Resilience Is A Choice: Why Believing in Your Ability Matters

Do you want to change or do you want to stay the same?

It’s a real question. One we don’t ask often enough I’d argue. My theory is we often avoid this uncomfortable question because we know we’re stagnant but it feels too hard, too uncomfortable to think about what it would take to change. I think a lot of us look at our circumstances and add it up to equate to who we are. We look at the hand we’ve been dealt and think, well, I guess I need to accept it and move on… or just keep swimming.

These mantras of “Keep on keeping on” -  *or* (worse) - “It just is what it is” - really get me reeling. It’s this fixed point of view of one’s circumstances - or static view of other people - that keep people blind to their own agency, lacking autonomy and feeling out of control… because they’ve lost sight, lost belief, that they ever had it to begin with.

Some do it while griping and complaining… Others choose misery and mask it with a moral veneer. Either way, this kind of person looks at their lot in life, determines it’s less than remarkable / not how they envisioned it, and they walk on without putting an effort to redirect, to reinvent, to recuperate or restore.

They sit in the backseat of their own life thinking something or someone else is driving their car.

When you stop to really think about it, all of creation highlights how false that narrative actually is. All living things are always changing, ever evolving, so why do so many of us have trouble seeing our lives that way? What it seems to boil down to is that some people struggle more with learned helplessness. I just learned of this concept recently in therapy. This is the simplest definition I can find from an article on Psychology Today:

Learned helplessness occurs when an individual continuously faces a negative, uncontrollable situation and stops trying to change their circumstances, even when they have the ability to do so… The perception that one cannot control the situation essentially elicits a passive response to the harm that is occurring.

People who have a higher sense of learned helplessness cannot see their own agency or the autonomy they do have… people lose sight that they are the driving force in their lives and, if they embrace it and make it so, are a force to be reckoned with. 

I’m writing about this because I was someone who had a significant disbelief in myself, over my authority in my own life.

I was implicitly learning time and time again from 18-28 years old that I couldn’t control my outcomes (hello a dozen acute hospital stays). Explicitly, people around me, namely doctors, were only reinforcing that narrative – they were telling me directly and indirectly that I wouldn’t ever amount to much, not on my own accord at least. I even had one psychiatrist tell me after getting me on a different set of medications, “I fixed you! Look how much better you’re doing now with my help! You wouldn’t have made it.”

When you have both a societal narrative shaping your self-identity and telling you you’re disabled and individuals in the systems that are only reinforcing that narrative, you wonder if maybe they’re right. Maybe you aren’t destined for the remarkable, legacy-filled life you dreamed of. Maybe you just need to settle in and ride the waves.

It would certainly be easier, but is that the point?

Writing this and sharing it is evidence that I’ve rejected that narrative. Every time I left the hospital walls I was confronted with a lot of decisions…

Should I go back to work? What do I tell my colleagues/employer? How much do I share with my friends? How do I frame or explain what happened? Should I file for disability? Should I just take a break and collect from a system that is supposedly designed for ‘people like me’? Will I really keep trying, again?

Here’s what I’ve come to understand. It’s your choice to get up or stay down.

Yes, God is with you and is for you, but YOU have to choose, to decide, to stand up again. He will certainly help you on the way up if that’s the action you take, but He granted you the capacity to have free will, to choose. Let me elaborate on a bit of related tangent for a moment…

It does not compute for me how people can get so stuck on “What is God’s will for me?” Now, I can relate to a degree around what specific calling or set of purposes has God uniquely designed me to live out – sure, we all consider, whether we’re God-believing people or not, why we’re here. That’s a human thing and one I believe God put in us to wrestle with so we do put good faith toward building a life of meaning and fulfillment while we have this one wild and precious life.

I do not, however, relate to the questioning of every micro and macro decision being analyzed under the narrow microscope and the notion that there must be an ultimate right way and every other choice would be “wrong.” I vehemently believe that the God I believe in is far more creative, far more brilliant and ingenious and generous and allows me to make calls that He can then use to shape and mold my ultimate life’s mission in light of His purpose. I don’t believe that anything, any decision I make, is out of reach for God to use for my good and His glory.

