Resilience Leaks
Since I've been thinking and writing so much about resilience lately, I am noticing some of my habits in a new way: as "resilience leaks." Certain things I do drag me down by making multiple things less awesome than they could be.
For example, I am impatient. My drive to “get things done” does make me productive, but it also leads me toward negative feelings like irritation, frustration, and judgmentality, which drain my energy and put dings in my relationships. More insidiously, impatience masks progress. I fail to fully appreciate my incremental progress because it’s so…incremental.
I now see my impatience as a resilience leak because it has multiple negative consequences. It robs me of joy, makes me feel frustrated (which really means powerless), hurts my relationships, and steals energy that could have been spent making progress toward my goals. Plus it makes me look like an ass.
Alcohol is another of my resilience leaks. I know full well that when I have wine with dinner, I eat too much, don't sleep well, and skip important parts of my bedtime routine, like brushing my teeth or taking my nighttime meds. But do I have the wine anyway? Yup, sometimes I drink anyway. Next morning I wake up with low energy, fuzzy teeth, extra weight and a bit of guilt. Alcohol is a resilience leak for me, physically and emotionally.
Here’s a third. I am honest and truthful - to a fault. Part of this is just a healthy ethical commitment to telling the truth. But in telling the truth, I can sometimes be overly blunt, which can hurt the other person. Their hurt is revealed to me sooner or later, whereupon I descend into a private hell of guilt and shame which lasts for days. I lose time, energy, headspace and mental health when this happens. Therefore my bluntness is a resilience leak. It affects me negatively in multiple domains.
We don't have to be perfect. We are human. Seeing my poorer habits as "leaks" from which resilience is seeping takes the judgement out of it. A leak in this view is not a failure or a character flaw - it is simply a leak that needs to be plugged, like plumbing. Plugging our leaks will lead us toward to better outcomes and happier, healthier, more resilient lives.
