How to Survive – Beautifully
What does it take to become a survivor? How can we cope more effectively right now and create a legacy? What can we learn from past survivors that will help us adapt? Read the full post below or listen to the podcast to discover how you can survive beautifully.
Gloria Gaynor sang a song years ago that became an anthem for women everywhere, called I Will Survive. It’s catchy and makes you feel strong and empowered and capable of doing anything. And in the song, you realize your strength comes after you overcome your fears and challenges. It comes after you’ve been through a lot. Her first words of the song are…
At first I was afraid, I was petrified
Kept thinking I could never live without you by my side
But then I spent so many nights thinking how you did me wrong
And I grew strong
And I learned how to get along…
And the message of course is that she’s learned, she’s become tough and resilient and she will survive. Male or female the meaning is the same, we go through tremendous challenges that sadden us and frighten us and create losses in our lives, and we come out more resilient and capable as we realize our abilities to create new alternatives and cope.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross has a wonderful quote on adversity:
“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”
As a species we are built for survival. Even while we’re working to revive our businesses or create the emotional space we need to work from home, we have the opportunity to start creating a legacy of accomplishments and growth.
Think about it, people will be talking for years about COVID-19 and conversations will venture into…what did you do with your time…how did you remain resilient…what did you learn while in quarantine. We have the opportunity now to create answers to those questions and genuinely change our lives in ways that are meaningful to us.
What does it take to become a survivor? How can we cope more effectively right now and create a legacy? What can we learn from past survivors that will help us adapt?
Thinking about survivors, I was working in Midtown Manhattan on 9/11 and didn’t realize that a few miles from me terrorists were destroying the Twin Towers until the class I was teaching was told to evacuate the building. Everyone looked out the windows to see what we had thought were clouds were instead massive waves of smoke coming toward us.
How did my fellow New Yorkers cope? We went through the shock of being attacked, then admitting we felt helpless, stunned, unprotected and vulnerable. We then realized the normal after 9/11 would be a different, less naïve attitude toward terrorism and protecting our country, and then we got busy making a difference.
The same thing is happening now. We have all been shocked to our core by all the aspects of this epidemic, and we’ve gone through the phase of honestly realizing we are feeling shocked, scared, and sometimes just plain baffled as to what our futures are going to look like. Now it’s time to figure out what we can do, learn, contribute and change in order to adjust. In other words, be resilient.
The definition of resilience means rebound. And, of course, we can’t rebound unless we’ve been knocked down in some way, in order to come back.
A wonderful example of the power of resiliency came from author Martha Beck, who wrote about Muhammad Ali’s amazing 1974 championship fight against George Foreman. She explained that Ali entered that legendary fight a 4-to-1 underdog against the younger, stronger Foreman. He spent most of eight rounds backed against the ropes, absorbing sledgehammer body blows. Then, with 30 seconds left in the eighth round, Ali suddenly roared back and delivered a flurry of punches that left Foreman on the canvas.
Ali didn’t win, she said, with sheer physical power. He didn’t dominate effortlessly but he was resilient and used resiliency strategies to win. And we can do the same as we recover our equilibrium and start to be productive, creative, effective human beings surviving well during the time of COVID-19
One growth strategy is to realize we are smart enough to ask for help and not pretend to be perfect. When we do this, we allow others to do the same. Who wants to admit feeling down or scared or any less-than-admirable qualities when talking to Super Humans who have everything 100% in control? Going back to Ali, he used a “rope a dope” strategy where he didn’t even look very good (I had to go online and watch the fight after reading her article). Allowing himself to be pummeled into the rope and using it for buoyancy, he wasn’t worrying about showing off or looking perfect; he was strategizing how to win.
Once all of us realize things have changed permanently in some ways (we’re still discovering what the future will look like), then it’s time to use our ingenuity and strengths and get moving. We know for a fact that despite past challenges and the current ones, we are intrepid and inventive survivors. We come up with quarantine songs, have outings on front porches six feet apart and lead meetings dressed in PJ bottoms. We can overcome and adapt, and the good news is in many ways we are already finding a myriad of ways to cope, survive and thrive.
Every week I talk with people who tell me about their losses—lost music tours, cancelled honeymoons and often something more dire. But little by little we’re creating a template of courage and adaptability, learning from each other, enabling us to come out on the other side of COVID as better versions of ourselves, letting our true beauty show through.
