Resilience is Your Ally

Bounce_lifeResilience. Mental Toughness. Agility. All characteristics naturally associated with leadership.

Being enamored with words, I discovered the origin of the word resilience is the Latin word resilire, which means to spring back or rebound. Buoyancy. Now there’s a goal that makes me smile: to become more buoyant.

Resilience is your ally.

Imagine how your world would improve if you could truly forgive and forget when someone offends you. That’s resilience. Imagine your world if you could learn from mistakes and move forward without beating yourself up. That’s resilience. Imagine your world if you could find the best in every situation – even the hard ones you would never choose. That’s also resilience.

Since everything happens in the head first, resilience starts in your thought life. I’ve always figured a challenge is an optimist’s destiny_fulfilledname for a problem. In another vocabulary search, I learned that “challenge” literally means false accusation. The word can be traced back through the Middle English calenge and Old French chalenge, then back to the Latin calumniari. (I know- I’m a bonafide word geek.) They all mean “accuse falsely.” The reality is, every challenge to the advancement of your destiny is not the truth!

Napoleon Hill, author of Think and Grow Rich, wrote “Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.” I have clung to that truth through some rotten times and seen the rewards of hanging on until the tide changed.

Challenges build mental toughness which is often the necessary margin for victory. Discouragement is an enemy of your destiny. Your own negative thinking can produce lies to distract, deter and ultimately stop you. Leaders learn to discern and use truth as a weapon to build the muscle of the soul.

“Life can be a rocky road. The challenge is to not let it grind you into dust, but to polish you into a bright gem.” ~Milton Fogg

Resilience embraces faith and stirs up hope. Don’t think for even one minute that faith and hope are fluffy, ambiguous elements. Hope propels us into the future, like an unseen slingshot. In fact, when you fix your eyes on what is unseen, you’re touching the realm of your destiny.

The audacity of hope in the face of obstacles, not the least of which are fear and unbelief, holds inestimable power. “Inside each of us are powers so strong, treasures so rich, possibilities so endless, that to command them all to action would change the history of the world.”

Resilience will be your ally in the coming year.

Rise to Resilience. Join me for an interview with Jennifer Clark, author of 166 Days: My Journey Through Darkness to hear her words of wisdom on this subject. A Lunch and Learn Session is available at no cost on Tuesday, January 6 at 12:30 PM CT. Register Here.

1 thought on “Resilience is Your Ally”

  1. I needed to read that as we are at the door of a new year. You are right, everything starts in our thoughts. May I keep the distractions of discouragement out of my thoughts, and trust Him to open unseen doors.

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