fortitude

As December begins, we can create the time for reflection. The holidays are a great time to slow down, reflect on how things have gone, and determine some things we’d like to improve next year. Instead, we may get caught in a frenzy of holiday activities that keeps us running ourselves ragged. With a little effort now, you can prevent an avalanche of tasks that keep you from having time to reflect when you get a few days off.

Make a list and finish your shopping. If you haven’t finished your Christmas shopping, finish it now. Today is Cyber Monday and a great time to find a discount. This task will go faster and remain more budget friendly if you make a list and stick to it.

Start wrapping immediately. You don’t have to wrap all the gifts in one day but start soon after you purchase them. Take an hour or two each night while you’re watching TV to wrap your gifts. You can make this task go faster by getting the children to help.

Cut decorations down to the essential. Use a lighted wreath on the door in place of strands of lights on the house. Hang stockings and decorate one tree, but forego garland, extra candles, Christmas villages, and extra trees.

Prepare the guest room. If you have people coming to stay, go ahead and locate the extra blankets and pillows. Locate the blowup beds. Change the linens or put them with the temporary mattresses to save time later.

Create a general menu. Once you have a sense of the items you want to serve, create a backward timeline that allows for bundling tasks, prepping, and/or freezing in advance.

Premix pancakes, waffles, biscuits, rolls, or cinnamon rolls. When you must avoid wheat or other grains, you can’t always pick up a mix or prepared product at the last minute. Instead of waiting until guests start arriving, premix the dry ingredients for baked goods you plan to make. Put the mixes in clearly labelled containers and print out, or bookmark, the recipes so you can finish them quickly.

Carefully choose parties. How many times have you attended some event that drains you? Perhaps you can forego some of the usual events in favor of greater investment in the ones that are meaningful.

Mix your friends. I had a friend who religiously refused to mix groups of friends. Ironically, most of us knew each other. When we gathered for his memorial party, it was easy to see how silly the rule had been. Minimize the number of days you’re busy by inviting groups you might not normally pair. You may discover they mesh wonderfully. If not, you’ll probably get an interesting story!

Practice mindfulness. If you hurry through the holidays or busy yourself to avoid bad memories or trauma triggers, this is a great time to ground and breathe.

Ditch regret. Some of us spend time and energy punishing ourselves for the things we regret. Spending time reflecting summons all those demons adding fuel to the flame. This is time and energy wasted. We all do things we regret. We can’t undo them. The best we can do is learn and do better next time.

Reflection is both a time to learn from mistakes and a time to revel in all the good, serendipitous, heartwarming things this year brought us. Fully embracing the good bolsters us for any difficulty we may face next year. Reflection is an excellent ingredient in the recipe for fortitude.

Is fortitude key to thriving?

In the past 30 days, I’ve had two days off. For the past two weeks, I’ve worked 12 plus hours per day. This temporary gig requires patience and humor. Without a great deal of fortitude, I’d be sunk. As an entrepreneur, I have long been aware that tenacity, fortitude, and flexibility are more important to achievement than intelligence, knowledge, and contacts.

Fortitude is what gets you through when you do everything right and things still turn out wrong. It’s what allows you to get out of bed and be excited about a project no one else appreciates. It’s what enables you to be ethical even when it means your bottom line will take a hit. And fortitude supports the patience it takes to slowly build a successful endeavor. Most importantly, fortitude is what allows us to weather the storms that come our way, slog through the aftermath, and emerge better for having had the experience.

I’d be willing to wager that those who had previously developed fortitude have been less detrimentally affected by the pandemic than others. That doesn’t mean they felt the losses and inconveniences any less, it just means they had a well of mental and emotional strength to draw from while envisioning ways to navigate the rapidly changing environment.

While most years won’t bring a pandemic, all will bring unexpected challenges beyond our control. So how does fortitude fit into everyday life?

Life is a game.

We seem to recognize the value of fortitude in sports competition. We expect elite athletes to train relentlessly, endure painful injuries, and still perform. We expect them to be able to focus and deliver peak performance no matter what is reported about them in the press. We feel free to bash them publicly when they struggle with their head game. And yet many of us allow ourselves to be mentally and emotionally lazy.

But life is the overarching game. And creating the life we desire is infinitely more achievable when we are mentally tough and emotionally balanced. We are all capable of improvement. All we need is to prioritize and practice building our skills.

The sooner, the better.

I’ve seen adults who had very little difficulty early in life self-destruct when hard times finally found them. Perhaps if they had developed fortitude sooner, they could have continued their early success.

Failure and fortitude go hand in hand.

No matter what you’re attempting, you will sometimes fail. As long as you keep learning from momentary setbacks, you will remain on a path to success. Each failure helps build fortitude.

Everyone’s tolerance is different.

Developing mental toughness requires difficulty. Removing all difficulty and pain will not help a child, for instance, develop fortitude. But each child will have a different level of tolerance. And each will require a unique approach for absorbing difficulty as a positive experience. Finding that approach and encouraging children while allowing them to feel disappointment, frustration, fear, sadness, and anger are key roles of parenting. Adults can be guided similarly by spiritual leaders, life coaches, therapeutic techniques, and even trusted friends or empathetic bosses.

Avoidance may be more pleasant in any given moment, but in the long-term can contribute to additional avoidant behaviors, more chaos, less resilience, a lack of follow-through, an inability to stick with a plan, and a tendency to quit rather than persevere. A bit of struggle is a good thing so long as it doesn’t overwhelm to the point of becoming traumatic.

Boundaries are essential.

When you are capable of more, you will be asked to do more. No matter how tough you are, there is a point at which taking on more is unhealthy. Setting and enforcing boundaries is essential for keeping your load at a level that allows you to thrive.

Building fortitude can help you reframe “I can’t.” to “How can I best approach this?” That tiny shift can make all the difference in how you feel.

That can be the difference between surviving and thriving.

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Tag: fortitude

Time for Reflection