Strength in Our Resilience in Life and Retirement
by Graham Hart, MDiv
Rubber balls are meant to bounce. Water balloons are great fun, but when thrown, they usually break.
Question: When life’s challenges come and you encounter setbacks, how do you become more like a rubber ball that rebounds, rather than a water balloon that breaks?
Stephen Spielberg’s application to USC Film School was rejected 3 times before he was finally accepted. Oprah Winfrey was fired from her first job on television. Abraham Lincon suffered 11 major losses and election defeats before becoming president.
When I was in seminary, six months after Linda and I were married, we were told that I had testicular cancer that had metastasized to my left lung. It was a great blow. Often, during those years of treatment, I felt like a water balloon about to break. Although it was difficult to go through, life lessons emerged, including those about resilience. I am grateful that years later I have been able to write the rest of the story.
Resilience is one of the essential skills necessary for life. When we are children and a bully’s words knock us down, we need to learn how to respond and get back up. When we go through a tough patch in a relationship, resiliency becomes the glue and springboard for helping us get through. If we get a pink slip or a member of a congregation thinks it is time for us to leave, how do we face the situation and bounce back?
In the face of life’s challenges, both big and small is the question: How do we bounce back? Below are best practices to help grow and cultivate resiliency:
Self-awareness – have a realistic, honest, accurate understanding of ourselves and the issue.
Good self-care – build the stamina and strength to face and overcome obstacles.
Social support - find support from friends, spouse and significant persons in our lives for additional strength and encouragement.
Learn from our past – ask how we handled tough times in the past? What successful strategies were instrumental in helping us bounce back? Each of us have resources deep within us that we can draw on and put in practice again that can help us get through life’s challenges.
Plan of Action - create an action plan that encompasses specific “next steps.”
In the retirement years everything we have learned about resiliency will be put into practice. In the Leader Wise Cohort Workshop Flourishing in Retirement, one of the issues we examine is becoming more resilient as we age. Whether we are age 13 or 73, how we bounce back is an essential quality that can be cultivated.
The next cohort begins on September 25. Click here for more information on Flourishing in Retirement.
To discuss how your congregation, organization or judicatory could benefit from a workshop or retreat on resilience with LeaderWise facilitators, please reach out to Mary Kay DuChene.