Are there decisions that I could make that would set me significantly back or in regression? Certainly. Are there obvious wrong decisions that go against the order of things that God made (I’m talking ten commandments)? Yes. But even in those, can God, the Maker of everything, redeem and reinvent the purposes of our wrongdoing? Absolutely– He did it all throughout the Bible. So what am I / are we so afraid of? If we believe this, we must with the same breath believe that nothing is out of God’s reach. To fear steering our ship astray with a single “wrong” move… Well, we’re underestimating God’s power and overestimating our own.

I think a lot of people choose to stay stuck in the same patterns their entire existence. A lot of times related to the freeze mode elaborated above. We can stay frozen for months, years, decades even wrestling with what we should or shouldn’t do as if there aren’t infinite possibilities. Some might know they’re doing this consciously, that they’re choosing to stay stuck, but many more I would venture to guess are miffed that they’re actually choosing sameness in the name of acceptance. Either way, you choose - to move and grow, or stay put and begin to fade.

So, how could someone choose to live a life they knew they are going to regret, or know full-well that they only lived maybe half of their potential, maybe even less?

I have a hunch. I think it goes back to that idea I mentioned above of learned helplessness vs. self-efficacy. Let’s talk about the opposite of learned helplessness. Self-efficacy in its most basic form can be defined this way:

A person's belief in their ability to complete a task or achieve a goal. It encompasses a person's confidence in themselves to control their behavior, exert an influence over their environment, and stay motivated in the pursuit of their goal. 

It’s that old adage of “If you think you can, you will; if you think you can’t, you won’t.” It may sound oversimplified, but it really isn’t that hard to explain, and yet, it is far more challenging to live out.

It really boils down to believing that challenges are really opportunities to become masterful, and setbacks are really just information for your next attempt. On the contrary, if setbacks are viewed as massive roadblocks or fixed barriers that impose more of a threat than your own will, therein lies the problem. 

I think the gap here between these two ends of the spectrum is a bigger question… 

Do you know what kind of person you want to be remembered as?

What impact, what legacy, are you trying to leave and what are you willing to sacrifice to get there?

Are you thinking about your present moment with respect to the end of your life or are you just passing through? 

I guess what I’m trying to get at is, does your existence here really matter to you? If it does, why aren’t you taking it more seriously? No matter what your beliefs are on eternity or post-earth life, it’s understood that you get one shot here on earth in this body and mind, this skin that you’re in right now. So why not make it one worth celebrating? Why not get up and get after it, everyday, and choose to believe that you can. If you don’t, what are you passing down to future generations? 

My spice and salt are coming out because this stuff deeply matters. It matters to me because I’m a full believer in going all out. “Go big or go home” is one way to say it, but it’s really an act of rebellion, arguably, to show up and show out for your life. The vast majority of people see setbacks as indicators to stop trying, to quit when the going gets tough.

We all can get dealt a shitty hand. Whether that’s a season of lemons, or decades of grief and loss or illness or _(fill in the blank)_. But what about those people who are out there making lemonade?! What about those that choose the silver lining in our stories, or the gold thread running through?! That takes courage and conviction to keep getting up, showing up and fighting for a truth that maybe only that person is willing to see.

So, if you’re struggling to be that active agent of change in your own life, get down there in the pit of your mind and figure out what you’re afraid of. What’s the risk of trying, of giving it whatever you’ve got? Failing? If you’re willing to take the risk and try, you’re not failing. Failing is resigning on your life and its outcome by allowing it to come as it may, taking the passive route as the passenger in your own story. 

You are able. You have authority whether you claim it or not – it was given to you by your creator and it’s up to you to harness it, to press in and move. Don’t let the inner critic lie to you and convince you that, no matter how you’ve “failed” in the past, you cannot actually change or that it doesn’t matter.

You’ve been gifted this life. Make it mean something.

Kindly,

Kelsey