Resilience is Capacity

Resilience is the capacity to be present with what is uncomfortable.

(read that again)

How does it feel to you?

I’ve been reflecting on this recently with people talking about the dynamics of challenging families during the holidays, preparing to take on new year’s resolutions, or specifically needing things to be a certain way for more inner peace.

We’ve been empowering ourselves to set boundaries and meet our needs in new ways, which is very helpful, yet there’s an element of doing so that can keep us more comfortable and less resilient when life does get messy.

Is it better to make our environment what we need, or find within ourselves what we need to navigate our environment? Maybe it’s about both?

I’ve been exploring this for some time, by learning to witness the discomfort, watching my patterns of response, practicing grounding, and leaning into acceptance of what is happening. In doing so, I’ve been building inner capacity to meet the feelings and experiences that live in me and move through me.

Matt and I were out for breakfast recently and there was a young child making a lot of noise. It was distracting and somewhat dysregulating.

I was reminded of a moment years ago on a plane, a baby was crying and I could see people were frustrated. In that moment, I closed my eyes, took some deep breaths, made space around myself energetically, and sent loving kindness to the baby. I had never done anything like that before, but it felt intuitively helpful in the moment.

We can’t change the way others act, we can only change our response.

And the way to support our response, is not to react, get upset, annoyed and attached to the situation. It’s to ground, find peace within one’s self, and meet the moment with compassion and understanding.

Calming an upset baby is never an easy feat, and I have to wonder, is that the best thing? Maybe the baby needs to get that energy out so it can reset its own nervous system, just like we often need to.

When those around us are uncomfortable, we learn to change or they try to change us for their own comfort. We develop methods for our nervous system to respond to those situations so we hopefully don’t lose connection.

We became resourceful, in this way, years ago when we first encountered situations to try to get our needs met.

The unfortunate thing is those responses are still playing out now, and not always helpful anymore, even though we’ve grown up.

I recall patterns of blame (on myself or others) that would ‘help” me through the moments of discomfort. Trying to “make sense” of the situation so that I felt safe and secure.

You have responses too. We all do. We have different responses to meet our needs in various moments and situations.

But coming back to this essence of capacity. If we can learn to meet ourselves in those moments in a new way, compassionately, we build the capacity to meet more uncomfortable moments and not loose ourselves or our inner peace.

In this way, we build more resilience within ourselves to meet the uncomfortable, to change “comfort” that actually isn’t working anymore, and to open ourselves to the unknown that stands before us.

Then we can build resilient and compassionate families and communities.

As we head toward the new year, this resiliency can help you align yourself with what truly matters to you and to let go of the rest.

I’m here to support you in building that inner capacity and resilience to meet life more empowered and present to what you truly need.

I hope you’ll take the opportunity to dive into my Grounded Resilience course. Those who have taken in the lessons and practices have said it was very helpful and will support them in years to come.

And as we step into the new year, I have a couple upcoming opportunities to support you in aligning your energy and intentions with your needs and desires to step calmly and empowered into 2026.

May you find your resilient, resourceful, and most authentic self in 2026.