Running On ... Hope and Resilience!
by Rosalind Joffe, M. Ed. (originally published
in "Out
in Front," Feb. 2007)
My friend, Trisha, and I were catching up over coffee.
She told me that she’s been running on empty
– the warning lights are on. Trisha has been
going full throttle for the past year, putting all her
efforts into building her business. She said that she
knows that she’s running out of gas and that it
could become a problem.
 She hasn’t been watching what she
eats and is gaining weight, she hasn’t been going
to the gym to work out and she skipped her yearly check
up with the doctor. She knows this isn’t good
but she just can’t change old behavior.
She said, “I’d always thought that a car
should maintain itself but I found out I was wrong when
I actually ran out of gas. I remember yelling at the
car, telling it to go when my four year old daughter
suggested that maybe we’d run out of gas. I honestly
never thought it could happen! Luckily there was a gas
station down the road. I didn’t learn though.
To this day, I never fill up until it’s almost
at empty.”
But Trisha, who turned 50 last year, can manage to
run this way and not stall out. She’s healthy
and can always refuel to catch up. She’s willing
and able to take the risks. Her body and her mind are
still resilient.
When you live with a chronic illness, however, you
can’t operate with a low gas tank. It’s
a slippery slope from ¼ full to empty -- and
that can be scary. It’s fear that stops us
from trying. Do you skip the trip to Alaska or even
the dinner out– reject the big project that’s
coming down the pipeline at work – order online
rather than ever go to the Mall? Are you afraid to
take risks, afraid you won’t bounce back and instead
choose to withdraw rather than pursue a life worth living?
It’s difficult to know when you can push yourself
harder. How do you decide how much is too much to do?
But, I’ve noticed that living in fear can be
just as bad for your health as running on empty.
We need to cultivate our hope in what is possible. And
nurture out resilience, the ability to bounce back from
the punches, to keep ourselves in shape, to stay physically
and mentally healthy. It’s particularly difficult
to maintain mental resilience when your body refuses
to comply.
It is resilience and hope that encourages us to
take risks that allow us to thrive, not just survive.
This gets put to the test every day when you try to
hold down a job while living with a chronic illness.
Recently, a client sent me some research done by Marshall
Raskind,Ph.D and his colleagues at Schwab
Learning regarding how risk and resilience in children
with learning disabilities could be predictors of vocational
success. I think their findings apply just as well to
adults with chronic illness.
Briefly, the traits they identified as critical
to risk taking and resilience are:
- Self-awareness
- Proactivity
- Perseverance
- Goal setting
- Presence and use of effective social support systems
- Emotional coping strategies
I’ll bet that those of you who don’t live
with either learning disabilities or a chronic illness
are saying to yourselves, “Ok, but isn’t
this true for everyone, even ‘normal’ people?
" Yes. I think it is. It’s just that when
you live with a condition that creates even more challenges
in life, such as learning disabilities or chronic illness,
you have to use everything you’ve got.
As the poker players say, You need to go “all
in”. You’ve got to take risks and cultivate
resilience even more than the next guy (or woman).
Do you agree? Do you want to improve your capacity for
resilience? Email
me to talk about the program I'd suggest that can
help you develop both.
“Living with chronic illnesses for 30 years
has taught me how critical work can be to health and
well-being. That's why I'm committed to giving people
who live with chronic illness the tools they need to
be employed.” - Rosalind Joffe, CICoach.com.
Reprinted with permission.
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