Make it Make Sense

There are big shifts going on in the world at the moment. Budgets, elections and wars (oh my!) are all there with the potential to shift the practical landscape of the status quo. They might seem like big and lofty things - abstract from our lives - until we remember how things trickle down into our work, our home lives, our bank balances and our resilience levels.

Going back to our trusty model of 'Resilience Portfolios', there's a key skill that we need to be mastering in times of change. The evidence base is clear that our ability to make sense of the events that occur in our lives and integrate them with our wider belief systems is key in fostering positivity and maintaining movement towards the better future we strive for. It's something we've all been practicing since we were tiny bods - we look for the world to make sense. But - and it's a significant but - just looking for meaning is not enough to automatically support our positive wellbeing.

It's all in the lens...

Our brains are processing the current moment that we are living in, and these moments don't have objective truth in them. Our eyes take in the sights, our ears the sounds, our wider senses the rest of it. Something happens, we receive information about it, and then our brains get busy. Put simply, we take the information we have about the event and pass it through our internal lenses to create a meaning.

That meaning that we create comes from three sets of lenses inside of us. One is our body, one is our mind, and one is our connection to our spiritual beliefs.

For example, let's say that you are looking for a job. You've been made redundant or you're burned out from your current situation and think there's great opportunity to change job and there it is on LinkedIn - your dream job. You sent out your resume and an absolutely banging covering letter. It's now day three and you've heard nothing back. Your inbox is just marketing emails and social media notifications.

If you're burned out or exhausted, your body is going to be in catastrophe mode. The same if your hormones are running the show that week. We all know the snickers advert - you're not you when you're hungry. All of these are lenses created by your body that can influence what the empty inbox means to you.

Let's say that you've experienced trauma in your life that has taught you to believe that you will never be good enough to be chosen by people. Maybe even that you're generally not good enough at anything. Maybe you're not smart enough, or confident enough in your abilities or you can't speak so that people listen. It's a lens created in your mind.

In terms of spiritual beliefs, I don't just mean religion here - although that is a part of it for some people - it's any kind of wider belief about how the world works. Mercury might be in retrograde and Aries should prepare for disappointment today. Maybe you're an eternal pessimist, or you believe in karma and have been beating yourself up for yelling at your kids when you tripped over their shoes for the fourth time this week... these are your spiritual lenses.

In reality, all that happened is an empty inbox, but in the examples above, it's easy to see how you could make it mean you never got the job. Maybe even that you'll never get ANY job and are doomed for a life on the streets in a box. That's not what happened. What happened was empty inbox. You've made the meaning that you’ve not got the job. A well-rested, confident optimist might be thinking "oh I wonder if the hiring manager is away from their desk this week?!"

How do these lenses factor into our resilience portfolio?

Well, firstly, there's going to be an immediate impact on your mood. If your lenses have taken you down the catastrophe spiral into losing your house, your relationships and everything you hold dear, you're likely to feel pretty anxious, sad, hopeless... one of the uncomfortable emotions will have come out to play. Using these lenses long term will have a consistent impact on your overall wellbeing and emotional state.

Next, they impact your actions. If we're feeling down (and we don't have one of my handy emotional regulation plans to fall back on), what are we going to do? We're going to go crack open the biscuits, start a Netflix binge and tell all our friends exactly how hopeless it is to need a job in this current climate. These actions then inform the next moment. If your friend says “you know what, it's right. It's really stressful. My work is making redundancies too!” that informs your meaning-making of the next moment and around and around the cycle we go!

But if you can spot the pattern and look through some more empowering lenses, our action shifts. What if you could tap into this: “I‘m great at my job - my boss told me so. I'd be a credit to any organization. Mercury's in retrograde and maybe it went to spam? I'm tired and hungry and need a very long nap right now.” Are your actions different when you come from some different lenses?

So as we move forward, if things feel doom and gloom, here's a guiding question for you: 'what lenses am I seeing this situation through right now?'

Wanna know what to do now you know those lenses are there? Send me a message and we'll draw up your next steps together 🚶♀️🚶👨🦽