Mad Scientist
In 1997, Robin Williams starred in a family-appropriate movie along-side a bunch of wildly talented, definitely-recognizable actors. In it, he played a mad scientist so singularly focused on his creations that he missed his own wedding… three times.
Flubber– both the name of the film and the improbable creation, is a green slime that is super-bouncy, super-stretchy, and it can fly. Within the context of the movie, slapstick shenanigans obviously ensue, the scientist may or may not get the girl, and the creation may or may not save the day. Is it a great film? Nah. But it’s an easy watch.
BUT KARI! What does this have to do with coaching?
Right, yes. Well. I’ve recently been thinking about what it means to be a resilient person.
Really, what I’ve been thinking about is how much I dislike that word, “resilient”, much like I dislike “authenticity”, and “priority”, and “triggered.” We’ve misused and misplaced those words to such a degree that their subjectivity is reckless. It could be my own biases and subjectivity at work, so I’m not going to spend a lot of time on that here.
What I will say instead is that I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about what it means to bounce back from some difficulty, having been stretched from an experience and slowly regaining our original-but-new shape.
Where do we find comfort in the comeback, without romanticizing the suffering or adversity we’ve experienced?
With so much that is out of our control, how do we move beyond certain experiences without losing what makes us special?
If you want to be a person of Flubber– who bounces and stretches and flies– it comes down to three things:
Be resourceful and realistic. Sometimes, things are going to be hard. Impossibly hard. Unnecessarily hard. Sometimes, no amount of positive talk is going to make something better. So how do you show up for yourself in those hard moments? Who shows up with you? What is at your disposal to help you keep going? And how do you celebrate the perseverance it takes to just get through it?
Find balance and objectivity. Maintain your perspective and don’t get stuck in your feelings. Appropriately integrate work and play so that you have something nourishing you in one area when the other is challenging. Learn from your successes and missteps. Work your sphere of influence.
Trust yourself and the lessons you’ve hard-won, instinctively learned, or intrinsically knew. Find comfort in your own skin. Find what makes you strong and keep working that muscle. Embrace the scars (internal and external) as part of the beautiful topography of your most-necessary existence. And for pete’s sake, be yourself.
What about you? What skills have you developed to help you bounce back? When have you embraced your inner Flubber and bounced the hell back?
