“Showing up is 80 percent of life.”

I love this quote, which has been attributed to Woody Allen. It perfectly captures my understanding of resilience. It reminds me of so many images from TV and movies, including "Rocky," "Cool Hand Luke" and countless others. Traditionally, resilience is seen as that quality we find in people who get back up when they are knocked down. I see it more broadly to include the reactions of conscientious people to the daily onslaught of challenges that they impose upon themselves, as well as unforeseen setbacks inflicted by the outside world.

You are faced with many choices every morning. What kind of person are you going to be today? Are you going to be the kind of person who your closest, most honest and most critical friends will admire?  Are you going to examine the principles you espouse and sharply challenge yourself as to whether you are living in accordance to those principles? Will you strive to become the kind of person who even your enemies will admire and respect? Are you going to be the kind of person who has the courage to apologize to those who you have hurt?  Will you have the courage to look deeply into yourself in order to find your own faults and inconsistencies? Are you willing to open yourself up to truths that seem uncomfortable and even dangerous? Are you going to keep in mind that you are mostly oblivious to the private struggles of almost everyone you meet? Are you thus going to reach out to every human being your encounter with kindness? Consequently, do you have it in you to constantly remember that you are only the protagonist in your own life story?

Doing these things takes sustained energy because these are extremely challenging tasks. Every morning, it's a new day and you are rated at zero at all of these tasks when you wake up. Conversely, every day offers yet another opportunity to see whether you up to these challenges.  Even before we get out of bed, we need to  resilience to take on the world  yet again.  Who are we today?  We will be challenged in all of these ways, and the Universe will be watching to see how we respond.  Do we have the strength and moral character to "show up" over and over?

These are my thoughts this morning, and I've take some time to collect some quotes about resilience.  As you can see from my writings above, resilience, "Vitamin R," is a daily requirement for all of us, not merely something that superheroes need when they are slammed into a skyscraper by a super-villian.  I hope you enjoy these as much as I do:

“Every morning we are born again. What we do today is what matters most.” ― Buddha

“Striving is fine, as long as it’s tempered by the realization that, in an entropic universe, the final outcome is out of your control. If you don’t waste your energy on variables you cannot influence, you can focus much more effectively on those you can. When you are wisely ambitious, you do everything you can to succeed, but you are not attached to the outcome—so that if you fail, you will be maximally resilient, able to get up, dust yourself off, and get back in the fray. That, to use a loaded term, is enlightened self-interest.” ― Dan Harris, 10% Happier

“People had long conversations with him, only to realize later that he hadn't spoken.” ― Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption

“When darkness falls, beauty is lit from within.” ― Johnathan Jena

“A life without challenge, a life without hardship, a life without purpose, seems pale and pointless. With challenge come perseverance and gumption. With hardship come resilience and resolve. With purpose come strength and understanding.” ― Terry Fallis, The High Road

“Optimists, by contrast, look for specific, limited, short-term explanations for bad events, and as a result, in the face of a setback, they’re more likely to pick themselves up and try again.” ― Paul Tough, How Children Succeed

“[W]hen children reach early adolescence, what motivates them most effectively isn’t licking and grooming–style care but a very different kind of attention. Perhaps what pushes middle-school students to concentrate and practice as maniacally as Spiegel’s chess players do is the unexpected experience of someone taking them seriously, believing in their abilities, and challenging them to improve themselves.” ― Paul Tough, How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character

Think about the ten things in your life that you are most worried about right now. In one year, eight of those will be distant memories. John G. Simon