What do you do when life throws you some seriously difficult challenges? How can you learn to find an empowering meaning in even the most difficult circumstances? It is not always easy but it is possible. In today’s episode I share two simple things you can do each day to build greater resilience and character into your life.
Transcript
Well, Hey everybody, Jonathan Doyle with you.
Speaker:Once again, welcome aboard to the daily podcast.
Speaker:I'm looking forward to this one.
Speaker:I'm passionate about this little topic.
Speaker:I think it's something that can be really helpful.
Speaker:Just another little tool to put in your personal development growth toolbox.
Speaker:I want to talk today about a word.
Speaker:That has been done to death.
Speaker:It's been a, it's one of those words in our culture that you hear quite
Speaker:a lot, and it's just been a little bit emptied of its depth and meaning.
Speaker:And want to see if we can bring some of that back today.
Speaker:That word is resilience.
Speaker:You know, that word, you hear it quite a lot that, you know, you
Speaker:hear people saying that the, uh, the nation needs to build resilience.
Speaker:The business needs to build resilience.
Speaker:The markets have demonstrated resilience.
Speaker:We hear it so often it gets a bit robbed of its meaning.
Speaker:I want to talk about it in the context of the fact that life isn't perfect.
Speaker:If you've been paying attention, you already know that's true.
Speaker:Many of us.
Speaker:Experienced setbacks.
Speaker:No, let's change that.
Speaker:All of us experience setbacks.
Speaker:It can go way back to, you know, when you're first starting school and you
Speaker:say something or do something and people laugh at you and something goes wrong.
Speaker:It goes way back.
Speaker:We have, from our earliest experience of being alive, we have experiences of.
Speaker:Trying to do something, achieve something, experienced something.
Speaker:And then the next thing.
Speaker:We fail.
Speaker:And then of course, depending on a whole bunch of factors, what we
Speaker:do with that photo, you can really direct the rest of our lives.
Speaker:So let's talk a little bit about the meaning.
Speaker:I jumped on the online etymological dictionary.
Speaker:I love actually love etymology.
Speaker:If you're not familiar with it, etymology is simply the study.
Speaker:Of the roots of words, where our words come from.
Speaker:Cause often, you know, when I was speaking, doing keynotes, I
Speaker:would, uh, be looking at a key idea or theory and I would go to the
Speaker:basic words that built that idea.
Speaker:And look at where they come from.
Speaker:So resilience begins with the Latin.
Speaker:So the, the re part, the re in resilience is from the Latin word back and silly.
Speaker:And so the resilience part is from the Latin Saliday, which means to jump.
Speaker:So basically put those together and it means to jump back or to snap back.
Speaker:So if you look at.
Speaker:Different definitions and other dictionaries, you're going
Speaker:to get this idea of bouncing back, snapping back recoiling.
Speaker:From some kind of impact, some kind of, some sort of force that
Speaker:has pushed something down and the ability to snap back into the shape.
Speaker:That you were in before, even better.
Speaker:So, of course that's helpful, right?
Speaker:That's the basic idea of coming back from difficulty bouncing back from hardship.
Speaker:So what we want to do.
Speaker:Let's talk about how do we build resilience?
Speaker:You know, you know, management consultants get paid enormous amounts of money.
Speaker:To run these sessions around building resilience.
Speaker:And how do you actually do it?
Speaker:Well, I want to give you a simple idea.
Speaker:Uh, before I do that, let me give you a cool quote on Missourians that I like from
Speaker:Helen Keller, the incredible Helen Keller.
Speaker:She says character.
Speaker:Cannot be developed in ease and quiet.
Speaker:Only through experience of trial and suffering.
Speaker:Can the soul be strengthened.
Speaker:Ambition inspired and success.
Speaker:Achieved.
Speaker:That's good.
Speaker:One more time.
Speaker:Character can not be developed in ease and quiet only through
Speaker:experience of trial and suffering.
Speaker:Can the soul be strengthened?
Speaker:Ambition inspired and success achieved.
Speaker:You know, I said yesterday, many of you would have heard me talk
Speaker:about on the weekend that at 185.
Speaker:Kilometer bike race.
