When the going gets tough...

“Can we talk?”

The world froze around me. Nevermind that it was 83 degrees in the shade at the hairy edge of springtime. Every cell in my body felt like it had been dipped in liquid nitrogen.

“Ok. One second.”

My head was on a swivel for two seconds. No one within earshot at work. Good…in case this gets ugly.

“Bella’s thrown up twice in the past hour, and it’s brown and black gunk. She can’t keep any food down, not even the rice and broth that I gave her. I need to go get the kids. Can you call the vet?”

Whew. A minor crisis compared to my typical catastrophizing. In the past, I would have been on the edge of falling apart, but I’ve been getting a handle on being a big more composed about family crises as they’ve become more regular.

With a family as diverse as mine, there’s more than a passing chance that something crazy happens on a weekly, if not daily, basis.

Let’s talk about some of the habits and practices that you can use to build your resilience arsenal.

It could be worse

This is one of Gary Vaynerchuk’s favorite approach to life: the gratitude mindset.

No matter what happens in your life, check yourself on a few things:

1. Are you healthy?

2. Do you have shelter?

3. Do you have running water?

4. Do you have a steady job or income?

5. Are you within a few miles of a supermarket?

Be grateful that you have these fundamentals covered. It could be a lot worse. If you live in a first world country, then you’re really well-off. If you live in a Democracy, then that’s the cherry on top. According to the Democracy index as of March 5 of this year, this is what the world looks like:

Count your blessings. While the colors have somewhat faded over the past few years for the US (for obvious reasons) we’re not exactly taking the struggle lying down.

Relatively speaking, we’re far from rock bottom.

For my situation, I have all of these, and I know it’s a privilege to have as many family members as I do as well as the quality of living that I can provide for them.

One phrase to flip the situation

There’s a silver lining in every cloud as the saying goes.

For instance, the latest crisis with my poor doggo and her eclectic eating habits gave me a chance to see how much she trusted me and how well she took hardship. She was a champ through the entire process, anxious and stressed though she was about the vet. She was given three injections, one after the other, and she barely budged…as opposed to these poor pooches:

There’s a phrase that I use to reframe every challenge: “I get to…”

Today, I got to see my dog’s willingness to appreciate people who were trying to help her. I also got to spend time appreciating the fact that she’s been in really good health outside of her little incident.

All things considered, throwing up once every twenty minutes or so was pretty manageable on my end, provided my kids didn’t take an interest in it.

Find the good in every situation by reframing it.

Remember this truth of all things

Something that is insurmountable is composed of a list of simple, straightforward steps.

All achievements are composed of tiny actions that take you closer to the finish line.

So many clichés…you get it.

Build systems by bundling actions into repeatable routines. The real trick is to offload your cognitive load by abstracting away all the mundane stuff so that you can focus on the edge cases.

Going back to mine, getting the dog to the vet was the end result of the following:

1. Call the vet to check for availability.

2. Tell my boss that I had a family situation.

3. Get my butt straight home from work.

4. Check the house for additional messes.

5. Get my dog into her harness and leash.

6. Add blankets and towels to the back in case she continued to throw up (she did).

7. Drive carefully to the vet right when rush hour started.

8. Coax my pooch out of the car and into the examination room.

9. Get her treated and pay for the shots.

Each of these actions were clear-cut and doable. I had a mental list as if I had prompted AI for it (I didn’t). The entire process took about 75 minutes including travel time.

Execution requires a little bit of planning, but don’t overdrive your headlights.

Sandbag these (don’t bury them)

I will confess that I thought my wife was going to share something far worse.

She never calls me for anything while I’m at work. It’s usually a text that involves the “Honey-do” list. So when her caller ID blew up my phone, I knew it was serious.

Whatever you do in these moments, don’t get emotional even before the news hits.

Manage your response. You aren’t even a fraction as effective when your first response is to cry or rage or fall apart under the weight. How you respond is fully your choice and is based on numerous factors. Your level of resilience either grows or shrinks based on your ability to meet the moment.

The moment she told me what was wrong, I sprang into action.

It wasn’t until we were in the examination room that I allowed emotions to see daylight. If I had let them out during the process of getting her to the vet, my driving would have been a lot more erratic and dangerous in my efforts to get to my destinations as soon as possible.

You need to process events that unfold but not until there’s a safe space for you to do so.

There are times when you’ll need to manage them at multiple stages. For me, the first stage was at the clinic. The second stage was at home when I had to get her situated as I juggled my kids and their needs. Thankfully, my wife was there to tag-team as we ran circles are them.

A final tip on building resilience

The four things that I’ve shared here are great and all, but there’s one thing that takes the process to another level:

Repetition.

Life is full of ups and downs, and if you think about it, you tend to handle them in very similar fashion regardless of the nature of the crisis. Why?

• Because you need to mitigate and manage decision fatigue.

• Because you’ve repeated the actions until they became part of daily rituals integrated into your life.

• Because you will go nuts if you have to focus on every little detail of just putting on your pants in the morning when it’s two minutes before you were supposed to be out the door with your kid going to school.

Gratitude, reframing, simple execution, and emotional regulation are all built into your routines. I’m just pointing them out here.

Here’s my “resilience ritual” that’s saved my ass many times over the past few decades:

1. Respond - acknowledge that it’s happening/happened

2. Relay - reach out and reassure someone (even if it’s just you) that you’re there to help

3. React - start moving (the longer you freeze, the worse it gets)

4. Reassess - course-correct as you go and handle any surprises along the way

5. Recognize - thank those who helped you at every step

You can take these steps and personalize them any way you want. They’ve served me well.

What was the last crisis you faced? Did you handle it well? What did you learn about yourself from the experience?

Next time, we’ll talk about what do to when things don’t go your way.