Latest / Hardiness with Dr Paul Taylor / Preparing for Life's Uncertainties With Carly Taylor

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Preparing for Life's Uncertainties With Carly Taylor · Hardiness with Dr Paul Taylor

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, it's Curly here and welcome to you this
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: week's mo Joe Monday. So I think most of us
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: like to check the weather app to know what to
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: expect in the coming week. We like to know so
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: we can plan around it. And yet anyone who has
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: been caught in the rain on a day that the
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  Speaker 1: app's wore would be clear knows that even the forecast,
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  Speaker 1: with all its experts and satellites and data behind it,
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  Speaker 1: is only ever telling us what is likely, never what
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: is certain, and nothing about our days ahead of us
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  Speaker 1: is truly certain. And of course, rationally we know that
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  Speaker 1: even as though we go on living with this level
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  Speaker 1: of expectation of how things will be, because humans crave
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  Speaker 1: certainty because it settles us and it lets us feel
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  Speaker 1: that the ground beneath us is sturdy and will hold
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  Speaker 1: us steady. And it's precisely because we crave it so
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: deeply that we can then crumble when life does that
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: very thing that it's always done, and that is to
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  Speaker 1: surprise us. There are so much information and selling points
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: out there at the moment about how to live a
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  Speaker 1: good life, how to be happier, how to live longer,
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  Speaker 1: how to stay youthful, how to eat, to move, and
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  Speaker 1: sleep and parent our way towards a better life than
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  Speaker 1: the one that we have right now. And much of
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  Speaker 1: it is genuinely helpful, and I have absolutely no qualms
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  Speaker 1: with any of it, but I notice how little it
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  Speaker 1: prepares us for the other side of being human and
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  Speaker 1: being alive, for the days when the body doesn't quite
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  Speaker 1: work out how we want it to, or the plans
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: fall through, or the news is not what we're hoping for.
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  Speaker 1: If we pour all our energy into expecting life to
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: be healthy and happy and smooth, then the moment it isn't,
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  Speaker 1: we are not only dealing with the hard thing that's
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: appeared in front of us. We're also dealing with the
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: shock that it happened. Oh, the sense that this was
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: never supposed to happen, not to me. It's always like
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  Speaker 1: this wasn't in my plans, this wasn't supposed to happen
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  Speaker 1: to me. It's that saying this is not what I
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  Speaker 1: signed up for. The most confronting version of this is
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  Speaker 1: the one we are least willing to speak about, which
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  Speaker 1: is that our lives will end one day, Because every
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  Speaker 1: rational part of us knows it, and yet we put
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  Speaker 1: that knowledge aside so we don't have to think about it.
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  Speaker 1: It doesn't come into our daily consciousness. And I'm not
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  Speaker 1: talking about this to be morbid or cast a gray
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  Speaker 1: shadow over your week. I'm talking about it because the
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  Speaker 1: more honestly we can notice the uncertainty of life, including
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: the fact that one day it will end, the less
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: power it has to flow us when it shows up
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: in smaller forms along the way. Paul and I talk
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: about this a lot. We believe that the challenges that
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: we meet, in a very real sense what we have
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: been training for up to this point with all the
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  Speaker 1: work that we do. And this idea comes from the
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: Stoic philosopher Epictetis, and he called it the hard winter's training.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: If you listened to Paul, you would have heard him
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  Speaker 1: talk about this many times. In Epictetas time the war
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  Speaker 1: would stop through the cold months, and the soldier who
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  Speaker 1: kept preparing while everyone else had gone home was the
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  Speaker 1: one who was ready when spring came and the fighting
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  Speaker 1: began again. He said that the bull does not become
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  Speaker 1: a bull all at once, and a person does not
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  Speaker 1: come into their strength all at once either, but through
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  Speaker 1: that daily, consistent and often unnoticed training done long before
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  Speaker 1: it is needed. So this is at the core of
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  Speaker 1: the challenge pillar of heartiness which Paul's book is based on,
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  Speaker 1: and that is the willingness to meet change and difficulty
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  Speaker 1: as a normal part of being human, rather than as
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: some personal misfortune that has singled us out and then
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  Speaker 1: we grow from it. So when I talk about expecting
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  Speaker 1: the unexpected, I'm not asking you to walk around brace