Speaker:And it's that experience of suffering, of difficulty, of hardship, of pain that be
Speaker:really strengthened you over the years.
Speaker:So Fino I've been training like that for decades.
Speaker:So you develop this resilience, you develop this ability to experience
Speaker:hardship at bounce back through it.
Speaker:And over time it changes you.
Speaker:So, I wonder if our culture, I don't know if you'll agree with this, but via
Speaker:social media, we really presented with perfection where we're presented with.
Speaker:Images of people and businesses and.
Speaker:That have just had incredible success.
Speaker:They're beautiful, talented, and we just, we see the end result all the time.
Speaker:And, you know, strangely in our culture, I would have said previously that what we
Speaker:don't see is all the work that went into this and all the suffering and setbacks.
Speaker:But the strange thing about sort of Instagram influencers and overnight
Speaker:success culture is that sometimes these people haven't had any real setbacks.
Speaker:It's just been a perfect, you know, glide path of success.
Speaker:Because they might've won the genetic lottery of looks or talent or something.
Speaker:So our culture really is.
Speaker:Unusual these days in the sense that, um, we are presented with a lot of ideas
Speaker:of perfection, but we don't see, and we don't understand the great cosmic truth.
Speaker:That real character real success comes through.
Speaker:This resilience, this snapping back from hardship and difficulty.
Speaker:So a couple of thoughts on how you build this into your life.
Speaker:First thing is I'd suggest thinking about putting yourself in more
Speaker:challenging situations, one of the ways you build resilience.
Speaker:Is really it's kind of stress testing, right?
Speaker:It's by putting something under more pressure.
Speaker:And if it comes back from the pressure each time, it's a little bit stronger.
Speaker:So as I said yesterday, you have to be conscious deliberate.
Speaker:You have to be an active participant in your own life.
Speaker:You have to show up and choose to do specific things.
Speaker:That lead to growth.
Speaker:Now I think I might've mentioned this yesterday.
Speaker:I took my son Aiden.
Speaker:Who's 12 to, uh, to hear the world famous concert pianist, constant and
Speaker:Constantine sham re uh, last week.
Speaker:And, uh, you know, regular listeners know I'm a morning person and often
Speaker:these concepts, they can go a bit late.
Speaker:And so on the way to the concert, I'm like tired and I'm thinking,
Speaker:oh, I hope he likes this.
Speaker:He doesn't fall asleep.
Speaker:Like his sister did previously.
Speaker:God bless her.
Speaker:But, uh, he had the most incredible time.
Speaker:And so did I, and it opened up incredible conversations for us and a
Speaker:beautiful memory and great experience.
Speaker:Here's the point?
Speaker:That it's often the moments of, you know, fatigue and you don't want to
Speaker:do something, but you push through.
Speaker:And on the other side of that is the experience on the other
Speaker:side of that is the growth.
Speaker:I think this is a universal principle.
Speaker:Definitely I can attest to it after decades of experience
Speaker:that it's pushing through.
Speaker:The moments of fatigue, pushing through the moments of, I
Speaker:don't really want to do this.
Speaker:Where this character gets formed.
Speaker:That's where resilience really matters.
Speaker:You know, Shakespeare necessarily not Shakespeare.
Speaker:Winston Churchill.
Speaker:Cause I'm just looking at a quote here of next to Helen Keller from Shakespeare.
Speaker:Winston Churchill famously said in a way that only he can.
Speaker:He said that, um, I think it was like not resiliency.
Speaker:You sort of talked about.
Speaker:It's the ability to go from, uh, from one failure to another, with no loss
Speaker:of enthusiasm, always liked that.
Speaker:And he wanted the ability to go from one failure to another,
Speaker:with no loss of enthusiasm.
Speaker:You've got to have a real courage in life sometimes to, to fail and
Speaker:keep going and fail and keep going.
Speaker:So, what are these two steps?
Speaker:The first one I've mentioned is.
Speaker:To choose circumstances to choose activities, to choose.
Speaker:You know, going for that promotion or asking that person out or doing the thing
Speaker:that is a, you know, going to be difficult for you that can build resilience.
Speaker:The second thing.
