Unwavering resilience in an environment of limited capacity

When someone with a high performance mentality has determined the mental, emotional and physical capacity they have to accomplish a series of tasks, that mindset is most consistent and stable when held in isolation from comparing it to others. In a reasonable environment, it should be stronger and more resilient with each day and week.

Moments and seasons of difficulty may impact the trajectory of growth periodically, but should not disrupt the pre-determined mission and vision and the tasks that are a part of seeing that vision come to life. But that’s easier to hold as an ideal than to practice.

Compression of time, reduction of resources, fatigue of will power, and limited collaboration can make that endeavor short-lived.

The moment personal capacity is compared to an environment of waning resilience, the most common tendency is to feel better about not accomplishing one’s personal goals or commitments, because of the comfort of comparison to others who are disrupted by less than oneself.

Additionally, when others see themselves as performing more than others, but you recognize it may be far less than you, and they are overwhelmed or burdened by potentially fewer tasks and less pressure, it can make you feel you have the right to also feel burdened or weakened by the commitments in front of you. When others in community or the general environment necessitate a further step of communicating the perceived injustice of their own fatigue or burn out from lesser pressures to someone with greater responsibility and pressure, a natural inclination is to respond with words or behaviors that communicate “You think you’re overwhelmed? : Imagine how I feel?”

This response is damaging to both the antagonist and the protagonist as it gives the individual with the greatest pressure the feeling of justification to feel what they previously wouldn’t allow – feelings of pity, frustration or anxiety. In spite of intent, instead of providing perspective to the other party and reducing their perceived anxiety, it instead creates tension, comparison, and a competition of self-pity, simultaneously damaging the capacity and resilience of both parties.

In my childhood family, this often looked like one party who would have a mental break-down from pressures and would allow themselves that right up until someone else communicated a more desperate mental breakdown with greater volatility and more dramatic actions. This would sometimes cause the first person to react with even more volatility in a competition to see who retracted first. Other times, it would cause the person with the initial breakdown to shrink back and become the aid the second person who was responding to the trauma of the first person.

However, even when the first person decided to aid the second more dramatic person, the first person did not become healthier. Instead both parties learned a behavior of “Those who illustrate they are more debilitated from their experience wins the favor and aid of the other first.” The problem with this is that neither party is growing in resilience, only in codependence and manipulation.

If this sounds familiar, I would be curious how you processed and learned from that experience.

When the environment that encompasses both parties creates compounded pressures from internal and external forces, both parties lose. So how do you win?

Determine that your capacity is not influenced by someone else’s capacity, but by your own emotional strength and spirit, and/or a source (for me the gift of the Holy Spirit given by the authority and power of Jesus) beyond yourself.

Be willing to listen to someone else’s frustration or venting, without bringing or comparing your own disposition. Don’t reduce your capacity because someone else is struggling to manage their own capacity. Commit to being sober minded about conflict and difficulties, and not allowing the weight of emotions or perceived injustice or equilibrium of the scales to dictate the commitment you established to yourself and others.

Lastly, create a community where you’re able to share your mental, emotion, physiological and spiritual processes without concern of comparison or competition, where your capacity and resilience is increased by edification instead of decreased by comparison and animosity.

The world can be tiring and individual and communal capacity less when external factors are changing, requiring more capacity with less resources- requiring resilience in an environment of limited capacity. Determine who you are going to be and how you will handle pressure, in spite of your circumstances, and build a community where that is the standard.