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  Speaker 1: for disaster. It's less about predicting what will go wrong
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  Speaker 1: and more about expecting that something, at some point will
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  Speaker 1: and when it does take that pivot, you are not
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  Speaker 1: also wrestling with a question of why this was happening
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  Speaker 1: to you. Life throws this stuff at us at varying intensities,
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  Speaker 1: and some, of course suffer way more than others, and
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  Speaker 1: there's not much regard for whether we feel ready. When
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  Speaker 1: we get over the initial shock, something inside of us
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  Speaker 1: is prepared, and instead of circling around the y me,
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  Speaker 1: we get to put all our attention and energy on
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  Speaker 1: the only part that was ever really ours to work with,
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  Speaker 1: which is how we respond, not the event itself, which
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  Speaker 1: is so often entirely out of hands, but how we
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: respond to it, which never is That is the thing
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  Speaker 1: that we have control over. So I want to give
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  Speaker 1: you two very small ways. There are many ways that
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  Speaker 1: you can train for this, but I'll just give you
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  Speaker 1: two today. So there are two small ways that you
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  Speaker 1: might begin training for the challenges that life will at
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  Speaker 1: some point hand you. The first is to do something
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  Speaker 1: hard on purpose each day. Whatever hard happens to look
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  Speaker 1: like for you, it's going to look different for everybody.
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  Speaker 1: So it might be a conversation you've been avoiding, or
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  Speaker 1: even saying no to someone when you're always saying yes
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  Speaker 1: because sometimes that feels really uncomfortable, or a few more
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  Speaker 1: minutes at the gym when your body would rather stop
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  Speaker 1: your mind would rather stop, or having a cold shower,
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  Speaker 1: staying there a moment longer that is comfortable even when
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  Speaker 1: your mind tells you to get out. Your mind's going
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  Speaker 1: to give you all sorts of excuses. So this is
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  Speaker 1: a really good opportunity to notice what automatically comes into
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  Speaker 1: your mind and then respond to that by staying that
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  Speaker 1: little bit longer. And none of these are huge in themselves.
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  Speaker 1: What matters is you are consistently teaching your mind that
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  Speaker 1: you can do your difficult things and come out the
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  Speaker 1: other side. So that difficulty starts to feel familiar to you,
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  Speaker 1: so when the big stuff hits, you're not totally caught
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  Speaker 1: in this spiral of stress. The second one is a
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  Speaker 1: really small change in language that I have found surprisingly powerful.
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  Speaker 1: So when you catch yourself using the word worry or anxious,
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  Speaker 1: like I'm so worried about this, Oh, I feel so anxious,
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  Speaker 1: see if you can replace it with the word concern.
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  Speaker 1: Worry tends to keep us trapped in rumination over what
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  Speaker 1: might happen and there's no way through it, whereas concern
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  Speaker 1: is more grounding. To be concerned about something is to
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  Speaker 1: care about it and to be ready to take that
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  Speaker 1: next rational step. The feeling itself can still be there.
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  Speaker 1: You don't have to try and switch that feeling off
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  Speaker 1: or fix anything. The move is simply in what you
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  Speaker 1: do next, towards that version of you that moves towards
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  Speaker 1: what you actually can do, rather than the one that
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  Speaker 1: stays caught up in what you can't. So both of
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  Speaker 1: these are small challenges we can choose for ourselves, which
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  Speaker 1: gradually then prepare us for the larger ones that we
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  Speaker 1: don't get to choose. And I'm just going to do
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  Speaker 1: a little mini Cell's pitch here because Paul has written
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  Speaker 1: a whole book on exactly this, called the heartiness Effect.
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  Speaker 1: And if you're interested in the science underneath all of this,
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  Speaker 1: along with so many more practices that you can experiment with,
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: look it up and grab yourself a copy. So none
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  Speaker 1: of us know what is coming, and the forecast, as ever,
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  Speaker 1: is certain, just like the weather and the weather app
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  Speaker 1: but you can become the kind of person who does
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  Speaker 1: the training, who comes to expect life to be life,
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  Speaker 1: and who meets those hard days as someone who has,
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  Speaker 1: in all sorts of small and I guess ordinary ways,
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  Speaker 1: been getting ready for them all along. So I hope
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  Speaker 1: that's helpful. Have a great week everyone, I'll catch you
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: next week.