#INKTOBER Day 9 — Bounce
When Life Brings You Down, Bounce Back Like a Tennis Ball
Don’t stay down like an iron ball
Inktober is a yearly challenge held in October. The challenge is to post one sketch for each day in October. My wife Durga is participating in this challenge. Her theme this year is Hanuman. I’m participating in my own challenge — I’m writing one article a day based on her sketch and the inktober prompt. Here are this year’s prompts.
When life pushes you down, bounce back like a tennis ball. Don’t stay down like an iron ball. — Swami Chinmayananda
The way we respond to life’s tough situations is directly related to how happy we are.
When we respond with grace, we glide through life’s terrains gracefully. When we complain and whine, life appears to be a series of rollercoaster rides.
Most of us appear to be wired to complain, leading us to view our lives in an unhappy light. This needn’t be the case — we can reprogram our minds to change our outlook.
Going along with the theme of this series, let us start by looking at Hanuman’s life.
Resilience is a Superpower
Being fragile sets us up for a lifelong bout of unhappiness.
Make no mistake — if it is not the nasty professor who takes sadistic pleasure in giving us a hard time (we’ve all had them), it can be the jerk-of-the-year boss, or the spouse who seems to have taken birth for the sole purpose of making our life living hell.
It is a bad idea to let people crush us.
It is easy to get crushed. It can be tempting as well. Why, getting crushed can turn into an addiction — you know that person who has a collection of woe-is-me anthology.
Resilience is a muscle we must all build — to protect ourselves from the big bad wolves present everywhere — most of our, the ones that exist inside our minds.
And make no mistake, resilience is a muscle that can be trained with practice. That moment where self-pity rears its ugly head, we must summon all the resistance we can and shut it down. When we rinse and repeat (and each occasion will drain us completely, since resilience is an alien concept), one day resilience will become our second nature.
Antifragility — The Obstacle is the Way
Problems are unpleasant.
So it seems at first glance. In retrospect, that insurmountable problem turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Our inability to see this fact is the cause for our suffering.
Building resilience is important, yes. What if we go one step further? What if we use or problems to our benefit? What if we make our problems fuel for our growth?
In the words of Roman king and philosopher Marcus Aurelius, “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”
Nicolas Nassim Taleb introduced the term antifragile — the opposite of fragile — using chaos to grow further.
What a wonderful approach. The raging depression and anxiety seen in today’s modern world will dramatically reduce when we change our approach to problems.
The Importance of Growth Mindset
Tony Robbins is addicted to growth. He says that if you’re not growing, you’re dying.
Carol Dweck, in her superb book Mindset, illustrates the importance of a growth mindset, as opposed to a fixed mindset. People with fixed mindset possess a “woe is me” and “Why me?” approach. People with growth mindset possess a “What next?”, “What can I do about this?”, “What lesson can I learn from this” approach.
People with a growth mindset adopt an approach of resilience, if not antifragility.
Focus on What is Under Our Control
It is a losing proposition to focus on what is not under our control.
Doing so is a double whammy. First, place our happiness in factors that we don’t control. More importantly we fail to act on what is under our control.
Not an intelligent way to live.
Let us discipline ourselves to relentlessly be solution oriented and see what is under our control. This action-oriented approach has a double benefit — we won’t have the time to wallow in self-pity — and we make progress to make our lives better.
Hanuman Had Every Reason to Complain and Whine
- He was subjected to a curse from the sages where He would not remember His powers until someone reminded Him.
- His mother had to return to heaven.
- He had to complete His education constantly on the move.
- He had to undertake a seemingly impossible mission to find Sita — where failure would mean death at the hands of Sugriva.
- Along the trip to Lanka, he faced a tempting visit,
He did not complain our whine.
Not once.
He was action-oriented, relished a challenge, kept a cool head, traveled light, didn’t carry the word ‘worry’ in His vocabulary, and did what He had to do.
Pretty neat.
Taking a tiny leaf out of Hanuman’s book can improve our lives multifold.
