Building Resilience

At first blush I have nothing to say about stress management.  I know nothing.  Yet then again, perhaps, I do.  I have no interest in being a first responder and yet that probably is where my native talent arises.  I move quickly from emergency, to plan, to action.  This weekend we had a chimney fire.  From the second I recognized the sound, to the point where "P" and I called the Fire Department, my brain was working, 1) pull the fire in the hearth apart and extinguish it; 2) can I smother the chimney fire?... no practical way; 3) can I fight it from the roof, nope, icy, and I'm not tall enough to reach the chimney top; 4) I have to fight it from below.... Where is the big fire extinguisher..?) and so my brain just engages and things fall into place.

But, I'm not as good with sustained stress... it quite literally erodes and depletes me.  Fortunately, I married someone who is best with that kind of stress.  I've learned a bit from her.  The questions become more strategic:  what can I do today, what can I do this week, what has to wait for longer -- a year, 10 years.  The mental discipline of compartmentalizing, of, thinking something over, and then putting it in one of the future boxes, putting the lid on it and leaving it.  Learning to care for oneself in the eye of the storm, to relish the moments of relief, but, more to create these moments in a strategic way, so that, I can keep, keeping on.  The connections to fitness types teases out here, for life one needs both kinds of toughness: sprinting and marathon.

Personally, I don't do well with strong emotions and so I try to get to a planning stage as quickly as possible.  I start researching, and fact finding, while almost simultaneously forming that into a provisional plan.  That plan may stand or may get completely re-vamped, but, having a provisional plan creates hooks to hang knowledge and facts on, to keep them at hand.  Facts and knowledge cut the problem to size quickly, showing tempest in teapots, or Godzilla for what they really are.

FOCUS and this is something I think we have to worry about as we have an entire generation of multi-taskers, who have not developed their attention span.  Having a laser like focus stills the internal voices, the roiling emotions -- mine has, at times, been ferocious, and I do see this as an asset.  Sitting meditation is an obvious place to develop focus.  But there are many other ways to practice attention span, learning and playing a musical instrument, exercise, martial arts, yoga, reading books, and for me writing, can work in this way.

Laughter and play, again I'm not a strong role model here, since strong happiness is as suspect to me as any other strong emotion.  But, play I'm a little better at, lots of different things through my life have served as play, so to each his/her own.  Play is important because it is often in play when the epiphanous solution reveals itself -- the AHAH!, moment.  And certainly, one needs solutions to the problems that cause the stress.

The chimney fire turned out fine.  I threw two fire extinguishers at the problem and yet it burned -- though with less intensity.  My resources were taxed yet I know that I often don't call for help and I often learn after the fact that a little help... helps.  By the time the Firemen arrived the fire had burned out.  I was embarrassed, a little.  But they were gracious (they actually seemed pleased to not have to deal with destroyed dreams and burned bodies) and they used their temperature camera thing to certify that the fire hadn't spread to the joists and framing around the chimney -- that is peace of mind.