Speaker:Is you really got to get good at telling yourself.
Speaker:Productive stories.
Speaker:So often when we fail, we believe that we fail through some great personal fault
Speaker:and that, uh, you know, it's the most embarrassing thing, worst thing ever.
Speaker:You know, they experienced back in high school when you asked someone out and
Speaker:they said, no, And, uh, you're crushed.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:And I mean, at least most of us are, I mean, some of us are like,
Speaker:well, your loss, but uh, most of us like get pretty crushed.
Speaker:We put ourselves out there, someone goes wrong and we get crushed.
Speaker:And when we tell ourselves a negative story, right, we tell ourselves a story
Speaker:like, well, this is because of me.
Speaker:We ascribe the failure to some internal characteristic.
Speaker:So what we know about successful people.
Speaker:And by successful.
Speaker:I mean, people that really actualize their potential is that they tell
Speaker:themselves much better stories.
Speaker:So when something goes wrong, they tell themselves an empowering story.
Speaker:And I know some people go well, that's ridiculous.
Speaker:You know, they're making up fairy stories and not being true with
Speaker:themselves about what's real friends.
Speaker:What's real.
Speaker:What's real is the story you tell yourself that helps you grow.
Speaker:I mean, you know, tell yourself the truth, but tell yourself the truth
Speaker:in a way that helps you to grow.
Speaker:It might be well, this person said no.
Speaker:But that's just because I didn't shape my pitch the way I should
Speaker:have, and I needed to do more work.
Speaker:So no matter what happens, you can build an empowering story.
Speaker:That's going to help you get resilience.
Speaker:You know, maybe something's gone really wrong for you in life.
Speaker:I mean,
Speaker:COVID has affected so many people in different ways.
Speaker:But, you know, for me, I was traveling all the time.
Speaker:I had the best life.
Speaker:I was all over the world.
Speaker:I was meeting amazing people and doing stuff I was deeply passionate about
Speaker:and COVID just ended it overnight, literally gone, you know, like two
Speaker:decades of speaking and travel just ended.
Speaker:And, um, I don't honestly think I spent a lot of time sitting around moping.
Speaker:I was like, well, I've got a microphone.
Speaker:Someone's listening.
Speaker:Hopefully, but it checked the stats.
Speaker:But, uh, you know, you just gotta tell yourself a better story.
Speaker:Maybe you've lost someone.
Speaker:Maybe if you're struggling financially, maybe you kind of get your health, right.
Speaker:But tell yourself a better story.
Speaker:Just say I haven't got my health right yet.
Speaker:Just add one word there's way to add resilience at a single word yet.
Speaker:You add that single word and then you've got the possibility of chain.
Speaker:So friends let's wrap this up summary.
Speaker:Resilience from the Latin , which means to bounce back to snap back.
Speaker:How do we do it?
Speaker:Well, we do it by strengthening the resilience muscle through.
Speaker:Deliberately approaching difficult things, choosing hard things.
Speaker:And then we do it by telling ourselves empowering, helpful stories when things
Speaker:don't work out just the way we want.
Speaker:That's how we do it.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:So I hope you're going to build some resilience.
Speaker:I hope you're gonna start telling yourself a better story.
Speaker:Maybe something's going to go wrong today.
Speaker:We shouldn't anybody, but if something goes wrong, To itself.
Speaker:A good story.
Speaker:Tell yourself a story that's going to help you grow.
Speaker:Tell yourself a story.
Speaker:That's going to build character.
Speaker:All right, that's it.
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Speaker:It's great to see it growing and reaching more people.
Speaker:You want to do personal coaching with me?
Speaker:Just send me an email.
Speaker:jonathan@jonathandoyle.co.com.
Speaker:Or find me on the website, Jonathan doyle.co dot C O as I'm not
Speaker:traveling, I'm taking on some personal coaching clients, business coaching,
Speaker:personal development coaching.
Speaker:You can work with me one on one via zoom, anywhere in the world.
Speaker:We'll get you moving forward.
Speaker:God bless your friends.
Speaker:My name's Jonathan Doyle.
Speaker:This has been the daily podcast.
Speaker:And i'll have another message for you tomorrow
