Welcome to "SIMPLY SUSTAINABLE SUCCESS" - Feb 24, 2009:
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Helping You Create What Matters MOST in Life and Work --
With Whatever Life Throws At You!
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"There is no human made material as resilient as the human spirit."
— Bernard Williams
Hi All,
Birds signing, chatting, outside my window, letting each other know that all is well in their area. Relax, they chirp, all is well — let's get together.
Ah, the simple life -- eat, sing, mate. Eat, sing, mate.
Alas, our lives are not quite as simple as the birds', especially these days. This is why "resilience is so important, and so valuable to cultivate, in ourselves, our families, and our communities.
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"Resilience"
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Resilience is the ability to overcome adversity — to bounce back up quickly when you're knocked down—and to recover quickly from setbacks. It's a kind of elasticity of character and attitude that lets us stretch to accommodate changes in our lives and world. Being resilient in the face of adversity helps you create results—in life, work, and relationships—even when the going is tough.
“Suppose you have tried and failed again and again,” said actress Mary Pickford. “You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing that we call failure is not the falling down, but the staying down.”
This distinction between the act of failure and what you conclude about it is key. If you judge that you failed, you are likely to stay down. Further, you are likely to generalize, “I am a failure. I always fail. So what's the point of getting up?”
Seeing yourself this way — as a victim — makes it difficult, if not impossible to learn from your mistakes. It erodes your resilience.
There are numerous ways to develop resilience. Be careful not to judge yourself, or reality, but, instead, describe it accurately, objectively, and emotionally neutrally. Practice taking on small risks that you can manage, and gradually extend your risk taking ability. But one of the best ways to build resilience is by mastering the skills and structure of creating.
Because it enables us to create results in spite of circumstances, creating increases our resilience. In the creating, failure is merely feedback, so even mistakes help us learn from experience.
Mastering the skills and structure of creating increases our competence to produce results we most want, and gives us confidence that we can deal with whatever life throws at us.
[Excerpted from the forthcoming Ebook Staying Up In Down Times: Creating Resilience, Results, and Rewards — With Whatever Life Throws At You!
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>Book Suggestion:
Adversity Quotient: Turning Obstacles Into Opportunities
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What does it take to succeed in life? IQ? EQ? SQ? Yes, all of those, and more.
Perhaps the most important of al is AQ: Adversity Quotient, which measures your ability to persevere and prevail in the face of adversity.
In Adversity Quotient, Paul Stoltz describes four CORE skills for building resilience. By increasing your levels of Control, Ownership, Reach, and Endurance, you increase your capacity to deal with adversity. A very readable book, with a very timely message. Highly Recommended!
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> Articles About Building Resilience
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If you're looking for resilience reading this week, please check out these articles of mine:
• Resilience: Success Means Taking Adversity In Stride
• Building Resilience to Stay Up In Down Times
Both can be accessed at http://hubpages.com/profile/Bruce+Elkin
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> Community Resilience: The Transition Town Movement
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This fascinating 8-minute video features Rob Hopkins, author of The Transition Towns Handbook talking about Local Resilience. Just as individuals can develop the ability to prevail in the face of adversity, so, too, can communities. Indeed, the combination of individual, family, and local resilience may well be what gets most of us through these difficult economic times.
Check it out at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyXZpUGnJ0E
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>This Weeks Quotes: "Resilience"
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"The event is not important, but the response to the event is everything."
— I Ching
"Life shrinks or expands
in proportion to one’s courage."
— Anaïs Nin
"Deep within humans dwell those slumbering powers; powers that would astonish them, that they never dreamed of possessing; forces that would revolutionize their lives if aroused and put into action."
— Orison Marden
"People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within."
—
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
"Those who do not create the future they want must endure the future they get." — Draper L. Kaufman, Jr.
"Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference."
—
Reinhold Niebuhr
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How resilient are you?
Have a wonderful week! Let that exuberance bubble out of you!
Bruce
PS Just a reminder that there are 30+ articles at: http://hubpages.com/profile/Bruce+Elkin
and more at http://www.bruceelkin.com/writer.html |
