Life coach and spiritual mentor, Afsheen Shah, teaches how we can become more resilient through self-love. We can cultivate resilience by embracing who we truly are and learning to love ourselves through the failures.
I’ve always thought of myself as a pretty resilient person. I even prided myself on it in my younger days. When others wanted to quit, I wanted to keep going. When others thought it was time to walk away, I would convince myself to stay and try a little harder. And when others started to break down, I “controlled” my emotions and held in the tears that were secretly screaming to be released. Somewhere along the way I had convinced myself that being strong and resilient meant never letting others – or yourself for that matter- witness your true emotions. I thought (very mistakenly) that I had it all figured out and if I could stay in control of myself and my feelings, nothing would be able to hurt me. The truth was that I had nothing figured out. The hurt I was trying so hard to avoid didn’t go away, it just hid itself a little deeper. The facade I’d been portraying as strength and resilience had nothing to do with either of those qualities. If anything, it was little more than a display of my inner stubborn streak, combined with an unwillingness to be wrong or vulnerable.
True resilience – the kind that’s impenetrable in even the most challenging of circumstances – requires a willingness to be open with others and most importantly, yourself. True resilience requires the ability to acknowledge your pain and face it head-on instead of pretending it’s not really there. And most of all, it requires the ability to love yourself so deeply that you’re no longer afraid to keep moving forward even if you have to do it alone, and even if the rest of the world seems to doubt you. That’s the type of resilience I have finally achieved. That’s the type of resilience I wish for you.
So how do we cultivate that impenetrable resilience? We start by focusing on self love. And that means putting your own needs and well-being first. It also means facing off with the person you have been..until now…so you can become the person you want to be in the future. It means cultivating a strong belief in yourself and your ability to handle all of life’s challenges, whether big or small. And most of all, it means having firm boundaries and an even firmer commitment to showing up for yourself, even on the days you don’t feel capable of showing up for others.
When I first started practicing more self-love (and a lot less people-pleasing), it didn’t feel good. It felt selfish and wrong somehow. I had always thought of self-love as being synonymous with arrogance and cockiness. But the true definition of self-love has nothing to do with either of those things. True self love is about self acceptance and fully embodying your worth by embracing who you truly are. True self-love means completely – and lovingly – accepting yourself and recognizing that each moment of your life -whether it was good, bad or ugly – has led you to where you are now right at this moment- which by the way, is also exactly where you are supposed to be right now.
Why is this so important? Because once we learn how to truly love and accept who we are, we can finally stop second guessing all of our past decisions and mistakes and beating ourselves up over the way things “should” have gone or “could” have gone had we made a different decision. The fact is that hindsight is always 20/20 and so-called “obvious” things often become clearer after the fact because they become more visible then. And maybe the mistake is precisely what was needed to bring them to light so that they could become a catalyst for change. Ironically, that’s also where growth and resilience comes in. It’s not our successes in life that create inner strength – it’s the failures. And if we can learn to love ourselves through the failures instead of beating ourselves up for not getting things right, we can cultivate resilience.
If I hadn’t learned to focus on self-love, I would probably still be people-pleasing and saying yes when I should say no and feeling defeated and emotionally drained regularly. Which is how I felt for almost all of my twenties and a good part of my thirties. And the self-beating and self-loathing that I felt as a result of that was anything but resilient. Quite the opposite. It was the foundation for what would lead me to a physical and emotional breakdown. But every breakdown can lay the foundation for a breakthrough if we allow it to be. My breakthrough started with self love.
There are still times I see myself sliding back into my old patterns – but it’s much easier to put a stop to it if it happens now. Mainly because my self-love has gotten stronger over time as has my sense of self. And in the process, my resilience has also gotten stronger – much stronger. I no longer need or seek external validation or input from others when deciding what’s best for me. I also care a lot less about what others may think about me, my path or my life. Mistakes and failures no longer scare me. I know I’ll survive the worst of both and probably come out better on the other side of them.
In many ways, mistakes have become my metaphorical teachers and guides that appear when I need to recalibrate or as a sign to step further and more deeply into my continuing evolution and expansion. They’ve also shown me that life isn’t supposed to be about always getting things right. Sometimes it’s more about being able to keep going…and growing.. even when things go wrong. The greatest growth comes from learning to look inside and love everything we see. Each time we love ourselves enough to keep moving forward, even in the face of failure or disappointment, we plant a seed of resilience that will continue to grow with each new or challenging situation. Over time, that seed takes root and becomes part of who we are.
We’ve all heard the saying into every life some rain must fall. I view resilience much like an umbrella. It won’t stop the rain, but it’ll make a big difference in whether you’re able to stay dry in the storm.
Featured Image Credit: Giulia Bertelli (Unsplash)
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