Episode 254: Building Emotional Resilience by Understanding Who You Are and Embracing Your Strength: Part 1

In Life, the Truth, and Being Free, Steve Maraboli says, “Life doesn’t get easier or more forgiving, we get stronger and more resilient.”

In this crazy world we live in we come up against things people in no other time have had to deal with. Our mental and emotional resources are taxed with mental illness, with severe deviations like all the confusion around gender, like the high suicide rates, like access to all sorts of depravity with the click of a button and the knowledge of all the terrors taking place across the world. We have experienced the trials of being secluded during a pandemic, and that negative voice in our heads telling us we are worthless seems to be at shouting level. Emotional Resilience is something we need like never before. I really like what Steve said, though life doesn’t get easier or more forgiving, we get stronger and more resilient, but like any skill, that often takes intentional work on our part - so let’s fight for our lives and our peace of mind. Let’s learn and practice resilience. Stay tuned for Part 1 of this 5-part emotional resilience series: Understanding who you are and embracing your strength.

I joined an emotional resilience group a few years back. There was a physical therapist, a composer, a nurse, a home economics teacher and me, a Realtor. We did not know each other before hand, and we were doing this course on-line because it was during Covid. This group was put together by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in an effort to support people in learning emotional resilience during a hard time, but it turns out, of course, that emotional resilience isn’t something just for Covid sequestered people, it is a set of skills we all need in order to navigate life successfully and not end up shattered on the emotional rocks at the bottom of life’s cliffs.

The class focused on learning and practicing spiritual and practical skills to better care for the body, mind, emotions and relationships. We did the class as a council, sharing personal experiences across our Zoom windows. We made phone calls to support each other outside of class, and we practiced different skills like healthy thinking patterns, managing stress, overcoming anger….all the good stuff. Everyone took different things from the sessions, because we’re all at different places on the path - we need different things. And, like that class, everyone will get something different from this series as well.

As we close out 2023 I have put together 5 episodes that glean some of my biggest take-aways from this 188 page 10 week course. I hope these will support you in your own quest for choosing emotional resilience skills. I’ll share stories, use content I’ve pulled from the manual, and I have experts on each of these episodes to share some perspectives beyond my own. Take from it what resonates with you, that you may navigate your life with a bit more resilience. One step at a time.

What is emotional resilience? As a child I pictured my future with all the good things. I pictured happy relationships, a nice home, a successful career, lots of friends. As children we don’t know or understand how deeply difficult life will be in the future. We don’t picture the divorce, or the depression, the anxiety, the cancer diagnosis, the death of someone we love, the sexual assault, the disloyalty of a friend. We don’t picture the emotional gauntlet that we will be forced to navigate because of the nature of being in the world. Emotional resilience is the ability to adapt to emotional challenges with courage and faith, helping yourself, helping others, and reaching out for additional help when needed. We throw around the words “Emotional Resilience” every where - it’s a catch phrase, but let me just repeat that definition: Emotional resilience is the ability to adapt to emotional challenges with courage and faith, helping yourself, helping others, and reaching out for additional help when needed.

The mind is where all the battles of life are won or lost. Choosing to strengthen our mental capacity and mental muscle in order to better deal with the real journey of the hero, is a choice to arm yourself for the battle. Learning emotional resilience is the armor. 

Kathryn Reynolds is a licensed marriage and family therapist. She practices solution-focused therapy and is passionate about helping women with anxiety or depression regain their sense of identity, expression, and purpose, so I pulled her in for this series to get her take and expertise on some of the things we’ll be discussing in the next 5 episodes.

I asked her what she thought emotional resilience looked like:

Listen to the podcast to hear her comments.

The ability to rise. What mindsets can help us pull on that strength when we need it?

In this episode there are 3 points I wish to make that will help us as we learn about emotional resiliency: First - Remember who you are. Second - Spiritual growth and learning is the WHOLE reason we are here. Third - We get to choose how we respond to the things we encounter in life, and with that choosing we build our characters one struggle at a time. These, I hope, will set a foundation for the following four episodes in this series that get more specific with emotional resilience techniques.

Let’s start with #1 -

Our first step to finding strength, self-love, and resilience is to know who we are and who we are not. Let me share some quotes to lay this groundwork - 

 In the Doctrine and Covenants it says, “Remember the worth of souls is great in the sight of God.” 

Boyd K. Packer said, “You are a child of God. He is the father of your spirit. Spiritually you are of noble birth, the offspring of the King of Heaven. Fix that truth in your mind and hold to it.” 

Dallin H. Oaks said, “Be careful how you characterize yourself. Don’t characterize or define yourself by some temporary quality. The only single quality that should characterize us is that we are a son or daughter of God.” 

One of the greatest battles we fight is against the mindset that we are unworthy. Even unworthy before God. Satan uses discouragement to cause us to doubt God’s love for us and to doubt our divine nature. This is a powerful play on his part, because if he can make us believe that we are nothing, and as he did in the Garden of Eden when he told Adam to go hide, if he can get us to hide from God, then we, of our own will, choose to separate ourselves from our greatest source of strength and spiritual reinforcement. From a stand point of war (in this case a spiritual war) that is the equivalent of getting you to leave the walls of your fortified city and wander, confused, out onto the battlefield. That make us easy prey.

