Resilience

If you woke up tomorrow morning and found your body 10 years
younger, what would be different? How about 20 years younger?

You might be tempted to think first of how you looked 10 or 20
years ago. Maybe you’ll remember having more energy, better
eyesight, or better memory.

The truth is, youthfulness can be summed up in one word:
resilience.

It’s all about the ability to respond and bounce back.

And the good news is, you can have a more youthful body by
focusing on resilience–but not on physical resilience.

The more the average person longingly focuses on having the
body, skin, energy, vision, hearing, teeth, blood pressure,
cholesterol levels, etc. of a healthy young person, the more that
person usually experiences powerlessness, frustration and even
depression that that’s not what’s happening.

Then, the more powerlessness, frustration and depression about
the aging process, the more stress, and the more quickly aging
progresses.

WAS WATTLES WRONG?

But, isn’t that what we’re supposed to do? Aren’t we supposed to
focus on what we want to manifest?

Even though Mr. Wattles advises this, my experience is that most
people do not experience healing or reversing the aging process
by focusing on health or youth.

It’s not because Mr. Wattles was wrong.

It’s because most of us are not in a high enough vibration most
of the time to be able to create that kind of body
transformation.

What should we do instead?

One of the best things I’ve found is to focus on resilience.

You’ve no doubt heard the advice that when you fall down, don’t
just wallow in the mud. Get up!

But it’s important to know the metaphorical significance here.

It’s not just the ACTION of getting up. It’s the courage to
change the story you are telling yourself about what it meant to
fall down, what it means to get up, and why you want to.

And, it’s not just changing the story, challenging your thoughts
and beliefs, it IS also about taking the action to get back up.

Resilience is all of that.

This may sound good and well as a general idea. But it’s
meaningless until you can actually recognize when you are in a
relevant situation and apply it in your life.

AN EXAMPLE

Here’s an example to help you out.

Elvis has just been diagnosed with prostate cancer. He feels
pretty depressed about the likelihood of losing his sex life
permanently, the time, effort, attention, and money it will take
to be treated, not to mention the possibility that he won’t be
around for his grandkids.

In his case, the “falling down” is falling prey to the barrage
of negative thoughts about what it means for him to have prostate
cancer. Getting up is about reinterpreting his situation, telling
a new story about what it means, and putting his attention on his
reasons for making the mental shift–and this last part is
critical–REGARDLESS of the signs and symptoms in his body.

In other words, getting sick or injured is not “falling down.”
It’s not a sign of failure or accident. It’s the natural,
cumulative result of your own energetic vibrational state.

The falling down part is when you believe you are powerless to
create happiness, that there’s something wrong with you, that
someone is to blame for your situation.

The getting up part is when you remember your true relationship
with the divine, with all of creation. It’s when you remember you
have eternal life, so your opportunities for love, life, growth,
and creation, are endless.

The getting up part is when you remember that you are entirely
capable of believing what you choose to believe, and that you are
therefore capable of being happy, you are fine just where and as
you are, and you are powerful enough to create your life as you
wish it to be.

Even if this doesn’t quite match your religious or spiritual
beliefs, you can apply the concept of resilience to any situation
in which you find yourself.

It means that whatever mood you find yourself in, whatever you
find yourself focusing on, if you don’t like it, turn your
attention to what you would prefer.

As soon as you start thinking about resilience, you’re
remembering that it isn’t always like this. You aren’t always in
this space. This isn’t the only way to view what’s going on. You
are a person who can shift from wherever you are to a more
flexible perspective.

It’s a funny thing that happens to some people as they “age.”
They get more attached to being right about “how it is,” because
they have piled up lots of evidence to confirm their beliefs.

But, if it’s true that your beliefs are self-fulfilling
prophecies, then the only thing that has happened is that
beliefs, helpful or not, are reinforced by their own
consequences.

When you understand resilience, you understand that you do not
want to build your life based on evidence that limiting,
scarcity, separation, or fear-based beliefs are correct.

You want to build your life based on evidence of abundance,
oneness, goodness, power, optimism, expansion, and possibility.

YOUR OWN RESILIENT LIFE

When you think about how to apply resilience in your own life,
consider the situations in which you feel stuck or limited.
Family relationships? Money? Career? Home? Intimate relationship?
Friends? Something about your body or personality that you don’t
like?

What beliefs are you practicing? What aspects of things are you
focusing your attention on?

What would be a more resilient way to respond to the situation?

In a way, resilience is all about applying the serenity prayer:
having the courage to accept the things you cannot change, change
the things you can, and having the wisdom to know the difference.

The key is to know just how much power you really do have to
affect change your own life experience, by focusing on the two
things you really can change: the thoughts, beliefs, and
sensations you focus your attention on, and the actions you take.