I'm not afraid to Fall

When my daughter was 4 we took her to a fantastic classical roller rink with wooden floors, a organ and the distinctive smell of grease, wood and slurpees in the air. They had a beginners lesson with the kids before the regular skate time where they taught them mostly how to fall well and how to get up. Everything else comes with practice. Flash forward about 6 months later we are on our way to our first family trip to a ice skating rink. I had heard about how its common for children to get their fingers severed after they fall on the ice. I’m trying to block the image from my brain when I hear my sweet girl proudly exclaim “I can’t wait to get there and start falling!!” My mommy brain exploded “what?!? Why?!?!?” She proudly and patiently answered “because that’s how you learn, you can’t learn without falling and I already know how to get myself up”. That memory has come to me when I felt afraid to fall or didn’t think getting up was worth it.

Since then I have learned how incredibly important this pivotal choice can be. When I stretch myself beyond my comfort zone knowing I could fall, I open myself up to potential success as well as the all important opportunity for growth. The trick is in the mindset. As my genius daughter illustrated, expecting to fall as part of the growth process and perceiving falls as actually part of the win rewires our brain to not only accept a fall but celebrate it and use it as a stepping stone.

For more on this, Zadra Rose Ibañez further describes what happens to our brains when we alter our mindsets towards celebrating the win in her Blog . If you are feeling like the only one who fails or falls and has trouble getting back up you can go to the museum of failures. To literally learn how to get up after falling on the ice go here. Finally, for a catchy earworm that will hopefully move you towards taking healthy risks this week, please take a listen to Get up by Superchick .

Facing your fears of falling or failure is one of the steps to resilience training I cover in my groups. Next one is forming in the Spring of 2020. I would love to hear the areas in which you are pushing past your fears of falling.

Embracing Opportunity

In one of my first “professional” jobs at a hospital I had a boss who would infuriate me. I would come to him whining about problems and injustices, throwing them before him like a moody adolescent challenging him to fix it. He would take a deep breath, pause and then ask “what are the opportunities here?” (I swear there was a hint of enthusiasm in his smile like we were choosing a ice cream flavor).   “Are you kidding me?” I would think - fire them or get angry or tell them they are wrong and I’m right...

Over time I got used to this approach and began to appreciate it. This process of looking past the problems and relabeling them as opportunities gave me a new way of gaining control over situations that seemed hopeless. It got to the point where I too got enthusiastic when challenges presented themselves and yes, as my career advanced I used the same techniques, infuriating many others and challenging them to grow in much the same way. I am grateful to my former boss and think of him every time I ask about opportunities and am met with a resistive snarl.

Its true that change, challenges, tragedies and injustices can be awful, hard, horrible and there is nothing wrong with wanting them to poof out of sight so that we can avoid going through them. When my kids were little one of our favorite books was we’re going on a bear hunt by Micheal Rosen and Helen Oxbury the family goes on a bear hunt and they are presented with all kinds of challenges like swamps, snow storms and spooky forests and we’d sing “we can’t go over it, we can’t go under it, we’ll just have to go through it. - swishy swoshy, swishy swoshy..”  While I was never quite sure why it was a good idea for a young family to go on a bear hunt I appreciated their tenacity and willingness to go through each challenge together, come what may. They didn’t look at the murky swamp, consider the potential dangers and turn back, they said lets do this and have a good time while we do it. its a beautiful day and by golly we are going to find a bear.  Many times in my own life I have looked at the road ahead and thought I don’t have it in me to go through this - there has to be another way.  When I have faced the challenges I do come through it stronger like the old saying goes but I’m not unscathed. Changes and challenges can hurt and scar us, growth comes at an emotional cost however, there are also amazing, often unexpected gains and inexplicable beauty on the other side.

Kelly McGonigal in her book the upside of stress as well as in her TED talk addresses how simply changing our mind set towards stressors can have a actual chemical impact on us. She found in study after study that when we view our challenges as opportunities and accept our natural physical/chemical response to stress as a asset, our body rising up to help us, our chemical response is actually healthier as opposed to focusing on the previous negative “killer” views of stress. People who view stress (challenges) as a positive (opportunities) in their life actually live longer, have better relationships and accomplish more. We have choices, all of us, in how we respond to stressful challenges and who we want to become in the face of them.

So   -   What are your opportunities?