Just how resilient are you?
- Kyle Snyder: Live on Purpose
- February 27, 2023
- 652
“You don’t drown by falling in water; you only drown if you stay there.” —Zig Ziglar.
“The Power Rangers” was a big thing when I was in school. They were teenagers who were given superhuman abilities by an alien. A couple of astronauts accidentally released the evil alien Rita Repulsa, who was locked inside a dumpster-looking contraption.
Now with her being released, of course she had plans of world domination. Another alien, Zordon, who had the task to recapture Rita, enlisted the help of five teenagers with attitude. I guess if you are going to take down an evil alien, you need teens with attitude. Zordon gives them super-human abilities, costumes to hide who they are and robotic vehicles. The villains grow to be taller than skyscrapers. The Power Ranger vehicles combine to form a giant robot to take on the aliens. Of course, the Power Rangers always win.
I also was a huge pro wrestling fan. Mom got me a punching bag with a picture of one of the Power Rangers on it. It sat on the floor, and every time I knocked it down, it came back up. I had fun wrestling with it, body slamming it, throwing it around and giving it the big boot. However, no matter how much punishment it took, it popped right back up for some more.
Do you know how a wrestler keeps from getting pinned? They get back up. Getting back up is a dying art.
Now that may sound silly to call it a dying art, but just listen to people talking about who hurt them, when, how and what time. I mean the list really does go on from there. The longer we’re around them, the more we hear the story. I know people like that. I almost asked one person what would happen if they talked to the person. Then I remembered that person had told me the other person died years ago.
In pro wrestling on TV, they can be outside the ring until a count of 10. If they roll back in the ring at 9 1/2, the match still goes on. Part of getting back up is having time to regroup so we can come up with another plan. Setbacks are hard and sometimes very painful, so it stands to reason we might need time to just rest.
Sometimes setbacks can feel like we will never amount to anything. Of course, that is not true, but we need time to process the loss — think about what we could have done different, who could we talk to about it, what to avoid and are we ready to move forward.
We live in a world where we so often rush into everything. Sometimes we get in such a hurry we can get overwhelmed and shut down. It is good to get away and smell the roses for a while. I listened to the book, “Good to Great,” and somewhere in the middle of it, the author told what happened while he took a break from writing that book. If we walk away from what we are working on, we can get a fresh perspective on what we need to do.
Just walk completely away and do something else for a while. Give your mind a rest. That is how we build resilience.