Prepare for the Unexpected: Part 1-Nurture Resilience

The BOLD (It starts with the stimulus)

Today, we start a three-part series—Prepare for the Unexpected. As Viktor Frankel asserted in the quote above, we have only one place to make a choice and that is the space between the arrival of a stimulus and the execution of our response.  For the next three weeks, we will be exploring the actions we can take to increase the size of that space by nurturing our resilience, designing our clarity and establishing awareness.  

The Whisper (and ends with our response)

The time to build your boat is before the flood comes.  Something is coming.  A surprise, unexpected and perhaps even unwanted, is waiting to spring. 

In our life, we have only one moment for choice and that is the moment directly after the surprise arrives and before we take an action.  It is very difficult to do anything about creating more space for better choices in the middle of that gap.  It is too late to prepare.  When we are there, we are acting and not thinking about acting.  

This is why the advice to “just breathe” is often less than helpful in a moment of stress.  We are less likely to think to breathe or to be able to take a breath when faced with crisis if we haven’t built the capacity before hand to do so.  This is why it is prudent to nurture our resilience with practices that build our capacity.  

When preparing for the unexpected, we can access three modes of preparation—mindfulness practice, physical practice, and self-investment. Each of these opportunities prepares a different part of our system to respond and builds a different capacity. 

Mindfulness

Mindfulness is trendy right now.  Celebrities extol its virtues and gurus urge the adoption of meditation practices.  Many people feel compelled to try meditation only to find themselves seated cross-legged, numb with cramps, impatiently waiting for the last ding of the timer to escape the tedium.  

“Surely this cannot be the desired state meditation is supposed to create,” they think.  “I would rather be mindless, thank you very much.” 

They are right—this is not the desired state meditation is intended to create.

What is mindfulness?  A simple definition is any practice that enables us to learn to understand how we understand.  There is a widely held misperception that meditation is the practice of emptying the mind.  This is the source of much of the frustration and reluctance expressed by new practitioners. It is, of course, impossible to prevent the brain from thinking.

In reality, meditation is the practice of observing the inevitable thoughts that our brain forms and allowing them to float by without engaging them.  In this way, we are learning to see how we think.  

Mindfulness practices, then, enable us to consciously sit outside the stories that we tell ourselves and above the messages we use to understand our world and decide our actions.  It is this aspect of mindfulness that builds capacity in the moment. 

Consistent meditation rewires the brain.  The meditation brain develops stronger access to the areas that have to do with higher-order thinking and reduces the areas that respond to stress. This means you have more access to your bigger thoughts and less fight/flight/freeze knee jerk reaction when you are startled by a surprise. 

Physical Practice (Yoga, Martial Arts, Alexander Technique)

Meditation prepares the mind to react.  Physical practices train the body to be ready as well.  

In college, my husband studied Judo.  Years later, on a school playground, as he watched over his class at recess, his heel caught on a railroad tie flowerbed border and he lost his balance. He was amazed to land softly in the grass, unharmed, at the end of a reflex Judo roll.  The investment paid off. His body had developed the capacity to respond to a surprise.  

Physical practices like martial arts, yoga and bodywork like Alexander Technique prepare us for physical challenges.  They can also prepare us for our emotional response. 

You know how you feel because you feel it. The symptoms of our emotions are in our bodies.  How do you know that you are angry?  Perhaps you feel a prickling on your scalp or a tightening in your belly.  Perhaps you feel stiffness in your neck or heat in your face.  We experience our emotions physically.  We can also impact our emotions with physical movement.  If you smile long enough, your brain will believe you are happy.

The more we practice feeling and using our bodies in natural, healthy ways, the more options we have to act in that space between stimulus and response.  

Self-Investment

I suspect that the term self-care has outlived its usefulness. For many people, the term suggests selfishness and self-importance.  For others, it brings a flurry of “I-know-I-should” guilt.  

I prefer the term self-investment.  We invest in ourselves and reap a return of energy, vitality, and vigor that we can then turn around and invest in the world.  Self-investments include, but are certainly not limited to:

• Sleep—great sleep requires an intentional investment of time.  For great sleep, we probably need a great bed and a safe, dark, quiet, comfortable environment. Sleep pays off in sharper focus, better health, greater energy, and deepened patience.
• Nutrition—Our bodies need essential nutrients to function at a high level.  Choosing to spend time, energy and money on high-quality foods pays off in better health and attention.
• Hydration—drinking water increases our focus, prevents headaches and ensures the proper functioning of our systems.
• Beauty—this is less obvious but no less important.  We crave beauty.  A few minutes staring out the window into the green leafy canopy of trees outside can lower stress. 
• Creativity and recreation—we benefit when our lives are about want-to as well as have-to

By making self-investments, we are ensuring that we are at peak performance when we are called upon to perform.  When our bodies, minds, and spirits are rested, nourished and restored, we are ready for the unexpected.

What’s Next?

In Part 2 we will explore the way in which designing clarity helps us to say yes to the best opportunities and no to the unnecessary distractions as we navigate the unexpected.

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To read Part 2, follow this link

To read Part 3, click this