Surviving to Thriving

The following excerpt is adapted from Surviving to Thriving: How to Overcome Setbacks and Rock Your Life. Available on Amazon.

What makes some people able to survive the rough patches, while others end up broken and hollow?

Let’s put niceties aside for a moment and be honest. You’ve seen those people. They’re at the grocery store, the doctor’s office, waiting in line at the movies. You look over and think to yourself, “Geez, they’ve had it rough.” There’s a good possibility that they haven’t lived through anything worse than you or me, so what’s the difference?

First, let’s talk about resilience.

People often refer to it as “bouncing back.” I think that term should be stricken from our vocabulary. Bouncing back suggests that you started at point A (or the beginning of your character arc for you writerly types); experienced your storm (this is the conflict in a story); hit your climax, and ended up… IN THE SAME EXACT PLACE. Writer folks, that means that your character arc was more of a ray.

Why would you want to do that? Why would you want to face trials and tribulations, only to become the same exact person you were before? That seems like a waste of a perfectly good period of hardship.

Our other option is bouncing forward, I suppose. We can face our challenges, learn from them, grow from them, and become better versions of ourselves.

Let’s use an example that everyone should be familiar with: A Christmas Carol. Just a heads up though: I’m going to be referring to the Muppet version, because that’s how I roll. The story is the same, so if you haven’t seen the Muppet version, you can still follow along.

In the beginning, Scrooge is an awful, miserly, cranky, old man who takes advantage of the frog and rats that work for him. He pays them poor wages, keeps the threat of the “unemployment line” hanging over their heads, refuses to ration out extra coal for the furnace, and makes them work on Christmas. He refuses to give to the poor, has no relationship with his family, and mocks a homeless bunny for his lot in life. No bueno.

Then, the ghosts show up. Christmas Past, Christmas Present, and Christmas Future (who is creepy!), stop by to help Scrooge reflect on how he lives his life, and what will happen if he goes unchanged. He wakes up the next morning, gets ready for work and goes right back to torturing his employees and ignoring the poor.

Wait. What? No he doesn’t. Because that would make a cruddy story!

Here is what actually happens: Scrooge wakes up, grateful to be alive and to have the opportunity to right the wrongs he has committed. He donates to the poor, shows kindness and compassion to that adorable bunny, and brings a turkey the size of Fozzie Bear to the Crachets’ house so that the frog and the pig can feed their wonderful, genetically impossible, frog-and-pig children.

Scrooge faces his challenge and bounces forward. He is a changed man. When you face your conflict, when life kicks you in the butt, will you embrace it and become better for it, or will you stick your head in the sand and become one of those “What the heck happened to them” people?

It’s been my experience that you can learn to be resilient. There are certain qualities you can develop, tools you can gather, and characteristics you can foster in order to rock out at this party we call “life.”

This article originally appeared in the Autumn 2018 issue of CHOICES Magazine