You are more resilient than you think!

I am determined to write an article before June is out! My commitment to write an article monthly is being tested this year. But determined I remain.

This year feels like one of those years where we must expect the unexpected! Externally, this seems to be the reality with President Trump as Commander-in-Chief of the USA.

But internally (what we can control), we can get a little derailed by the external, and it takes courage and resolve to keep ‘it all’ together!

I had a couple of disruptions this year, the snakes in my home and a throat infection. First, an update on the snakes. In my last article, I wrote about the 2 snakes in my house. We caught one and never found the second. Hopefully, it found a way out.

But here’s what amazed me about the snake disruption. At first, I was quite apprehensive about ‘living’ with snakes in my home, but with time, I adapted. I was more vigilant than usual, but not in a bad way.

It was not from my fight/flee brain, but from my executive brain that looked at it from a ‘this is my new normal, how best can I navigate this?’ And so far, all has been good.

The second disruption this year was the throat infection I experienced. Luckily, I have an Ear, Nose & Throat doctor who is great. She did a swab of the back of my throat and found 3 different bacteria that decided to make my throat their home.

With some effort, we found antibiotics that were effective for all three strains. However, even after the completion of the antibiotics, I did not feel better. My sinuses remained congested, and I needed to irrigate my nose daily. I went back to my doctor to have another swab done to ensure that the bacteria had gone. Thankfully, they were.

But, according to the medical profession, I had gone from the acute to the chronic phase of my infection. I needed time for my body to heal. With a relatively packed schedule, this was proving difficult. But whenever I could, I rested to allow my body to heal.

Which brings me back to resilience.

Working with the unexpected requires resilience. And we all have our own ways of coping with ‘disruptions’. And the long term outcome is a shift in mindset (growth), increased adaptability and more from the learnings that the disruption brings.

Many times, when friends and family found out about the snakes in our home, almost all reactions were one of the following:

‘I would have left the house’

‘you are brave’

 ‘not sure how you are still living in your home’

And my reply was always – ‘you are more resilient than you think’. Because hypothetical is so different from reality.

Hypothetically, we all have our answers to events, but only when we experience something ourselves would we really know what our reaction is! And at times, reality can be worse than expected but from every experience we become a little more resilient.

A shorter-than-usual article this month to balance last month’s article. 😉

As always, you can reach me at yoga@yoganesadurai.com