Sometimes I find my own brain Really. Fecking. Annoying.
Case in point, the other morning I tuned into a “Meditation for Courage '' on my Peleton app.
I’m feeling in need of it at the moment, because I have some low-level emotional discomfort going on in the form of doing things that are exposing me to feelings of embarrassment and fear.
The embarrassment is coming in the form of reaching out for help for a mad idea that potentially makes me look naive, unrealistic, out of my depth and over-excitable.
The low-level fear comes from putting on a new style of event that I’m not sure will work.
For most of the time I’m very excited about the event, but occasionally I think, “What if I completely and totally f*** it up, forget my words and bomb?”
It could happen.
But I won’t know unless I try.
Hence, I have to dig deep and grow.
One of the strategies I use for changing my state is meditation, and when I spotted a courage meditation with Ross Rayburn on the list of classes today, it felt like a great choice.
I’ve done several of Ross’s meditations in the past and I like his style, so I settled myself after my ride this morning to flood my brain with positive s**t.
However, it was only a couple of minutes into the meditation when he said something that bugged the hell out of me.
“We need to develop our resiliency….”
“Our WHAT? Surely, the correct word is resilience. We develop resilience. Like we develop patience. We don’t develop patiency!”
Let it go, Vic….let it go….look it up later.
Ommmmmmmm…
F*** me - he must have said resiliency twenty times in ten minutes, and my little brain was screaming for my body to get up and Google it.
The more he said it, the more agitated I became.
It was like being poked on a bruise every single time.
Needless to say, not the most effective meditation I’ve done, but probably the most ironic because I was seeking help for dealing with discomfort!
Anyway, in case you’re interested, resiliency is a recognised word but just not as common as resilience.
There is also some debate over whether it should be recognised, as some people describe it as an unnecessary word, but it’s enough to allow me to let it go and be at peace with Ross…
A more important coaching point is when you’re working on goals that stretch you, then you’ll need to work on your resilience - your capacity to withstand and recover from difficult situations.
Plus, work on your patiency, as your goals may take longer to achieve than you think!