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Find Purpose, Strengthen Relationships, and Develop Grit
20 September 2016
Allison read Making Modern Toughness in The New York Times and appreciated Damon Winter’s advice on how to be more resilient.
Tags: allison read, balance, grit, resilience
In Making Modern Toughness, Damon Winter suggests that the path to emotional resilience, grit, and inner strength may lie in our ability to tap into a greater purpose that inspires us. Rather than trying to protect ourselves from pain or falling into the trap of being harsh and combative, he suggests that we be brave enough to feel the pain.
"The people we admire for being resilient are not hard; they are ardent. They have a fervent commitment to some cause, some ideal or some relationship. That higher yearning enables them to withstand setbacks, pain and betrayal. Such people are, as they say in the martial arts world, strong like water. A blow might sink into them, and when it does they are profoundly affected by it…. There are moments when they feel swallowed up by fear. They feel and live in the pain. But they work through it and their ardent yearning is still there, and they return to an altered wholeness."
Winter agrees that at times there seems to be a certain fragility in the face of setbacks among younger generations today, but he takes issue with the sentiment that older generations were or are necessarily healthier in the face of adversity. "… but let’s not be too nostalgic for the past. A lot of what we take to be the toughness of the past was really just callousness. There was a greater tendency in years gone by to wall off emotions, to put on a thick skin — for some men to be stone-like and uncommunicative and for some women to be brittle, brassy and untouchable."
I appreciate Winter’s balanced view of the pros and cons of younger and older generations in the face of difficulty. Regardless, of your age I believe we’ll all be well served to "...to rethink toughness or at least detach it from hardness." In the midst of my own suffering when I’m desperate to feel tougher and be stronger, I’ll be doing my best to help myself remember my greater purpose and make a warm connection with another person.
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