Resilience when Working for Change

by Miki Kashtan

I have often wondered why it is that there is so much strife and conflict in so many of the communities and movements I know of. This has been especially challenging to grasp when the groups I am talking about are generally committed to a vision of a peaceful world and the individuals in them aspire to personal integrity and compassion in their relationships.

I am very well aware I am not the only one wondering about this, and many have had things to say about it already. Some think of it as inevitable, part of human nature. Some think of communities as going through pre-determined phases. I find my heart sinking at these thoughts, because of my own deep sense of human dignity, and because I have so much faith in our capacity to transcend any static notion of who we are or how things must unfold.

Some others invoke centuries or millennia of practices of domination which have been passed from generation to generation through our education, through wars, through our governance and economic systems, and through the stories we tell ourselves about what it means to be human and how things should be. In this view, each of us is brought into this world and becomes part of these dynamics regardless of what, if anything, is our essential human nature. Tragic as this view is, I find it more palatable, more consistent with my own heart longings, because it leaves room for the possibility both that as individuals we can overcome our personal habits, and that as a species we might learn collectively how to create new systems, structures, and practices that will support us in interdependently engaging with others to create a world that works for all of us and the rest of the natural world.

Why We Want to Create Change
I don’t know why it took me so many years to ask the simple question I discovered today: why it is that any of us would work for change - either as personal growth or as our contribution to social transformation. Since I think of most everything through the lens of human needs, a part of the answer became immediately obvious to me: we work for change because our needs, on balance, are not met in how the world operates or in how our individual lives unfold. Anyone whose needs are mostly met is less likely to want to create change.

With this clarity came another: if our needs, on balance, are not met, that’s likely to mean that we have less resilience. Resilience, in the online English learners’ dictionary, is defined as “the ability to become strong, healthy, or successful again after something bad happens.” As a colleague once remarked, when our needs are often not met, any one experience of unmet needs can become unbearable, whereas if our needs are overall met, any one experience of unmet needs is much less significant.

The implication of this simple insight were unsettling. Could it really be that those of us who work for change are, in some ways at least, less resilient because our needs are less often met? If so, wouldn’t that be a reason why more things would appear to us as attacks, people slacking off, or the like; why more of the time we would feel afraid to say what’s on our mind because the weight of potentially not being received can be more debilitating; or why we would get angry easily when conflicts arise?

Young Haitian Soccer Players after Earthquake

Sources of Resilience
If, indeed, our lack of individual resilience is a contributing factor to the many challenges of working with others and trying to collaborate, then if we want to work for change we need to find sources of strength, activities, relationships, or other strategies that nourish our sense of well-being so that we can face situations with more presence. The possibilities are almost endless, and I would love to see a focused discussion in many circles about what can add to our resilience. To get started, here are some sources of resilience that I know have worked for me and others.

Solidarity: The experience of being in community with others who are experiencing the same hardship can be a source of immense support. Bell Hooks, among others, describes how segregation in many ways helped African Americans develop pride and resilience, because they developed an entire parallel society with many successful role models of business people, teachers etc., while integration has sapped both for many. Much would need to be explored about what conditions make this kind of togetherness supportive, and when the very issues of strife and conflict can interfere with the added resilience.

Gratitude: I have already written about how a practice of gratitude can provide immense fuel for life. After a year of consistent and daily gratitude practice, I find that I can now have immediate access to gratitude even in tough moments, and literally feel the increased resilience that arises spontaneously from tapping into gratitude.

Faith: As someone who lives without a god or higher power of any kind, I am well aware that people of faith often have much more capacity to withstand challenges and difficulties. God, or any other source of faith, is something to lean on, some profound heart assurance that a force exists that will bring about a longed-for outcome. For just one example, I imagine that for Martin Luther King, Jr. to say that the arc of history bends towards justice required faith. In the absence of a transcendent source of faith, my own relies on human dignity, on our ability to transcend circumstances, on the grandeur of our spirit. I aim to cultivate and deepen my faith, so I can lean on it more in times of great challenge, especially when I feel helpless and in despair in the face of the immensity of human cruelty or lack of care that I so often perceive in the world.

Spiritual Practice: If conflict involves temporary or longer-term loss of empathy, compassion, generosity, or care for self or others, this means that those capacities get most “tested” in those times when others (or ourselves in many cases) act in ways that don’t work for us. This has led me to recognize that we can increase our resilience by embracing a consistent spiritual practice that strengthens our ability to withstand unmet needs, so can access choice in how to respond to those difficult moments.

Vision: I wish so much that we lived, already, in the world of my dreams, a world without coercion, based on willingness and generosity, trust and sufficiency; where enough needs are met for everyone that violence becomes a thing of the past. For now, that vision in itself becomes a source of strength for me. I have found, repeatedly, that clarity of vision sustains my energy even in difficult circumstances. As I am reminded of possibility, my passion rekindles, and I find more capacity to accept the obstacles along the way.

Power and Grace

When you think about power, what are some of the words or images that come to mind? More often than not, I’ve heard people associate power with domination, coercion, or extreme force. For many, their relationship with power is at best ambivalent. What if you were to think of power as the capacity to mobilize resources to attend to needs? What happens when you imagine increasing your internal resources, bringing more choice, decisiveness, and resilience to your life and work?

