This can be positive and joyful if we met or exceeded those expectations, but can also lead to feelings of inadequacy, resentment, stress or failure if we or the situation itself failed to meet those same expectations.
Let's start with a universal truth. Life knocks down all of us, and will keep doing so until we go.
We all internalize whatever happens to us with meaning. It's our truth, our life, the results of which are now ingrained in our mind and in our being, and we become as we decide to internalize the truths we tell ourselves.
So if every time we have setbacks or decide to experience failure as an inadequacy we have no control over, we start building self beliefs that will accumulate over time, and lead to stagnation and risk avoidance in different areas our lives.
Putting it simply: if when life knocks you down, you make the decision (conscious or not) to stay down and not lift your head up and try again until you achieve whatever you want, it's unlikely you'll get to live a purposeful and fulfilling life because all the little decisions we make every single day, all the little things in our daily routines, or what we set time apart to do each week as part of our goals and dreams, they add up and come with interest correlating directly to the success or expectation you can or should have about it.
Resilience is about recovering quickly. As my mentor, Eric Thomas, says 'We all get knocked down. But if I come a week later, and you're still on the ground? Then we have a problem". And most people, it's not even a week they're down. Something happens and they spend weeks, months, years and even decades pointing fingers at people and situations and without ever moving on with their lives. Please don't let that be you.
Make it your decision to internalize each setback, each obstacle, each milestone, each effort as a stepping stone towards a future and hoped for reward. The path may not always be clear, but it will always show itself.
Resilience is also about increasing your personal threshold of tolerance towards life's randomness and staying flexible. Things will happen when you least expect them to, and if we find positive and constructive ways of dealing with it, we increase our tolerance threshold and what we feel comfortable dealing with so that overtime we get so good at it, that it takes something very significant to throw you down. As Bill Harris mentions in his book "Thresholds of the Mind", a resilient personality cannot be taught but it can be learnt, and its the "emergence of innate abilities made possible by learning from experience and responding flexibly to whatever is happening'.
Resilience is about making up in your mind that whatever life throws at you, you'll succeed. It's about taking small risks and not living permanently in your comfort zone, feeling the fear and doing stuff anyway, from the little stuff like having difficult conversations with people and not being afraid to stand up for yourself,to the big stuff like accepting consequences of the choices we make, face them and just deal with it and decide to move on and not hold resentments or regrets.
Ultimately, it's about acceptance Rafael. Acceptance that you'll not always be in control, that randomness is an integral part of living and there are no inherently good or bad things in life, unless you decide to make them so. With every challenge, we all have the power to decide if it will break or make us into who we are. The power to decide between lessons and blessings and opportunities, or fears and failures and threats. You'll be a happier man if you choose the former.
