resilience required: a note on doing hard things.

RESILIENCE (noun): the ability of a person to adjust or recover readily // the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.

I’ve been thinking a lot about resilience lately — what it means, how it reveals itself in our lives, and how it often requires us to answer its call, usually when we feel least prepared and when our phone only has 1%.

Speaking for myself, resilience has been a recurring theme in my life in the last couple of years. The blessing here is knowing I’m not alone in that feeling. Sometimes it’s like we find ourselves on a path where the cement ends and the new terrain automatically comes with a hard hat and a sign that says “Resilience Required”. We can’t turn around, so we put on the hat and brace ourselves because we know the trail ahead will require extra helpings of strength, grit and tenacity to get to the other side.

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A couple of years ago, my friend Jamie Newton posted something that I immediately copied and pasted into my notes app:

“What I'm beginning to realize is that something about life requires that in order to feel what we want to feel, we often must first feel what we absolutely do not want to feel. Want to feel fit? Feel like you might die at the gym. Want to feel smart? Feel stupid. Want to feel connected? Feel awkward. Want to feel love? Feel vulnerable. Here's to feeling what we don't want to feel, may it be so nice.”

I think this is the heart of resilience. Like feelings, it’s doing the things we don’t want to do because that’s the only way we’ll eventually be able to do the things we do want to do. It’s taking the next step (or sometimes the first step), even when our shoes feel like they’re weighed down with cement and it’s all we can do to stay upright and keep one foot in front of the other.

For the last couple of months, I’ve been using a metaphor that’s helped me as I embark on my own ‘Resilience Required’ path.

Resilience is like a bucket and every action we take, every little thing we do, every single move we make on our way to rightness is a drop of water in that bucket.

Every single day, drop after drop, action after action, we make progress and we are better because of that progress. But the road can be long and can feel grim at times. We can do 100 things that equate to 100 drops in the bucket, yet simultaneously feel defeated because the bucket still looks empty. But you know what? If we keep going, if we keep consistently adding drops — the bucket will fill to the brim. It has to. It can’t not because #science. It’s like that random jar of change we keep in our coat closet. A quarter here, a few nickels there, pennies thrown in over time… and then on one random Tuesday we turn it in and the teller hands us back $120 cash. We’re shocked the jar could’ve possibly accrued that from the change we casually threw into the jar along the way. The same principle applies to the bucket — it all adds up.

So what does this mean? It means you keep going.

Keep doing the work, even when you don’t notice a change in the outcome yet.
Keep doing the next right thing, even if you don’t know what the thing after that will look like.
Keep doing the things that are hard, even if the only reason you’re doing them is so they’ll eventually get easier.

If you put a few drops in your bucket today – congratulations! Use that momentum to keep adding more.
If you stumbled and knocked your bucket over – that’s okay! Grab your bucket and start collecting drops again.
If you don’t even have a bucket – just start collecting. Start now. Start with a spoon or a cup or whatever you have and transfer your progress to a bucket later.

Keep adding drops to your bucket, because one day it will overflow and you will be the recipient of that abundance.

Resilience is built gradually and over time. It’s not measured in the number of drops in the bucket or how long it takes to fill it up — it’s measured by how quickly we bounce back and keep adding drops to our bucket after an obstacle gets in our way. We can’t let the days with no drops or the fear of our buckets toppling over keep us from doing the work.

I hope you’ll keep intentionally and consistently adding drops to your bucket, even through the seasons of drought and on the days when you think it’ll never get full. I know that sometimes the resilient road can feel like a desolate and vulnerable one, but I hope you’ll keep going. Even with tear-stained cheeks and blisters on your feet, I hope you’ll keep pressing on. Take heart — the roads with the “Resilience Required” signs will help you get where you want to go.

So dig deep, and then dig deeper. Start with one drop. And then add another. These drops are our becoming and every single drop counts.

So grab your bucket, babe. We’ve got drops to collect. 💧🤍