Resilience

Living from the heart, creative living, is one battle after another against Resistance.

Resistance will inevitably win some battles.

As long as Resistance doesn't win the war, then we're good.

But when Resistance does win, our greatest ally is Resilience.

Resilience is how quickly we get back up after Resistance knocks us down.

Great Resilience = Quick Recovery

Resilience is important because Resistance is crafty.

It'll invent some new way to trip us up.

It'll distract us with some new shiny object.

It'll find a new blindspot where it can stick its foot out and trip us.

Resistance is a formidable opponent, especially if we wish to live our best life.

We can't expect perfection of ourselves.

We may get distracted and procrastinate.

We may forget something we planned to do.

We may get pulled away by something important that we couldn't see coming, like a family emergency.

Or a sick dog needing to go out every hour, on the hour.

Resistance is looking for every opening to derail us.

Resistance would be easier to deal with if every day was exactly the same.

We could figure out the best approach and just keep it consistent.

But each day is different.

We feel different.

We have different events planned.

We have things happen to us that we never could have planned or prepared for.

It's in that daily variation that Resistance is able to wedge its fingers into the cracks of our focus, grab our attention, and pull us from our calling.

It can stop us from showing up and doing our work.

Today, Resistance used Distraction in the form of YouTube, games on my phone, email, and more to try to keep me from my daily writing practice.

My fur-daughter Daisy was sick this morning and has needed to go out every hour to release her sickly doggy doo-doo.

One moment she'd be laying on her bed, totally knocked out, and the next moment she'd be up and running for the door.

And each time, I would be in the middle of something.

Journaling, walking on the treadmill, and doing whatever else I intend to do as a part of my usual morning routine.

You know, the stuff that leads right into my writing time.

And she'd also have to go out during my writing time as well.

We can't control everything.

Stuff happens.

Sometimes a sickie-poopie-bootie baby just need our help.

We can't just let that smelly-belly-bobo scratch at the door until she can't hold it anymore.

We have to stop what we are doing, even if it's our most important task of the day.

We take that chonky-monkey outside to do her business, even though it interrupts us and cuts into the time that was deliberately set aside for our own important things.

We make it work someway, somehow.

And we don't blame the stinky-booty-bihhh.

No point in blaming things that are outside of our control.

It's better to accept what's happening, and instead of throwing the baby out with the bath water, we dump the bath water and get back to taking care of the baby–which, in this case, I guess kinda applies to both our creative practice and also the dog.

Resistance will try to convince us, "oh welp, my whole morning is ruined, so I might as well get on Instagram for two hours or play video games or watch YouTube."

Resilience though, if we listen to it, says, "that wasn't ideal, but we can still make this work. Let's focus on making this work. Come on, doing something is better than doing nothing."

So here's my something.

I hope you like it!

Hasta mañana,
Acme