It is easy to feel defeated, especially during challenging times. The human mind and heart can often be fragile and easily wounded.
Although, feeling wounded is a momentary thing.
The human mind is keen and when seeing a situation from a detached, clear standpoint it becomes easier for the mind to move forward. Thinking becomes less scattered.
The heart has its own version of this.
The wounded feeling only lasts for a short amount of time. Although, one must choose to move through the wound and then move away from it. Then the heart can recognize the situation from a similar detached standpoint.
Though feelings still float and percolate inside, particularly fear of the unknown, the heart manages to move forward.
This is courage.
When the heart and mind detach from the hurt together and move forward without solutioning the unknown that is the process of resilience in action.
One starts with what they know and takes steps that are within their control.
I haven’t always felt like an expert in this area. Resilience is not something that I feel comes naturally to me.
In my experience resilience was developed over time. It was a character trait that I had to adapt to within myself and each challenge I faced seemed to require a leveling up of this character trait.
I had to become a resilient person. If I didn’t then the wounded feelings, the hurt, the sorrow, and all the rest from the injured mind and heart would have swallowed me.
I could not let the feelings and the thoughts that swirled from the challenges take me under.
So, while I still felt the feelings deeply, and struggled to ignore the scattered thoughts, I moved forward through the challenge. I did not think much about resilience of any kind.
In fact, most of the time I did not feel strong, and my mind was so unkind to my heart.
However, what got me through each challenging moment was to choose to not be swallowed. Though there was a storm that raged inside me, I refused to let it take me.
I have come to realize that a resilient person still feels all the feelings and still has an active mind. There is still a storm of challenge going on, but the difference is that somewhere within them there’s a small part that remains upright.
There may be bruises, or smashed pieces, but somehow there’s one area of the person that stays standing.
Resilience lives in the part of the person that refuses to be swallowed by the storm.