When I look at my boys I see soooo much! I see tremendous beauty, talent, ability, potential. They often shrug off my praise because it’s just coming from mom, but on the contrary, this is exactly the eyes they should look through to see their glory - the eyes who see it clearest. I think about how much I want my boys to accept their strength, beauty and power. How much I want them to live into their obvious greatness, how much I want them to be unaffected by the critics and insecurities brought on by society, culture, expectation, and I know God wants the same for me - that I will accept, not doubt my own glorious ability and potential. A parent seeing a child for all they are and all they could be and hoping that they will embrace it with boldness and not shrink in fear. We can relate, and I think is also helps us understand what God hopes for us too. 

Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf, apostle in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints said, “Much of the confusion we experience in this life comes from simply not understanding who we are.” 

The Apostle Paul wrote a hymn to Charity, translated in part it says, “for now we see through a glass darkly.” The original actually reads, “We see in a mirror dimly.” In other words, we do not fully see ourselves or understand who we are, it is why we seek to know who we are, to know our relationship to God. Some of the big questions we ask as we navigate life: Who am I? Why am I here? Once we embrace the answers we become stronger. Who am I? A child of God. Why am I here: To learn, grow, experience.

Spencer W. Kimball, past president and prophet of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints said, “God is your father. He loves you. He and your Mother in heaven value you beyond any measure. You are unique. One of a kind, made of the eternal intelligence which gives you claim upon eternal life. Let there be no question in your mind about your value as an individual.” 

If we will accept this premise, really accept it, that we are loved by a benevolent god, that we are his and he is ours, we will most certainly make different choices. We will find courage rather than fear. We will square our shoulders, even when we doubt. We will have the spirit of power and of love and of a sound mind, as Timothy said in the New Testament.

My 2nd point: Our progress spiritually is the reason we are here. Orson F. Whitney said, “No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is wasted. It ministers to our education, to the development of such qualities as patience, faith, fortitude and humility. All that we suffer and all that we endure, especially when we endure patiently, builds up our characters, purifies our hearts, expands our souls, and makes us more tender and charitable…and it is through sorrow and suffering, toil and tribulation, that we gain the education that we come here to acquire. So, the gauntlet, while difficult isn’t all bad. There is purpose.”

Plato, a voice from Greek philosophy - believed that our paramount moral duty was to become like God, as far as was possible. This means that we will have to know many things, experience many things, be pushed into the workshop of life where we can try out such things as patience, love, forgiveness, faith, etc.

The Apostle Peter, a voice from the New Testiment - noted that we seek to emulate the divine. This will cost us everything. Acquiring divine nature is not for the weak. It is a space of meekness to gain understanding.

Enoch’s - A voice from the Book of Mormon - experience with God, that he sees him weep over his creations, shows that God deeply loves and suffers with us. But God rejoices and commands Enoch to rejoice also when Christ is come to heal and create a returned space to Heavenly Father. This is a comfort as we face the painful stretching of spiritual growth.

My 3rd point: Let’s bring things into our own control now - less divine and more about how we navigate the path. In all aspects of life - the good, the bad and the ugly, we always get to choose how we respond. We always get to choose the story we create about it. We can believe we are victims, or we can choose to use our agency to choose better mindsets. This puts a lot of responsibility on us for regulating our emotions and taking responsibility. So, sometimes it’s not a favorite, but let me share this quote by David A. Bednar, Apostle in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. “As sons and daughters of our Heavenly Father, we have been blessed with the gift of moral agency, the capacity for independent action and choice. Endowed with agency, you and I are agents, and we primarily are to act and not just be acted upon. To believe that someone or something can make us feel offended, angry, hurt or bitter diminishes our moral agency and transforms us into objects to be acted upon. As agents, however, you and I have the power to act and to choose how we will respond.” 

I wanted to get Kathryn’s take on this idea as well, and she clarified things a bit - I think her comments keep this idea real. Here’s what she said:

Tune into the podcast to hear her comments.

I firmly believe that it is in the struggle to do so that we build mental and emotional muscle - and often it’s where we find the gifts that are waiting for us. It’s like a treasure hunt for the persistent. So if we start with awareness - notice when we have “natural man” responses like blame, complain, find fault, doubt, give up, procrastinate, anger, self-pity, fear, etc. and then when we see these things in ourselves we get to choose a better response. 

In episode 241 Samantha Hawkins, she shares the story of not getting a job she felt she was qualified for - she had the choice to be angry, to blame others, to let self-doubt creep in, to quit trying, or she could rally, get feedback, learn new skills that would help her get the job next time. Here’s a clip from her story. 

Tune into this episode to hear the clip from Samantha

You can see from her example that the mindset of blame and quitting is going to get very different results from the approach she took of making moves to get where she wanted - taking action to get better instead of just quitting when she was told no. This is emotional resilience - navigating touch emotional spaces well. Rejection is a tough emotional space.

Knowing who we are, why we are here, and that we have the power of choice answers some of the most pressing questions of life. With those answers we are empowered to face the struggles of living with more power and more peace. Knowing these things does not remove the challenges, it just helps us find strength in the navigation of hard things - it strengthens our emotional and mental resiliency. Your challenge this week is to deeply consider these things and see how they strengthen you. If these are true, how does that change your current mental approach to facing the challenges. I also would love to have you consider where you’re dealing with an emotional challenge and take your power to shift a mindset to serve you - shift into bouncing back, persistence, learning. 

Thanks for being here today, and thanks to NFA Coaching and her 5-star review titled: Inspiring the World with Meaningful Stories! “Such a wonderful podcast! Lori asks questions that highlight the heart and soul of people’s journeys. So relatable and insightful! What a gift this podcast brings to the world.”

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Have a great intentional two weeks, until our next episode - Part 2 of the 5 part series on Emotional Resilence - Next we’ll be talking about healthy thinking patterns.