RESILIENCE TIP

Resilience is the ability to cope well with difficulties and to bounce back from setbacks.

While some people are naturally more resilient than others, resiliency can also be intentionally developed.

Confusion’s Beauty

“I’m confused”, clients have said with a look of dismay. “Great!” I say. “That is the first step toward new thinking.” We humans use routine thinking for routine situations. We compartmentalize incoming data to help us manage the vast amounts of information coming our way. Hmm, seat, back, some legs – goes into our “chair” compartment of our thinking, and then we can move on to another thought, or use the chair as needed, or disqualify the chair as not fitting a current need, as we can be (usually) certain regarding our perception of an object as a chair.

Desiring change is the antithesis of routine. ”I would like to lose weight, while eating exactly the same, while maintaining the exact same physical activity.” Sounds nice, but I believe obviously unrealistic. And yet we act similarly in less obvious situations. “I would like to be more efficient in the way I work”, while continuing to organize and relate to our work in the same way. We want our marriage to be different, and yet continue the same thinking patterns in trying to make the marriage different. Certainty at these times, including certainty of which we are unaware, can hinder. If Nobel Prize winner Dan Shechtman had succumbed to the certainty of his colleagues of the impossibility of the quasicrystals that Shechtman saw, science would be less rich, and useful applications of his work would not exist.

As Einstein said: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” And from Claude Bernard: “It is what we think we know already that often prevents us from learning.” When our thinking, and subsequent actions, do not give us desired results, then change is needed and so learning is needed. Some learning is fitting new data into known compartments. You may add three-legged chairs into your chair compartment that previously only included four-legged chairs, and the compartment entitled “chairs” continues without great confusion.

Other kinds of new data can confound our compartments. In my work with mixed couples of ADHD and non-ADHD spouses, the difference in their worlds can be mind-boggling. The non-ADHD spouse may have a compartment of attention as an indication of love, greater attention indicates greater love and vice versa. The ADHD spouse typically has no such compartment. They may be attending to a myriad of things, while being madly in love with their spouse. If this is confusing to you, wonderful! Absorbing qualitatively new data, or data that does not fit into our currently existing compartments, is confusing. And that is what moves us forward when we need new solutions. Confusion unfreezes the certainty that can block new thinking.

Accepting our confusion as a positive and forwarding step encourages the important high-level resilience characteristic of Curious Thinking. “Well, then how do you show love, how do I know that you still love me?” Help me to understand, help me to clarify my confusion so that I can expand or shift my compartments in order to better address my newer reality (a changed situation, or a changed understanding of a situation). For example, the ADD spouse may explain that they avoid their spouse when the spouse is upset because disappointing their non-ADHD spouse, again, is so crushing.

For more resilient responses to situations that feel stuck, embrace confusion. Use the confusion as a sign to employ Curious Thinking (and Curious Questioning), in order to expand your understanding and your approach to the issue at hand.

Carolyn S. Tal, PhD

Psychologist and Consultant - working with individuals, couples, and business partners

052-825-8585, carolyn@talconsulting.com

(Please contact me if you would like to have these tips sent directly to your e-mail.)