Every time you pick up your GO-VA mug for a quick sip of your rocket fuel of choice, a reminder comes up. You are Brave, Resilient, and Remarkable. It’s even got your name on it.
Sometimes, though, we don’t feel particularly brave or remarkable. Or resilient, which. like anything worth learning and doing in life, takes practice.
In their talk last Friday, Feb. 21, about mental health, our CEO Fiona Kesby and GO-VA founder Matt Kesby shared some powerful reminders.
First, that it’s perfectly normal to feel fear, anxiety or doubt, especially when we go through a rough patch in our work or personal lives.
Second, that we can help one another overcome the shame that surrounds these low-energy feelings and ask for help.
Third, that there are ideas, tools, and skills we can apply to help move from fear and to recover our bravery when these rough patches come—as they inevitably will.
When life threw her one curve ball after another in the 5 years before GO-VA’s birth, Fiona found that deliberate gratitude helped.
The losses that she mentioned are universal. Every one of us will go through the loss of a loved one and the end of an intimate relationship.
We will all know failure (in fact, potentially many failures). That’s just the price of admission for being alive.
Yet grief isn’t permanent. And our failures aren’t necessarily final. Sadness is what reminds us to cherish joy when it comes back, as it always will. When our hearts break, sometimes what happens is that they break open.
To help us endure and recover from all sorts of setbacks, we’ve got to work on our mindsets, our tools, and our skills. “We’ve got to get our self-talk right first,” Matt said.
Remember this speed drill when you start to feel worried or fearful.
Or when you start to doubt your own abilities.
Remind a teammate, friend or loved one that you’re there to help them get unstuck when they go through anxiety, grief, or doubt.
There’s a lovely definition of resilience by the authors Karen Reivich and Andrew Shatte. They think of resilience as the ability “to persevere when things go awry, the ability to handle threat with integrity and grace.”
