Staying alive: embrace life’s ups and downs with vitality and resilience
I recently got input from readers on ambition archetypes I’ve been exploring based on my research over the years. They describe what we might be feeling about navigating ambitions at this time in our life.
What I was reminded of from what people shared is that we are all on our own ambition journeys, and we tend to live life in cycles of ebbing and flowing, ups and downs, joyful times and hard times, and so forth.
This concept of duality has been a consistent theme for me over the last year or more. Of course, it’s not a new concept, but our current cultural climate tends to focus only on one extreme, such as always seeking and expecting to experience happiness and comfort. More and more I think we’d be better served to learn to deal with the difficult, the uncomfortable, the ambiguity, and the uncertainty than seeking and reaching for perfection or some emotional ideal. It’s never easy to go through hard and challenging times, but it makes it even harder when we don’t normalize that these states are a common and natural part of our stories.
It’s interesting that such thinking isn’t more commonplace given how many philosophies speak to the idea of duality like the Daoist concept of yin and yang, Buddhism’s acknowledgement of suffering along with happiness, or the Stoics embracing both fortune and misfortune.
Across various philosophies and perspectives, the belief is often that these contrasts are fundamental to our existence, recognize that the human experience is complex and multifaceted, and present opportunities for growth.
I was also reminded of these concepts by my two podcast guests last month who have new books out in the world. Interestingly, each of them used Latin phrases to inspire their work that embrace these dualities:
Jodi Wellman, author of You Only Die Once: How to Make It to the End with No Regrets, uses memento mori, which means “remember you must die.” Perhaps dark, but true. Jodi uses it as a reminder to us all to live.
Luis Velasquez, author of Ordinary Resilience: Rethinking How Effective Leaders Adapt and Thrive, uses amor fati, which means “love of fate” or “love of one’s fate.” ****The term encourages us to accept and embrace both the positive and negative of our life experiences, viewing them as both necessary and enriching.
Jodi’s research shows that over 50% of people self-describe as living their lives on autopilot. In one of her interviews noted in the book with Dr. Sheldon Solomon, a Professor of Psychology at Skidmore College who studies mortality, he said:
“Let me know when you get your first death threat because what you’re saying is, ‘fucking wake up’ and not everybody wants to be woken up.”
Some of us are afraid to take control of our lives.
And yet in contrast, this is one of my favorite quotes by theologian Howard Thurman, which Jodi also has in the book:
“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
Jodi enthusiastically encourages us to enjoy all of what life has to offer while we’re lucky enough to be above ground and to do so by finding vitality and meaning in our lives.
To do that, a couple of things from Jodi:
Get inspired by counting the number of Monday mornings you have left here.
Then think about one small thing you can do to add a little joy and vitality to your life today.
Or, what if you thought about making it to the end of today with no regrets, what would you do? If you wanted to make it to the end of the month with no regrets, what would you do? If you wanted to make it to the end of the year with no regrets, what would you do?
Luis grew up in war-torn Guatemala, watched his father survive and thrive after a serious car accident, lost his own career in academia after having a brain tumor, got divorced, and became an Ironman triathlete and ultramarathoner. I say all this to give him cred—Luis knows resilience. And he is someone who embraces amor fati and champions what he calls “embracing the suck.”
To face the suck, Luis believes resilience = (commitment + persistent) x optimism.
I love a story in the book and an analogy he offers around, do you want to be a
carrot, egg, or coffee bean? When put in hot water, a carrot becomes soft. An egg becomes hard. A coffee bean transforms into something better. The lesson: be the coffee bean.
This question he offers points us toward that: “What can you do today so that three or four years from now, you can say that this crisis you’re going through right now is the best thing that ever happened to you?”
One thing both Jodi and Luis share that I pull out as a reminder to all of us is to embrace optimism. I need this reminder, so I thought perhaps you might, too.
So, the lessons from these conversations: Don’t squander your life. Live it. Carpe diem! And, embrace all that life offers us, making the most of both the ups and downs. Meet our fate with commitment, persistence, and optimism.
Perhaps this is a fitting reminder as we start to bring a close to the summer and look toward the final months of the year. How will you embrace life? How can you face whatever hard thing is in front of you with optimism and embracing possibility?
I’ll be right there with you, asking myself these questions, too, to shape my final months. Let’s make them good ones and meet them with vitality and resilience.
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