Mental Resilience : A big deal?

There is an Indian parable that I’ve found to be instructive and applicable to many aspects of my day to day life cutting across different fields:

“A man wants to walk across the land, but the earth is covered with thorns.
He has two options - one is to pave the road, to tame all of nature into compliance. The other is to make sandals.”

Making sandals is the internal solution. It does not base success on a submissive world or overcoming forces, but on intelligent preparation and cultivated resilience.

Mental Resilience arguably is the most critical part of a world class performer but what really is “resilience” about?

Oxford Dictionary defines Resilience as “the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties”

The very little things we do not appreciate show us how we may not be aware of certain things :: “Who knows water like a man dying of thirst?” or “Who doesn’t know that sickness is the most potent ambassador for healthy living.”

Making valuable impact is hard, else everybody will be on-board with minimal effort. Solving difficult problems most times require different approaches from the norm and it takes a prepared mind to navigate through the challenges to make sense out of everything to provide an excellent result.

How do we build mental resilience? “That hurt, but I survived it. I don’t want to repeat it, what did I learn so that I don’t repeat it or I can avoid it”? It is not necessarily a pleasant learning experience but it gets us from Point A to Point B which will open doors for us to get through to the remaining 24 alphabets.

Jackson Pollock (known for splattered/drip drawing) reminds me of what bringing something new to life which is against the norm requires dedication.

Remember,
Depth beats breadth any day of the week and hard-work beats talent almost every time.

See you all at the top.