Achieve (Reverb10, Day 28)

December 28 – Achieve
What’s the thing you most want to achieve next year? How do you imagine you’ll feel when you get it? Free? Happy? Complete? Blissful? Write that feeling down. Then, brainstorm 10 things you can do, or 10 new thoughts you can think, in order to experience that feeling today.

(Author: Tara Sophia Mohr)

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I've had really insightful conversations with a few male friends over the course of the past week. In each instance, we've ended up discussing how best to move on from a difficult situation - how to achieve a balance so that you neither dwell for too long nor blast forward unhealthily. As one of them astutely put it, "Life is, in the end, about how you deal with the moments of instability." So this year, I want to achieve resilience.

There's no one trick to being resilient. Both your strategy and underlying tactics will change depending on what you are trying to move past - a failed relationship or friendship, the end of a job, the realization that you might not achieve what you set out to do. Perhaps even the realization that you aren't the type of person you always hoped you'd be.

But resilience does have one common thread regardless of the situation: consciousness. Forcing yourself to accept that something difficult happened. Then, reflecting honestly on how it happened, who was at fault, how your character and judgment may have affected the situation. Finally, the ability to move past with purpose so your internal cues are not directed by damage or uncertainty.

Time and circumstance can chip away at the person you intend to be, if you don't stop them. Resilience is about wading through at your own pace so you can learn from your mistakes while keeping both eyes on the future.

So - how will I feel when I "achieve resilience"? Probably healthy, whole, alive, grateful. Less guilty, confused, and cynical. It could be pretty life-changing, so I intend to start right now.

Thanks to Reverb for forcing me into intimacy on this page. Yikes was this a difficult one.