Building resilience. How to bounce back when life beats you up.
Hi! I'm Dr. Paul Jenkins, I'm a professional psychologist. And this is a topic that comes
up quite a bit. Let's first define resilience. And then I'll give you four powerful strategies that
will help you stay resilient when those hard times come. I found a pretty good definition of
resilience online as I was preparing to shoot this video today. Resilience is the ability to
adapt and bounce back in the face of adversity, trauma, or stress, and to maintain a sense of
well-being and purpose despite challenging circumstances. I like that definition for
a number of reasons. And I'm going to to go to the end first. Challenging circumstances. So that
first of our four strategies is to get good at distinguishing between circumstances and stories.
So, let's go back to the definition for a minute. It says despite challenging circumstances. Notice
that we're calling them challenging circumstances. When really they're just circumstances. Challenging
is a story. Okay, now, I'm not denying the difficulty or the actual challenges that we face as we go
through our circumstances. But when we call them challenging, we're creating a story about them. A
couple of years ago during the pandemic, I got a call from one of my corporate clients, this is a
hospital that I had worked with in British Columbia. And they called me saying Dr. Paul,
could you do a little virtual program for us about how to stay positive during such
challenging times? That's how they asked me. And in the training that's where we started, challenging
times. Compared to what? A few years ago, I had the opportunity to listen to an amazing speaker, her
name is Immaculate Ilabegiza. She survived the genocide in Rwanda. And she wrote a book called
Left To Tell, sharing her experience about that. I got to hear her speak. Now, challenging times,
compared to what, right? The hospital that called me was talking about the pandemic. The global pandemic,
covid-19 that occurred a few years ago. Immaculate was talking about a genocide that occurred in her
country over a decade ago. Just notice that it could always be worse. And it could always
be better. As we get better at distinguishing between our circumstances which are neutral.
No, I don't mean that they're painless or easy. Sometimes those circumstances are difficult and
painful. But they're neutral, meaning that it could always be better, it could always be worse. Our
story about it makes it good or bad. Distinguish, I'm not even saying you have to change how you
think. I just want you to notice the difference between a circumstance and a story about those
circumstances. Now that leads us right into our second strategy, which has to do with two processes
that are going on all the time in our own mind. You can't turn it off. These are principles. Kind
of like gravity. Do you ever get up in the morning and think I wonder if gravity's on? No, it's on. And
so, you conduct your life with the assumption that gravity is going to work, that's why you
put on shoes. If we didn't have gravity, we wouldn't need shoes. Just notice that these processes are
like gravity, and there's two of them that I teach all of my clients. Evaluation, meaning judgment. You
can't turn this off. Notice this. You're constantly judging. Aren't you? Yes, you judge yourself pretty
harshly sometimes. You judge your spouse. You judge your kids. You judge people in your neighborhood,
people at work, people online. You judge the government. You judge the economy. You're judging me.
It's alright I'm judging you? You can't turn it off. You're constantly judged. Just notice that, okay? Now,
the process by which we judge implies comparison with some standard. So, you can only say something
is light compared to something that's dark, or heavy depending on which light you meant. You can
only say something is bad compared to something that's good. You can only say something is sick
compared to something that's healthy. This is how our brain judges and you can't turn it off.
So, just notice that. The other process that's constantly going on is creation. Meaning, creation
of what is to be. I believe even from a spiritual standpoint that we as human beings are creators.
It's in our divine nature, we have to go create what's next. And the only way we can do that is
by first, imagining what it is that we're going to create. That's not a direct quote obviously,
but this is the idea. The angel was always there in the stone. The carver just had to set it free
and get all the other stuff out of the way. That implies that the artist already knew what it
looked like. There's an imagination of what it is that we're going to create. Now, we already
established that you can always. My editor tells me to always avoid the word always and never use the
word never. But I just used it. What it is is always between better and worse? In your imagination, you
can always imagine something better. You can always imagine something worse. I'm giving you a really
quick version of a model that I've designed, called the positivity model. In fact, I will give you a
free copy of that model. Go to the URL on the screen right now, drpauljenkins.com/themodel,
and I will put a full-color-free PDF copy of this right into your inbox. Go grab it, you'll
see what I'm talking about as it relates to these two processes that are always going on in our mind.
To become truly resilient, we have to understand what our brain is doing. And the model will give
you some of the operating instructions for the equipment. Go get it, drpauljenkins.com/themodel.