Back when I was on the speaking circuit, the most requested topic, in good times and bad always came back to “How to thrive in uncertainty.” One of the reasons I decided to restart the Monday Motivator was the snowstorm of emails and texts from friends of every political bent who are terrified for our future.
So let’s begin this new series with a few thoughts about the five commonalities shared by people who find reserves of resilience and energy in every season.
Focus on things within your control.
- You can focus on your actions: Your choices, behaviors, and responses to situations.
- You can control your attitude: The lens you choose to use to view the world around you will make all the difference
- You can control your effort: The race is not always won by the strongest or fastest, but by the person who can get back up and keep going.
- You can control your words: What you say and how you communicate. Listen to learn. And remember, you subconscious programs the rest of you by what it hears you say. So when you talk, watch your language.
Prioritize relationships.
- Time is the one thing we can’t get back. Gently let go of energy suckers.
- Make new friends. You may find fellow travelers who get you.
- Prioritize people who care. In tough times, they’ll be the only ones there
Don’t withdraw. It’s easy to doom scroll on your screens, sleep late and avoid interaction. Stay in circulation. You never know when being there might make all the difference for somebody else.
Take care of your body. Your resilience and resistance are directly proportional to how you fuel and exercise your marvelous machine. Get in those steps. Minimize the sugar. Maximize the power foods.
And finally, practice acceptance. We can’t change what happens to us, but we can control how we react to it. Accept the past, but become a catalyst for positive, productive change in the only moment that is truly ours: The Now.
Remember this quote from Doc Brown in Back to the Future Three.
Our future is up to us. So make it a good one.
