The Basis of Resilience: Predictable Irrationalities

First, you must be willing to admit that you have these predictable irrationalities. Scientists prove that, while we agree they exist and can spot them in others, we ourselves wouldn’t exhibit predictable irrationalities.

Some people are able to find proof for why they are better, right, perfect, more deserving, or whatever, to believe that they earned what they have through merit alone. They never need to develop resilience.

Then the rug is pulled out. The divorce, the layoff, the financial distress, and the visible cracks in the façade of making it look like you did the right things and got the promised rewards, singularly gifted.

Maybe it is.

When everything falls apart, and you are searching for blame, for hope, for a higher level of thinking, a solid foundation upon which to start again. Consider that you, too, might be behaving with predictable irrationalities.

Because what I spent a career learning is that if you can predict it, you can prevent it.

Suddenly, I can see a whole new world where people take accountability for creating their own happiness instead of expecting others to do it for them. People-pleasing eradicated due to a lack of market. It’s one of many predictable irrationalities that could be solved in a snap.

A world where merit rises to the top. A slow and gradual shifting of power and capital back to balance through tiny changes. Tiny changes that add up to old structures crumbling down, and hurting no one because everyone long left the building.

It’s a beautiful future, one person at a time simply choosing to listen to their own voice of happiness, health, and wealth, over the louder one. A proactive worldview, instead of accepting the status quo as a way of life.

Difficult, but not impossible.

Personal Agency

What you can prevent is massive if you remember that predictable irrationalities are happening almost all the time in many ways.

Predictable irrationalities include accepting the feeling of discomfort as usual. “Your comfort zone will be your coffin,” if you pick what’s familiar over what nurtures you. It’s numbing pain because no one taught you what that feeling is asking you to do. It’s behaving one way when health, wealth, and happiness are calling from a different direction.

The work you have to do is accepting that you are flawed. Also, that you have agency to change it, called consciousness. What you get in life is a direct reflection of this work.

You have agency to reflect, feel, question, and seek new information. You have consciousness to update your actions to reflect the smarter, older, more experienced person you are today. Leave behind the person you were when you first made that choice.

Did you act authentically? Or did you do your best, and next time, you plan to elevate your behavior from a reaction to a response? What does it take to upgrade? What have you learned from the experience to point your compass in the direction that serves you, not stresses you?

To know thyself. To know, for the honest and complete truth, and not what is socially shared, assumed, or skewed. Thyself, and not the automatic robot, preprogrammed from birth and running on automatic pilot until the conscious awareness wakes up and starts taking over.

To wake up and start taking over is the work we all have in our lifetimes.

Misdirected Efforts

I was unaware that this work existed until I was in my forties. Earlier in life, I knew I had made mistakes. This knowledge made me feel guilty, ashamed, and embarrassed. I was also exhausted from trying to act in ways I thought would avoid recurrence.

I became an engineer and made a career out of it, pouring willpower, effort, and investment into it.

At the end of my rope, finally, I learned that I wasn’t lazy, stupid, or mean. I had tripped up in ways that brain scientists would have called predictable.

It was the truth that set me free to find a better way to approach life.

Today, it’s not about endurance, but enjoyment. It’s not about people-pleasing, but peace-making. It’s the freedom to pilot my life with conscious awareness. It might be the hardest thing to do, but it’s the only work no one can do for you.

I am bouncing forward from a career that required bolstering weaknesses instead of building strengths. I am bouncing forward from a values structure that made that series of essential choices make sense.

Like a hermit, I am rediscovering and defining who I am with as little external influence as possible. It’s an attempt to quell the old people-pleasing personality.

Sure, I might be late to the game, as I’ve met youngsters who have been encouraged and empowered from a younger age than I. They, too, will have their own work to do. It may not be as consuming as my own, but it’s still work.

This world is built by all of us doing different things. If we all did the same thing, we wouldn’t have all the wonderful avenues open to us today as we answer the question, “What should I do with this life?”

Unfulfilled Needs

Avoid desperation at all costs. Learn to be self-reliant in whatever way suits your skills and opportunities. Diversify your income, grow your investments, and have a solid liquid base that can support you for six months. Do whatever you can to get you there as fast as possible by minimizing credit and consumer debt.

When you get there, you have resilience in your pocket.

Getting fired doesn’t require you to take the first job you can get, setting you back permanently in your career ladder. Unemployment insurance in Canada requires you to take a job that is within a bracket of your old one, and that bracket is large. It also doesn’t account for commuting costs that might be involved. Quickly, your life is upended if you aren’t ready for a potential upheaval.

When you know you are vulnerable, you sacrifice your voice for security, but it comes at the cost of increased stress. How long will you be able to pull it off?

Desperation is a ticking bomb, and there’s nothing you can buy that will make it feel better when it goes off. Consider that the next time you reach for the plastic or head for the checkout.

Your desperation might not be financial. It might be something else in your life that is in a precarious situation right now. Either you are doing nothing about it, or you are not doing enough. You aren’t thinking through the scenarios or educating yourself about what they might be; you aren’t making sudden, drastic changes to your resources or how you use them.

