Understanding Resilience

(air hisses) (plastic clicks) (tranquil music) (whispers) Headspace Studios. (ethereal music) (tranquil music) (bird chirping) (tranquil music continues) Greetings. I'm Kessonga, and welcome to Radio Headspace, and to this wonderful Wednesday. I'm hoping this hump day is finding everyone maintaining well this week so far. One of the things I really cherish in my life is my relationship with my parents. I think they are just some of the most wonderful and beautiful people that I know. I feel extremely lucky to have them as my parents, but, these days, I find myself getting emotional after I talk to them on the phone, and I know the reason is because I actually almost lost my father last year to Covid, but typical of my father, he was able to fight back and is going strong today. (tranquil music continues) So, what I would really love to explore a bit today is this phenomena of resilience. So, what is resilience? It's actually defined formally as the capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties. I like to call it your ability to bounce back, but to bounce back from what? Well, the definition says difficulties, but I just like to call it plain old stress. I like to use this term stress because it covers so many bases. (tranquil music continues) Unfortunately, everyone is going to encounter stress at some point in their lives, and at various levels. I'm here to tell you that it's all okay and everyone is going to find themselves at various levels of stress at some point in their lives. It's just the way it is. I think the first step of tapping into our resilience is accepting that this phenomenon of stress actually exists. I think we often try to convince ourselves that we shouldn't be feeling stressed, and I am no exception. When my father was basically dying in the hospital from Covid, I was totally distraught. I distinctly remember at one point thinking to myself, "Kessonga, what are you doing? You can't fall apart right now. Pull it together. You have to be strong for your siblings and for your family." That's so wild, right? Here I was thinking that I couldn't fall apart because my father was dying. I quickly realized that I wasn't practicing what I preached, and I allowed myself to experience what I was feeling, and oddly enough, once I allowed myself to cry and to just ball it out, I actually felt better. That just goes to show you that resilience can look differently depending on the situation. In my father's situation, me allowing myself to be vulnerable and to cry it out was how resilience showed up. My father showed resilience by not succumbing to Covid and literally deciding to continue fighting. I will never forget that day, when he had previously decided to take the intubation tube out of his body, knowing that it was the only thing basically keeping him alive. At the very last...