How To Build Resilience When Adversity Hits
How To Build Resilience WHen Adversity Hits
“What do you see here?”
“Not the color, but what do you see?”
I look into the audience. I see empty silence and expressionless stares. In their faces, I see the black screen that is behind me, the one I’ve asked them to describe.
“What do you see?”
“Darkness?”
“Emptiness?”
“Nothingness?”
I feel as though I am walking the street, underneath the stares of boarded-up windows. No hand raised. No answer spoken.
Light and dark.
Sunshine and shadows.
Everything and nothing.
Of all our senses, there is a reason sight is the most dominant. Our eyes control and define how we not only see the world, but perceive the world. We look at life differently in the light, as opposed to darkness.
Why?
Through my inner-nerd, I learned light is visually perceived radiant energy and that the light we see comes from two places — the actual source, or the reflection of that source. It is light reflected from objects to our eyes that allow us to see. Changes to light changes our perception.
I loved camping as a child. I still do. I would spend hours exploring the woods underneath a sun in full shine, the light guiding me through a symphony of nature’s sounds. Then dusk arrived, followed by night. Even armed with a small flashlight, I never wandered in the dark alone.
The sounds I could no longer see changed into a siren of unknown danger, tricking my mind into the improbable, if not outright impossible. Once, I swear I caught a glimpse of Sasquatch, playing hide-and-seek between the trees. Then again, it could have been my shaky hand, the one holding the flashlight.
Mental Lesson: How To Build Resilience When Adversity Hits
Most times, we only see what we are looking for. By habit. Another vice? Light, and dark, changes our viewpoints of what is before our eyes. But it doesn't have to be so.
Mental strength is knowing you have the tools, the capability, to step forward when the darkness comes. When adversity hits, our first instinct is to retreat from the darkness. The uncertainty, the unfamiliarity, the unknown. We retreat back to our Dead Zone because the brain likes to bask in the sunshine of what’s known, what’s familiar.
I think of the scene from The Lion King when Mufasa is showing Simba his kingdom, “Everything the light touches is our kingdom.”
Simba asks, “What about that shadowy place?”
Mufasa warns him never to go there.
Our brain plays Mufasa every time we face the unknown. Fear’s job is to protect us, and it guards the borders of what’s known and familiar. Curiosity and fear both meet us at the edge of the light, and most of the time, fear speaks first, keeping us from stepping outside its confines to see what is just beyond what is known to us. Most of that fear is the underlying uncertainty and the fear of failure that is tied to it.
Fear of failure sounds like a single, identifiable thing. It rarely is.
Underneath “fear of failure” is almost always something more specific — fear of debt, fear of judgment, fear of disappointing someone, fear of having to start over. The general fear is a mask. The specific fear is the actual thing running the show.
Once you can name the real source, you take your power back.
In the woods, the shapes between the trees grow bigger the longer they stay in the dark. Shine a light on one, and it becomes what it always was, a tree or a rock, or a branch, something you can walk around.
You need to develop the skill of shining your light in a dark place. This is what resilience is. The more you grow accustomed to walking in those dark places, the easier it is to turn that light on.
The first time you step into the dark, your hand shakes and the beam jumps from tree to tree, chasing every sound. The second time, you recognize a few of the shapes. By the tenth time, you know where the trail bends, where the roots rise up to catch your feet, and how far your light reaches. The dark is the same dark it always was, and you are the one who has changed.
Adversity works the same way. A first setback feels like the whole forest closing in, with every unknown looking like a threat. Each time you face one, name what’s there, and keep walking, the dark becomes a little more familiar. Your eyes adjust faster, your hand holds the light steadier, and you reach for the switch sooner.
Resilience is built one trip into the dark at a time. A flashlight lights the next few steps of the trail, and the next few steps are enough. Point the light at the specific fear, see it for what it is, and take the next step into the shadowy place.
Your perspective shifts your perception, and your perception shapes future perspectives. The way you perceive a situation will determine the way you act on it.
Each time you step into the shadowy place and name what’s there, everything the light touches comes into focus.
Next Rep: Three Ways To Equip Yourself To Shine In The Dark
1. Use the Curiosity Shift at the edge of the light. When adversity hits and you feel the pull back toward your Dead Zone, use one of three curiosity triggers: Interesting. Fascinating. Ridiculous.
“I got moved out of the starting lineup… Interesting.”
“I just missed a 3-foot putt… Fascinating.”
“I just got robbed of a grand slam… Ridiculous.”
Mindset of curiosity helps point our brains to what we can do next, what is in our circle of control, and helps you pinpoint the solution instead of staying stuck in the mistake, the problem, or the adversity. Each word hands your brain a new instruction to look closer. As I shared in The Curiosity Advantage, curiosity softens fear the same way light softens darkness.
2. Build Daily Systems that walk you into the dark. You grow accustomed to the dark by walking in it often, in small doses, before adversity forces you there. Choose one small uncomfortable rep and make it part of your day: the hard conversation, the drill you avoid, the question you hold back in the meeting. Each small trip teaches you the trail, so when the big darkness comes, your hand already knows where the switch is.
3. Take Full Benefit of every trip into the dark. Full Benefit is a saying credited to the Navy SEALs, spoken the moment something goes wrong: the run gets longer, the deal falls through, the plan falls apart. Full Benefit squeezes growth out of adversity. It means you can see things without the confusion of your inner struggle.
Say it in the moment: Full Benefit. Then, once you’re through, ask what the dark revealed, what you learned about the trail, and what you’ll carry into the next one. Every setback you take Full Benefit from becomes a landmark you recognize the next time the lights go out.
Final Buzzer
The dark is where we jump to conclusions and assumptions, the place we judge others as well as ourselves. The dark is what alters our perception of things, of places, of people. But it’s our choice in how we deal with the darkness in our lives.
Whether it’s the woods at night or a black screen on a stage, the darkness hands us an empty space, and our perception decides what fills it.
We can look at a black screen and see — and say — nothing. Or, we can look at a black screen and see it for what it truly is.
Challenging you head-on and always in your corner,
— Coach VJ
This is the work I bring into locker rooms, boardrooms, and team environments.
If you’re looking to bring a mental performance message on confidence, pressure, and belief to your team or organization, you can connect with me here.
Check out my speaker tour dates here.
I also offer 1-on-1 mental performance coaching. You can learn more or book a conversation here.
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