Finding Resilience: An Attitude of Abundance

September 29, 2022 Mike MacConnell

I come into contact regularly with people in crisis. Tension is extreme and resiliency most needed when their emotional resources are most drained. It might be a parent in the midst of a separation wondering “How will I provide for my children? Am I destined to a life of loneliness?”

The uncertainty can be terrifying. For some it is traumatic, prompting resentment and a bitter feeling that the situation, or maybe life as a whole, is unjust and unfair. But the following quotation from Hamlet happens to be true: “There’s nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.” It’s only bad if you believe it to be.

The stories we tell ourselves become self-fulfilling prophecies. If you believe you are a decent person with sufficient resources, you will be more likely to willingly accept hardship and thereby find ways to succeed. Conversely, by focusing on what you lack, you sap yourself of the will to make an effort.

It isn’t about pretending everything’s OK. Resilience is about making the effort to shift your attitude away from despair. What appears in the moment to be an unremitting disaster can in fact be a wake-up call.

My job as a mediator involves coaching you in those vulnerable moments, when you are most overwhelmed and least able to think clearly. I acknowledge, yes, that things are unpleasant. You didn’t want this. But I encourage you to shift your mindset. Resentful anger or despair prompt you to fixate on what’s wrong and on who’s to blame, preventing you from considering the most effective next steps.

In other words, RESILIENCE CAN BE LEARNED. It’s a matter of attitude.

Stephen Covey, in his 1989 bestseller Seven Habits of Highly Effective People coined the notion of “an abundance versus a scarcity mindset”. In the intervening decades, positive psychology and the success of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy have largely confirmed Covey’s view that mental health is to a large extent determined by how we think about life’s struggles.

So seek out abundance. This isn’t magical thinking. You recognize the problem and face it squarely, but direct your attention toward the resources at hand that ARE available, rather than lamenting those that aren’t.

Here are a few additional suggestions about how to convert your conflict into connection and unwanted change into new growth.

List resources available to you, both inside and out.

· See this change as an opportunity to fix what’s wrong with your life.

· Be grateful for what is going well.

· Seek out people who have a buoyant attitude toward life and hardship.

· Accept that resolving conflict can benefit both sides.

An abundance mindset will help you grow from resentment to resilience and from victim to victor.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mike MacConnell, founder of Reflective Mediation, is an accredited family mediator, conflict coach, educator and author. He is the highest-ranked mediator on Google in the greater Toronto area, with over 180 5-star reviews. To book your free consultation click here.

To Speak or Not to Speak – That Is the Question (When To Press Pause)

October 24, 2021 Mike MacConnell

“I try not to react, but one day I’m afraid I’m going to burst. Arguing just makes it worse.”

Every couple struggles at times to communicate. Some boil in silence; others snap back defensively. But lasting connection is built out of small, daily, often unnoticed efforts of patience and restraint that enable you to listen with respect and speak your mind clearly.

Instead of cold forbearance and withdrawal or hot counter-attack, try pivoting instead toward genuine curiosity about the other person’s feelings. Listening with deep sincerity is the first step toward an honest conversation. That’s when a couple can collaborate.

It’s hard to know how and when to speak, yet at some point, speak we must. The challenge to decide when to speak and when to let it pass requires an effort. Here are a few tips to make it easier.

If you tend to push at difficult topics:

Ask yourself about your intention. Are you trying to prove you’re right, explain yourself or push to a solution? If so, save your words for later.

If your goal is to work through a problem and to do so together, then the following tips help direct the conversation toward a deeper understanding:

· Inquire into their feelings and what matters to them right now

· Ask about what they would have liked, what they wish would have happened

· Name something specific you observed and ask what its impact was on them

· Summarize what you are hearing to check in if you are hearing correctly

If you tend to avoid difficult topics:

If silence is your fallback, try to keep in mind that all emotions are legitimate. They deserve to be heard. More than that, they offer a window into our deepest needs. Speaking about them will accelerate you and your partner’s awareness of what matters.

