“Sometimes carrying on, just carrying on, is the superhuman achievement”
Albert Camus
I was cleaning out a junk drawer and came across an old rubber band. It was one of those thick rubber bands that were perfect for shooting at friends or siblings. The ones that actually stung a little when they connected.
The problem was that this rubber band had lost its stretch. I tried to pull it back and met no resistance, you could see little cracks in the rubber. The years of repeated stretching and pulling had made the rubber band lose its bounce.
How many of us are starting to feel like that old rubber band?
If you are like me you have stress coming at you from multiple directions, surprise attacks. It feels like the victories are few and the defeats are many.
If we allow ourselves to be constantly exposed to a barrage of stress, we lose resilience and quickly become like the old rubber band.
No Where to turn
Granted, in our current times there really is not a place to hide from stress:
Work – no
Home- no
Entertainment- We are all “Netflixed” out
Social Media- Big No
Our typical outlets for stress relief have become bogged down actually creating more stress
Protect Your Bounce
Resilience is essential during these times. If you let the stress keep pressing you down you will eventually break, not bounce. Think of a trampoline vs an old rubber band.
A couple of summers ago we bought our boys trampoline. The bad part was I had to put it together and I wish I could say this was one of my finer parenting moments.
What I did not realize was there are 96 individual springs on a trampoline that give its bounce. Talk about resilience.
How many of us have 96 positive people in our lives that can help give us a bounce to get through the day?
Think about the trampoline even if 10 springs go bad it is still has enough remaining to work fine.
In our lives though usually the ratio of positive to negative people is flipped. It’s hard to bounce like a trampoline when you have 4 good springs & 92 weak, stretched ones.
Love It, Hate It
What I learned when placing the springs on the trampoline is that you actually need some tension on the spring to make them effective. The first ten or so springs it was easy, however as I began to add more, it got increasingly harder. The last spring was nearly impossible, but without that tension, the trampoline would just be a piece of fabric.
We actually need some stress in our lives.
I know we all dream of one day lying by the beach all day, but seriously that would get old pretty quick.
The trick is ,just like the trampoline, how do you balance the amount of stress in your life, so you are not weak & baggy, but also not so high sprung any additional stress cause you to snap.
Avoid the stress you don’t need.
Granted we can’t avoid all unnecessary stress, but we should try to at least help ourselves out.
Do you have that one person on your Facebook feed who is always posting something that gets your blood pressure up?
Just un-follow them, they won’t know you’ve done it. You will still be their Facebook friend. You don’t have to deal with their conspiracy theories.
Also, now is probably not the time to take on a bunch of new projects at work or at home. If you are like me, just the day to day operations of my job have become increasingly complex. The thought of adding more is a little mind boggling.
But that is just for now.
As you acclimate to the stress or things change then your bandwidth will increase and you can take on new things.
Surround yourself with Support
Like the trampoline, find your 96 springs.
I am not saying literally 96 people but find your core group of people who provide you the most amount of support with the least amount of drama.
There is a lot of synergy with the 96 springs on the trampoline and I guarantee you will be providing just as much support to them as they will be to you.
Look for ways you can help support someone else. We all could use some extra springs in our lives. You might be that final spring they need to get their bounce back!
How awesome would that feel!!
Life is too short to have negative people around, particularly now.
Maintain Hope
For a lot of us things seem pretty desperate right now.
Whether it’s a concern for a job, health, health of those around you, concern over social unrest, concern over the election.
These are heavy times and we have a lot on us. It is so easy to get tunnel vision.
Step back, expand your view and try to get the long view.
Andy Stanley says about parenting, “The days are long, but the seasons are short”
We are in the middle of some long days, but we will get through them. A year from now it will seem like yesterday.
Look for the areas that you can stay grounded and stay hopeful.
It doesn’t have to be something big, in fact in may even be the little things that inspire hope.
Like your favorite cup of coffee on your day off
Appreciating a beautiful sunset
Early morning walks
Looking forward to the changing seasons.
Find something, anything to stay hopeful about.
Life is bigger than the current situation.
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