Wouldn’t you want a way to work directly on cultivating power?

Despite my clarity and strength, even relatively minor obstacles often interfere with my access to power. Since I hear similar experiences from many people, and since sharing my own experiences sometimes inspires others to live more fully, I decided to share with you in this post how I have been working to access more of my power.

Blocked access to power looks different for different people. My particular version looks like collapsing in the face of obstacles; paralysis and helplessness; giving up and resigning; or becoming abrupt, intense, or unpleasant as a way to scramble out of helplessness. Sometimes powerlessness shows up as waiting, just waiting – for the right person, the right circumstances, the right opportunity, the right project – so life could start, finally.

Practicing Power

Power would look like maintaining connection with what I want, and with a sense of possibility about moving towards it even in the face of obstacles. Power would look like choosing to live life fully now. It means choosing the circumstances in front of me instead of waiting. It means bringing all I have to life, to the world. It means risking disapproval and continuing to live the truth inside. That freedom is the power I want to have.

I have written previously about my gratitude practice at the end of the day. Now I start my day with an equally simple, almost mirror practice to work towards power. I review my day, what I know of what’s coming, not counting the unannounced, unplanned forceful flow of life. The next step is simply asking what I can do to be more powerful in each situation. What would bring more leadership? How can I be more intentional about attending to each moment to everyone’s benefit?

I slip away from the practice. Much of the time I lose my focus and wander. Or I don’t foresee the obstacles. Or I don’t know how to respond to them any differently from how I have in the past. This is the beginning of a practice, not the report on mastery. The whole point of practice is that when we start we are usually not good at what we are practicing. Still, even this early in my practice I can more easily imagine having a life that works for me. I can picture myself strong enough to face opposition on my way to share what I am called to share. I can see the possibility of being more relaxed, less challenging for some people. I am filled with curiosity about how it will be to face what life places on my path.

What about Grace?

This new practice creates an arc that balances power and grace. The morning, the power practice, is about thrusting myself into the world. I prepare myself to meet life. I gather my strength, my inner resources, all I have, to create, to bring my gifts to fruition. The night, my gratitude practice, is about surrender. I let go of any illusion that I by myself can do anything. I entrust myself to life. I focus on receptivity, on the gifts that life brings to me. I sink into other people’s kindness, their power to affect me.

Gratitude, nourishment, relaxation, inspiration, and beauty serve as fuel for life. Challenges, when we can meet them with our inner resources, serve as the fire that strengthens us. We become bigger, stronger, more able to face life, to prevail, to imagine new strategies to address obstacles, and new capacities to accept life. Without fuel, without grace, the challenges become overwhelming. Without the stretching, we run the risk of losing vitality, clarity of path, or our compass. I want both, in ample measure, for me and for everyone.

About Gratitude

By Miki Kashtan

Despite years of knowing that gratitude contributes to life, and suggesting to people in my workshops to start a gratitude practice in their lives, it is only in the last couple of months that I was finally able to start my own practice. In the past, using gratitude as a PRACTICE instead of just when it arose spontaneously (which I am blessed to have happen often) just wasn’t working for me. But the times were hard enough in my life, and the draw strong enough that I started.

So, for a couple of months now, during a period that included some of the most challenging times in many years, I end each day lying in bed, breathing fully and slowly, and reviewing my day, looking for everything that could possibly be a source of gratitude. Not as a check list, but really pausing with each one, putting my attention again and again on the mystery, wonder, magic, and awe that is the experience of whatever happened, whoever contributed to it. My primary focus is on the people who contribute to my life. It could be something really small, or it could be something extensive. Regardless, I focus my attention and my heart on really taking in that there was no reason for this person to do what they did, they didn't really have to do it, they only did it because they are human and we humans do things for each other. Sometimes without even intending to. On a few occasions my focus has been on people I don't even know, who produced something I was consuming on that day. Slowly, I attempt to open my heart to this person, as if I am trying to BE that person and feel what it's like to have done what they did that contributed to my life. I find enormous beauty in doing this. I go to sleep more peaceful. I also have an inkling that this practice may have been part of what shifted the inner experience I have into more softness, less anguish, despite the fact that so many challenges remain in my life.

What have I learned from doing this?

Two surprising things. One is that, exactly like Marshall Rosenberg, creator of Nonviolent Communication has said, gratitude is a kind of fuel. Especially on days when I have felt depleted, lacking resources, or particularly stressed, I found the practice to nourish me, give me some energy, release some of the stress. Then I started wondering what other aspects of life act in this way, as fuel? So far I have come up with a few: beauty, love, vision, and inspiration. One morning, in talking with a friend, I also realized that I had used vision as my primary fuel for far too long, and that I was worn out. So I am especially happy to have found other forms of fuel.

The other thing I learned is even more surprising to me. I learned that on the days that were the hardest I usually had more things that I could be grateful for, more people that contributed to my life on those days. Why would that be, I wondered. Here's my hypothesis: when we are doing well, we require less support, and we can more easily hold on to the illusion of self-sufficiency. When we are faced with challenges, we become more aware of how much of our life depends on the grace and generosity of others. I find immense comfort and richness in this realization.