You know what to do, and you aren’t doing it. Why, or rather, why not?

This past Christmas went by uneventfully for me. As a child, they were a big deal, and there was pressure on my mom to make it magical. I’d always thought she did that to herself. As an adult, I realize that she went full-out, but reserved her right to let it be known that she was doing it for everyone else.

Today, I see consumerism in it, and I can’t get over it. The instilled fear that you are not doing enough as a wife, mother, and income earner; you now must also be Santa Claus and all the elves.

I listened to the power moves of Christianity, and heard how she resolves to stop saying, “Bless You” when someone sneezes, but rather what they said before there was colonialism: “Who is thinking of you?”

My cat sneezes, and I rush in with, “Bless you,” followed up by a slow, “Who is thinking of you?”

As an adult, I know many of the motivations behind my behavior were instilled there for the benefit of… well, not me.

Today, I am choosing myself as consistently and clearly as I can. I breathe, and it’s enough.

Of course, it’s fun to be Santa Claus when you can afford it, and the costume actually does keep your identity anonymous. It’s fun to come off like a pack of elves when you are so productive, focused, and driven that you only remember the montage.

Growing up, I stressed out a lot about what to get people for Christmas. I also spent a lot of time making presents instead of buying them. Today, those people are not even in my life, let alone the pressure and stress of worrying about what to buy them. Phew, that’s a load off.

Constricted by Conformity

Being estranged from your family of origin is not easy, but for me, it is easier than staying involved.

We are all wired to conform. We do so from birth, as our vulnerable little baby bodies couldn’t protect or feed themselves, we need others to keep us alive. Learning how to get someone to respond when we wail is an early lesson we all go through.

Some still wail when they need help, expecting someone to step in and save them. Some are always doing the saving. Others are watching the drama unfold, thinking, “Why so dramatic?”

Still, you don’t need to be educated by an evolutionary neuroscientist to know that you should watch what you say if you don’t want to lose out. Don’t give them a reason to cut you off the guest list, out of the will, or in the back.

Sometimes we don’t fit the spot that others make for us. We can play the role for only so long before we forget that it was an act.

The day arrives when the balance of what you will likely lose is offset by what you stand to gain – self-respect, individualization, and coming into the adult of you with all the guilt related to abandonment and letting other people down, all packed up and left behind, because today, we aren’t living in caves. You have the body and power of an adult to live life without the protection of others.

Today, success isn’t from conforming, but finding your freak flag and letting it fly. It’s finding out what’s unique about you that is a piece of the puzzle the rest of us need. Everyone says it, but really, it’s about what captures you so unyieldingly that you can’t NOT do it as long as it’s healthy.

Spiralling with Anxiety

Being uneasy, being apprehensive, in short, lacking the confidence that we think we need to do what we are thinking of doing. It’s a mental assessment in your gut that you are lacking something.

Indeed, you might be lacking a plan, and if that feeling persists, your plan is not as bulletproof as your mind would have you believe.

What if instead, that feeling is excitement, because you have faith in the plan and practice in the skills you are about to draw upon, and put in the work to make the moment matter?

Too often, we prize people who just go for it, without much of a plan. Too often, we chide people who polish plans into near perfection without gaining much real-world experience, testing their ability to plan.

Quash anxiety with real plans. Thought and effort put into all the little things and how they add up. That’s how you go about tackling things that are bigger than what you can hold in your head. Some people have notebooks to help them, some have entire offices, and others have more resources than you might imagine to help them better imagine a future and make a plan to create a better future than the one headed our way.

Funny, when I’ve witnessed executives in action with these plans, no one starts with the future that is already unfolding. They act as if today will continue into every tomorrow without change, and that the future is a void waiting for them to fill. That alone might be why these plans fail, but I guess that it’s because more time and effort are spent deciding how to divide the pie.

Action is the best way to gain the confidence you wish you had. Flip the feeling, and do it anyway.

Anchored by Confirmation

Confirmation bias is one of the predictable irrationalities: the tendency to find supporting evidence for what we believe, rather than investigating with an open mind and arriving at an informed conclusion.

If you believe you have limits, then you look for proof of those limits, find them and confirm what you believed.

The point is that if you want to change what you are getting in life, you must change what you believe, but be careful with aiming your target.

For no amount of correcting a weakness can hold a light to the spark of genius when you capture your talent. You must believe that the spark is in you and you will find it, then look for proof of that.

When you catch yourself confirming a bad outcome – see, I knew it would turn out badly! – confront what you are saying and when would have been a better time to tune in and listen to yourself. Now, when it’s too late, or before the fact, when you can incorporate the wisdom into your plan and have it turn out differently.

At least don’t bait your own trap and then walk directly into it. Notice what you say you believe, and start to say different things. Fake it until you make it they say, but with this one, you won’t have to fake it for long – evidence shows up quickly.

With language, there’s always a choice. I wondered why the self-professed book lover said that her coffee table was “littered” with books. Litter, like trash? A book lover has a vast vocabulary, and putting books and garbage in the same category feels disrespectful to me, but maybe someone said to her, too, “Mind candy.” Since then, I could never look at fiction the same way again.