• Jim Gillette

Tap Into Your Resilience

Stay calm and balanced

More and more, I hear from or meet with people who are very troubled by some circumstances or events that they believe are giving them a hard time or are difficult to deal with. Certainly, in life, there are numerous lessons to be learned and challenges to be met.  Often, things may not “go your way”. But, you can ask yourself what is “your way”. Are you in harmony, in flow?  Can you maintain balance in the midst of turmoil? Do you adapt and regain insight and balance, and go forward with new lessons learned? A vital key to resilience is to understand how life works and how we work. Inside our mind, there is a constant flow of thoughts accompanied by corresponding emotions.  Some of the thoughts just pop up and it is usually easy to let them go on by.  They do so by themselves and are replaced by more thoughts right behind them. Some arise from deep within and are very fundamental impulses like love, compassion, honor, fear, courage. Others are stimulated by outside events. How we experience these thoughts and emotions is our own individual way of how we create each of our own version of reality. What does that mean?  Isn’t our reality Reality.  Well, no. Each one of us walks around with our own version, yet we think it is Reality. There are a set of insight principles that can turn all of this around and give you a much more authentic experience of joy, creativity, and resilience. One of these principles is that of Thought.  This is the energy of action and creation that arises in our consciousness out of a universal field that underlies everything.  Our “thoughts” are made of this energy. All living things have a type and level of this action. The thoughts and emotions in our mind in each and every moment are what we experience as reality.  But, because this thought energy is filtered and formed by our own unique patterns, beliefs, background, memories, and desires, it is all just like a movie on a screen. It is our filters, our movie, our life. Here is the insight that can flip everything upside down and give a completely new perspective, resilience, and your own authentic creativity. A calm center. A place of peace and balance. It is simply that your experience always is inside out, not outside in. Your experiences aren’t caused by something outside of you.  They are always what arise within you. When you realize this, you can step back and take everything with a new understanding of why you may interpret something a certain way and come from a deeper appreciation of your freedom and innate health that resides within each one of us. You can separate yourself from the attachment and identification with your thoughts and move more easily in harmony with the ebb and flow of events.  The events around us are real but we only experience them inside, through our own filters and patterns. Just getting a handle on the principle doesn’t immediately make everything better.  It isn’t used like a tool to apply, but rather as an understanding that has implications that you now appreciate. If you can pause, particularly when you feel some discomfort, and realize these are just fleeting and sometimes recurring thoughts that are how you are viewing reality, you begin to realize you are not trapped or bound by the way you “think things are”. When you have discomfort, ask what is the nature of this experience. What is underneath your experience. Could you let it go? Would you? And when?  Don’t strive to be “Right”.  Let yourself be Free. Having the insight of how we create our own reality, how it is inside us, and how it is our own to improve and become free of, is true resilience. Make a practice of resilience. Your life includes everything you need to live it with enthusiasm.

©2018 by Enthusiasm For Life. 

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