Resilience to Suffering Starts with Mindset
Posted on 26th September 2022 at 15:39
Feels like there is a lot of suffering going on in the world, either happening now or just the anticipation of it. Even if you aren’t on the front line of war or climate catastrophe, it still affects your mental health.
Helen Keller, born in Alabama in 1880, became deaf and blind due to illness at the age of just 19 months. She had an incredible disadvantage but started learning to speak aged ten and eventually became an author, disability rights campaigner and political activist.
She wrote 14 books and hundreds of essays on a wide range of topics such as blindness prevention, the rise of fascism, and birth control. She is an incredible example of overcoming suffering, or at least the potential of it.
Hearing her story, it is as if she never felt disadvantaged, and that her situation was the making of her. (It probably was.) We so often have bad luck laid before us, and then decide about how we feel about it, often in an understandably negative way.
But however tough the hand dealt, consider that nothing actually makes us feel like anything – how we feel and react is a choice which belongs to us alone. It’s a mindset thing and that is the starting point to build resilience.
Having a kitbag of mind and body boosting techniques which become healthy habits means developing a stronger mindset, turning suffering into thriving.
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