14: Be A Child Again
Chris Suarez: [00:00:00] [00:00:00] Today, we're going to talk about how to be a child. Again, some point earlier this week, I realized that one of the most commonly printed stated and used words of the year has been resilience. And as I stopped to think about it, I can certainly see why it's made me realize that. I was building a team, a group friends I'm building a family that uses that word consistently.
It reminded me that I placed myself in an environment that gravitated towards the word or a focus on resilience in lieu of the word or a focus on pandemic or recession or social unrest. All words have been quite popular in the media and the world outside, just not inside. So at first I began to unpackage what resilience really is, where it comes from and whether or not we could actually build it or grow it is resilience.
Something we either have, or we don't have, are we born resilient? Do we become resilient? Can we lose our resilience? The definition of resilience is the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties or toughness? Well, immediately I know that all of us. Either are resilient or can be resilient because it's based on our capacity to do something.
Each of us are capable. Each of us have that capacity. The second part of the definition is the ability to spring, back into shape a lasting city. So that's definition. Number two, the ability to spring back into shape elasticity. Now this is where the work might come in. We have the capacity. But do we have the ability?
Ability is just to learn trade or skill. So again, all of us either are resilient or can be resilient. The word elasticy stood out to me this week, specifically earlier this week, my nine-year-old daughter was walking on top of a log that, that protrudes out of one of the sand dunes outside of our home at cannon beach.
So just a few steps down. It's been there for as long as I can remember. It's just a few steps away from our house and we pass this log every single day. When we go for a walk on the beach as a family now, countless times. And I mean that by definition countless times, I have told her not to walk on that log as she could fall.
And of course, countless times she's hopper right up on that log, walk down at like a balance beam and then nonchalantly jumps off the edge and into the sand, just a few feet below. No. Yep. I know there's a lesson there for me as a parent but this week, my fear was realized as we walked out to the beach this week, I looked back just in time to see her slipping off that wet log, her little body slamming, and it's not log bouncing off of it.
Like a doll and finally falling a few feet to the ground below and yes, headfirst. Into the sand. Now immediately I ran over honestly thinking she was ridiculously her. I was holding back the urge to say, didn't I tell you not to be, because I was convinced she had broken bones or potentially worse, from the look of her fall. But before I could even reach her, she hops up from the sand exclaims in, in, in this proud, almost singing voice I'm okay. I'm okay. And was brushing her stop off those two words. I'm okay. Have become part of her almost daily language. As I reached her side and confirmed, she was indeed okay.
That she was escaped with. She didn't even have a scratch. I couldn't help, but tell my wife. I can't believe how resilient this kid is. And there it was. There's that word again? Resilient in that moment, the word elasticity couldn't be more perfect. It's the perfect description of children had a young age as our bodies and bones are still growing and forming and fusing and bending.
We are far less prone to serious injury, broken bones, right? You or I, we slipped off that lock we're in trouble, but Lilly. Yeah, she hops right back up out of the sand. So it caused me to begin really connecting resilience with elasticity. Interestingly, our bones don't fully ossify until we're about 18 to 23 years old, depending on the human we were created and formed with the need to be flexible or resilient yet.
At some point, as we physically grew, many of us became emotionally. Or [00:05:00] perhaps psychologically rigid. We are emotionally fused. Now psychological resilience is the ability to mentally or emotionally cope with a crisis or to return to pre-crisis status quickly. That is the clinical definition of psychological resilience.
And as we think about that, how much calmer would the world be right now with a bit more psychological resilience? It may be the single most important quality to cultivate at this very moment. So what can we do? What can we do to be a child again and display resilience? I propose to the three PS.
The first one is program. Guys program and control your thoughts in cognitive behavioral therapy. The first step to change something about ourselves is to change the nature of our self-talk. Our programming. This self-talk will begin to reinforce our real beliefs and our beliefs will reinforce our actions.
Our actions will reinforce our habits, so we need to adjust our self-talk. To eliminate conversations around how difficult, how overwhelming or how challenging a situation may be. We need to program a life of ease. Now we can easily begin to believe that. We just can't handle it as opposed to ensuring our self-talk includes our affirming.
I got this. I know what to do. I'm okay. A good friend of mine. From Texas constantly says it's fine. It's fine. Those two simple words repeated and affirmed will go a long way in building resilience. Remember I'm okay. The second pain prepare. So we have program number two prepare for challenges, prepare for crises, prepare for bumps and detours as a person who bumps up against OCD and perfectionism, man, it is a daily challenge to prepare constantly for the unexpected.
If I don't prepare for the challenge and even expected to arise. And I certainly won't be ready to demonstrate resilience when that challenge shows up. We have we have a litany of guests and interviews on this podcast of people that have dealt with challenges and continue to focus on living experientials lives.
Why? Because they're prepared to, they're prepared to live experiential. How well, we prepare for the unexpected as the key coaches and sports psychologists will have their athletes go through a process called visualization whereby they literally visualize everything happening exactly how they intend for it to happen when they're actually competing every stroke in the pool, every swing of the bat every throw so of that football, but they also so visualize everything that could possibly go wrong.
Carl White guy is a professor of organizational behavior at the university of Michigan. The university of Michigan business school. He wrote this, he said there is good evidence that when people are put under pressure, they regress to their most habituated ways of risk. So prepare for pressure.
Third P is power. We have program. We have prepare the third P is power, assuming power over our actions, assuming power over our environments, our responses, and our results will lead to greater resilience. This is based on us adopting an internal locus of control. When we perceive that, that we're in control of what's happening in our lives, it'll come compound.
Our resilience. It will actually counteract even a more natural leaning towards the external locus of control, the power over our actions. What of, one of my favorite studies? And I've shared this before with this community So one of my favorite studies, except for the fact that they used animals in this study.
So we're going to forgive that for just a moment. This was done in the late sixties, so that's why, but it was related to personal power and it was Martin Seligman who completed the study. He found that dogs, rats, mice, even large insects that received mild bleeds, painful shocks over which they had zero control.
Would eventually just accept the shocks. They wouldn't look for a way out. They wouldn't try to stop it. They wouldn't try to move. They would just sit and accept the shocks. Why? Martin Seligman said it was learned helplessness. They believed they had no power. So they learned to be helpless. We have to do everything possible to beat this learned helplessness.
The minute we begin to believe we do not control an outcome is the minute or the moment we become just that helpless. Do not let your mind and body and emotions learn helplessness. Our resilience is built on the foundation of power and control. Now there are certainly other habits [00:10:00] we can work on in order to build resilience, eating healthy builds, resilience, getting rats builds resilience, exercising, builds, resilience, developing strong relationships, build resilience.
All of those things reduce stress and allow us to build and develop our programming, our preparation, our power, but let's just revisit for a moment that resilience. See of children, although it's true that their bones and bodies had perhaps a bit more elasticity than our own. More importantly at that young age, their psychological and their emotional flexibility is a model for all of us.
The wind here is that we can control that there's nothing that's scientifically ossified, our psyche or emotions, our experiences. Our environments, our upbringing, the people we spend time with will all play a part in how flexible or how rigid we become. All of which are choices by the way, children are resilient as is.
They have not yet built these foundations and walls and trust systems of facts and opinions and beliefs around themselves. Every time my daughter has fallen and gotten hurt, I've been there to make it better. She has no other belief than the fact that temporary pain will subside and her world will move forward and improve as it always has.
So this allows you to take risks like walking on that wet log. It allows you to explore, to be curious and find continued happiness in the present moment, not scared about the future pain children are constantly learning, they're adjusting and asking and changing. They see the world as it is for them in that very moment.
Not as what they think it will be or what they think it should be. Yes. We need to be a child again, perhaps the most important skill on our path to resilience is our ability to see reality too often as adults we had filters and lenses to the current situation based on past situations, blurring and clouding of our vision.
Children stay in the present reality. So well, resilience sits on the shoulders of reality. So my challenge to you this week is wake up tomorrow morning and be a child again.
