Reading this book Don’t Quit Your Day Job by Aliza Knox, I learn to see resilience as a form of mental stamina. Not so nice things can happen to us. How we respond to them can further shape outcomes. So practicing mindfulness, staying in the present moment, instead of living in the past or future, is a way to cultivate mental stamina. Of course, it does not mean we should stop planning or reflect on possible future outcomes. Staying in the present moment is an invitation to find balance between the here and now and not getting obsessed about the past or being fixated about the future and getting upset when things do not go our way.
Nature has a way of teaching us how to accept the bad and good, as written by William Wordsworth in his poetry A Character.
I marvel how Nature could ever find space
For so many strange contrasts in one human face:
There’s thought and no thought, and there’s paleness and bloom
And bustle and sluggishness, pleasure and gloom.
There’s weakness, and strength both redundant and vain;
Such strength as, if ever affliction and pain
Could pierce through a temper that’s soft to disease,
Would be rational peaceāa philosopher’s ease.
There’s indifference, alike when he fails or succeeds,
And attention full ten times as much as there needs;
Pride where there’s no envy, there’s so much of joy;
And mildness, and spirit both forward and coy.
There’s freedom, and sometimes a diffident stare
Of shame scarcely seeming to know that she’s there,
There’s virtue, the title it surely may claim,
Yet wants heaven knows what to be worthy the name.
This picture from nature may seem to depart,
Yet the Man would at once run away with your heart;
And I for five centuries right gladly would be
Such an odd such a kind happy creature as he.
Guide: Noelle Lim
Image credit: Biel Morro, Unsplash
Kindermind Center 