Can You Develop Extreme Resilience?

Do you find yourself reacting viscerally to a relative? Reading a novel under a tree by a lake seemed just what the doctor ordered to combat loneliness and homesickness. When the senior partner, plagued by ailing health, wanted to retire, the two went into debt and acquired the company. It flourished under their management. One day, the city caught fire, and their store went up in flames. Insurance covered only a fraction of the goods. Even before the flames had died down, the former clerk was planning to rebuild on a bigger scale. He quickly organized a rescue squad to save as much of the merchandise as possible and opened a temporary store nearby. Soon he bought out his partner. Six years later, that store caught fire and was leveled. Undaunted, he planned an even grander establishment as he watched his emporium disappear. Within a month, he had reopened in a lakefront exposition hall leased from the city. At his death, he was one of the richest men in the nation, a noted philanthropist and pillar of society.

Emotionally Scarred

The man was Marshall Field. That State Street store’s Christmas windows, restaurants, and Frango mints are still the stuff of retailing legend. Can you develop extreme resilience? You notice loose shale, a granite mountain that lies squarely in the way of the proposed road, marshy ground, and so on. You don’t rail against any of these obstacles. They are simply the constraints that you have to accommodate. Your genius lies in accomplishing your objectives even though you’re hampered. The challenge itself is exhilarating. Cultivate this attitude in real time. Your store burning down is merely giving you the opportunity to build a bigger, better one. It was a gorgeous summer day, and I jumped at the thought of escaping the concrete jungle I was in. It took me five minutes to get ready. I had some leftover eggplant parmigiana in the fridge.

Full Circle

I didn’t have aluminum foil, so I took the casserole dish. I skipped the light, disposable, Tetra pack with apple juice in favor of root beer in a glass bottle. I thought my buddy might like one, so I took one for him. I was almost at the end of a gripping thriller, and next up was a historical novel spanning two continents and a hundred years. I took both, even though they were hardbacks and the significance of this eluded me. I couldn’t get everything I needed into my backpack, so I put the leftover stuff in a plastic bag. It didn’t weigh all that much. We drove upstate from Manhattan for a while, parked, and headed out into the forest. The first two hours were just fine. We had an enjoyable late lunch. I didn’t want to litter, so I put the empty root beer bottles back in my pack, and we set out again. It was not so fine after that.

Doing Nothing

My arms felt as if they were dropping off. Finally, I discarded my inhibitions about littering along with the root beer bottles. You don’t want to carry any extra stuff on a long journey when you’re on your own. The manager of the space shuttle program cheerfully forks out tens of thousands of dollars to lop a few ounces off the payload and considers it money well spent. You too are on a long journey and are on your own. The mental detritus that you insist on carrying around on this journey is every bit as enervating and debilitating as the physical stuff that slows you down on a long hike. A marriage counselor I know was speaking about the reasons couples split up. She cites all the times her husband has forgotten birthdays, spoken slightingly of her friends, disparaged her efforts to beautify their home. The husband recalls, equally accurately, the number of times she has prevented him from going to a game he really wanted to see, the friends she froze out of his life, and the numerous occasions she had a headache. Crap happens in every relationship, the counselor went on. The ones who survive are the ones who can drop it, clean up, and move on. You also are carrying heavy burdens, and the odds are quite good that you don’t even recognize it. Is there a colleague at work whose presence fills you with distaste and a feeling of dread? Do you know that a meeting your boss has called is going to be a total waste of time? Are there people who rub you the wrong way, social situations that make you uneasy, tasks that bore you to death? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you’re bowing under the weight of your load. Whoa! I hear you say. I didn’t create this stuff. I merely recognized it. This is a common reaction. When you have had many experiences of the jerkiness of an individual at work, it is easy to label him a jerk and treat him as such. But I am not really concerned with that individual. I don’t even care whether he is or is not a jerk. What matters is the feeling you have toward him. The groaning expectation when you meet him that the interaction will be distasteful. The dread you feel beforehand. That is the burden you carry. That is the sum total of the experience that you have not let go. The Pygmalion effect has been well documented. In one study, teachers who were told that randomly selected students were very bright developed expectations that those students would perform at high levels. Lo and behold, they did far better than their peers. Other researchers have found similar effects in a variety of settings. Your expectations do affect the outcome you observe. Watch a baby gurgling happily and chugging milk from his bottle. Now take the bottle away. He screws up his face and bawls. There is no doubt at all that he is really angry. Now give his bottle back.