Negative emotions rise out of healthy needs that aren’t being met. They are worth exploring together to find more skilful ways to meet them. To get a healthy conversation going, the points above will help you to “get” what matters to the other. But chances are, you haven’t been heard. To help them “get” your viewpoint regarding the issue or conflict at hand:

· Begin with a positive quality of the other that is honest and relevant

· Identify the emotional impact, for you, of a specific thing that happened

· Identify the underlying need, belief or value that matters to you and caused the feeling to arise

· Ask the other person to summarize what they have heard you say

· Inquire about their comments or questions and viewpoint

Beware of concluding too quickly that because you’re struggling you must be with the wrong person. Struggle sparks change and motivates growth. Resenting or avoiding the hard conversations can cause you to miss the fact that those difficulties can take you to a deeper place of intimacy and understanding. We need to be tested to discover who we are capable of becoming.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

3 Steps to Befriending Stress

April 25, 2021 Mike MacConnell

In last month’s blog on Kelly McGonigal’s bestseller The Upside of Stress I summarized her argument that, contrary to popular belief, stress can be healthy, if we shift our relationship to it.

She isn’t suggesting that stress is always good for us. On the contrary, she points out that humans (and all social mammals) are capable of exhibiting a hardwired “defeat response” to extreme stress, typified by loss of appetite, depression and even suicide. Stressors are particularly harmful when an individual feels trapped, depleted and isolated from others.

Yet the same stress that harms you can become a catalyst for growth. McGonigal offers three practical, evidence-based strategies for converting unwanted stress into “post traumatic growth”. The hardiness to benefit from adversity appears to come naturally to some people. For those of us who lack that gift, it’s encouraging to know resilience can be learned.

We met Bridget in a previous blog, a single mother suffering from the stress of working at home while homeschooling her children through the pandemic. Let’s apply McGonigal’s three suggestions to see how Bridget’s stressful challenges could help her become stronger.

Step One: Tend and Befriend

The fight-or-flight stress response makes us want to withdraw from others. One way to build resilience is to cultivate a “tend and befriend” mindset, resisting the impulse to self-isolate and instead connecting and inquiring into the welfare of others and offering them help. When we engage with others, increasing our awareness of their pain and focusing on bigger-than-self goals, our biochemistry has been shown to shift. Studies have regularly shown that social contact activates the body’s production of oxytocin (the body’s “cuddle drug”, an enhancer of sociability) dopamine (a neurotransmitter associated with pleasure and vitality) and serotonin (which stabilizes mood, counteracting depression, anxiety and agitation).

Bridget decides to try to overcome her loneliness by organizing a Zoom mothers’ group in the evening after her kids have gone to bed. The moms share best practices for keeping kids meaningfully occupied and exchange easy recipes. Exhausted, they share stories of running on empty, yet often end by telling Bridget how helpful the circle has been for them.

Step Two: Express Your Stress

Many of us have bury our pain and hide it from others. McGonigal presents research showings that it is more healthy to be open about your struggles, sharing your story in all its distress with interested others. We need to be selective, sharing at appropriate times with those who genuinely care. The effort to articulate your struggles provides an outlet that not only helps build connection, it helps you to see your stressors from a different angle, perhaps drawing out helpful perspectives and insights from family and friends.

Bridget becomes close friends with June, with one of the mothers from the Zoom group. They meet online or exchange phone calls once, sometimes twice a week to unload. It isn’t all complaining. Listening to one another’s struggles they realize how much they have in common, laughing at things the children have said and joking at times that their emotional survival skills could fill a self-help manual.

Step Three: Find Restorative Stories

Narratives that reaffirm the possibility of resilience have been shown to improve the ability to recover from stress. We can select these kinds of stories not only by limiting our consumption of toxic media, but by seeking out stories (true and fictional) that portray redemptive struggles. In our personal lives we can pay closer attention to the resourcefulness we hear in the stories told by family and friends, even as we attend to their pain. Also, let’s not overlook evidence of emotional strength and success that is present in the memories from our past.

The calls with June have taken on a new tone. Bridget has joined the IVOH (Images and Voices Of Hope) Facebook group and found other self-help websites with tips for helping her friend. She listens now for evidence of June’s resilience, and points out examples of qualities that have made June such a gifted parent. The new tone of the conversation helps them both feel stronger, with June often returning the favour.

Directing her attention toward realistic, positive thoughts has become an uplifting practice, with connection to nature as the way to get there. She takes brisk walks in the park, breathing deeply and observing nature, experiencing each time a positive change in her mood and perspective. She almost feels like thanking her stress for the motivation to get outside.

Stress hasn’t ended for Bridget, but thanks to a shift in her mindset, stress has shifted its meaning. Would she prefer the stress and the pandemic to end? Of course, she would. In the meantime, by changing her relationship to stress she has come to feel less helpless, less lonely, more enthusiastic and empowered.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR