Discipline One

Discipline One of Six: ResilienceMy spiritual memoir Spiritual Audacity: Six Disciplines for Human Flourishing is built around six spiritual disciplines of which the first is resilience.  Is this an important discipline in your spiritual life?  How has it become or not become the basis of your flourishing?Resilient people use a well-developed set of skills that help them to control their emotions, attention, and behavior. Self-regulation is important for forming intimate relationships, succeeding at work, and maintaining physical health. —The Resilience Factor by Karen Reivich and Andrew ShattéHow does spiritual resilience factor into your life today?Resilience: The single most important spiritual practice in my life. Having lived with and through so many difficult circumstances in my life, I have needed to make resilience a core spiritual practice for myself. This is largely about transforming suffering.One of my teachers compares transforming suffering through resilience to feeding a family from a spoiled dead fish. A dead fish stinks. You want to keep it as far away as possible from your supper. Yet if you compost it in the ground, with lots of water and sunshine, it can become a source of new life to make a meal for all.Life grows forth from death. No matter how hard we fall or how difficult it may be to recover, even if we want to give up, resilience will always lead us to something good in the end. That dead fish can be transformed into food for the soul through the practice of resilience. Lift up and tell the stories of resilience in your own life.  We all can practice this spiritual discipline, and with practice, we all become better at it.  All will be well.