle
Normally, I would use a Christmas Eve post as a nice little round-up of 2021. That doesn’t feel appropriate with so many people facing a second Christmas alone, or in isolation, or mourning the loss of loved ones and liberties.
Instead, I want to talk about developing our resilience muscle.
I am constantly amazed at the resilience of humans and never was this more true than in the last 21 months. We work from home when our bosses previously told us it couldn’t be done. Millions of us have given up our jobs because we’ve finally woken up to what matters to us. We have developed deep resilience to situations none of us ever thought we would have to deal with.
We have changed the world through our resilience. There is joy to be found in that.
And we can continue to change the world, one resilient person at a time by exercising our resilience muscles (and Lord knows we’ve had a lot of practice this year).
Here are 4 small tools you can put to use straight away, to help you build resilience. Use them in the face of global pandemics, or something smaller, like difficult family members (my personal challenge this week).
Get some good quality sleep
Resilience was never built on a poor sleep routine because sleep is magic.
Practice positive thinking
A highly underrated skill, in my opinion, positive thinking can literally reshape everything. Psychologist Martin Seligman talks about the 3 Ps when it comes to positive thinking - permanence, personalization, and persuasiveness.
Permanence - resilient people see the effects of a bad event as temporary, not permanent.
Persuasiveness - negative thinking can persuade you that just because one area of your life has gone wrong, your WHOLE life has gone wrong. Resilient people are not party to this persuasion.
Personalization - resilient people don’t take bad events personally or blame themselves.
Pick your response carefully
We might not be able to control what is happening around us, but we can control our response to it.
Use cognitive restructuring to re-think crappy events
Cognitive restructuring is a way of challenging those automatic beliefs we may have developed to go hand in hand with bad feelings. It’s about reframing your negative thinking through taking a step back and analyzing the situation from a distance.
There is so much to unpack when it comes to cognitive restructuring (and I am by no means a therapist), so here is a great resource to help you start your restructuring journey.
And finally, find a way to go around it
In other words, be flexible. Plans change, people change, not everything will go the way you want it to or think it might. Being resilient is all about finding another way through the mud. Because there is ALWAYS another way.
A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS to you all. I truly hope you have a good day tomorrow, wherever you are and whoever you are able to spend Christmas with.
Much love, Charlie.