How to Begin Again After a Fight: Cultivating Resilience

How do you cultivate resilience?

We all know that resilience is valuable. The road to every happily ever after is filled with bumps. So how do you handle the bumps?

First let’s identify when it is you NEED resilience. Resilience isn’t a replacement for rest. Resilience won’t help if you’re headed in the wrong direction. So, if you’re feeling exhausted, or burnt out, don’t ask yourself to buck up. Instead, let yourself lay down. And rest.

Our culture is filled with messages to “push through” or “buck up.” People brag about how little sleep they got or what long hours they worked. Neither of these are a healthy choice and I can promise you that your relationship will suffer if you are chronically exhausted. The good news is, I just recorded a podcast about rest.

When is resilience relevant? 

Resilience is for when you’re headed in the right direction for your life, but you simply encounter one of the most normal things: a bump. A hurdle. Or a detour.

Every life is filled with these, so of course every marriage is filled with bumps, hurdles, and detours.

Don’t waste your time questioning the fundamentals. I see clients all the time who face a hurdle and immediately ask, “Does this signal the end of my marriage?”

Not at all! This means you’ve found that spot where your relationship is about to sink into intimacy.

If. If you lean into the bump, hurdle, or detour.

Suffering is much more closely tied to resistance than the original bump, hurdle, or detour.

It’s when we RESIST that those bumps PERSIST.

So today we’re talking about how to lean in. Don’t resist hurdles. Then you’ll suffer. Instead, welcome them with a resilient spirit.

First you have to notice

First notice the bump. Or the hurdle. Or the detour. Use all your powers of noticing.

When you notice, you neutralize. When you resist, you empower the bumps.

So, first just notice the bump.

Notice how you feel facing this bump. Jumping over this hurdle. Navigating this detour. When you notice your feelings, you receive and welcome those messages from your Inner Lizard that are meant to protect you.

We talked about how your Inner Lizard calms down when you have a conversation. But your Lizard won’t be ignored. If you don’t acknowledge your feelings, your Inner Lizard will keep sounding the alarm. This is because your Lizard wants to protect you.

Feel the feels

Like when you feel frustrated because this is the 27th time your partner has “forgotten” to take out the trash.

Or you feel hurt because you tried to tell your partner about a painful situation at work and your partner couldn’t get their nose out of their phone.

Or you feel invisible because you put on a nice new shirt, took a shower, and welcomed your partner home to a lovely dinner only to hear them complain they don’t want to eat meat.

Notice how you feel. And express those feelings aloud.

Resilience training step 1: Shake. It. Off.

As Taylor Swift warns us, we can sit on the sidelines of our life believing the bumps and the breakers, the hurdles and the haters, or we can shake it off.

There’s strong science behind this. Animals shake to alter their state: so shake off stress, sleepiness, or discomfort. It will work for you too.

Put on Taylor Swift’s song and shake. If you’re not a Taylor fan, just start the shake with your hands up high and fling them down to your knees, bending at your waist as you do so. If you need help shaking, check out my bonus episode that is simply a 60-second shake down.

If shaking isn’t for you, take a walk, do some jumping jacks, or jump on the bed as if you were 8 years old.

After you’ve shaken off the bad juju of your bump, hurdle, or detour. Now you want to wake up the optimist inside you that believes there is a better way. Wake up your vitality.

I have a reliable way to wake up my vitality with a big wad of bubble gum.

Here’s some suggestions:

Dance in the kitchen: Don’t make it a big deal. A single song. A twirl. Some sway. You’re touching your sweetheart, and that helps calm your nervous system. What’s the best song for you and your partner?

Or race around the house: Go outside and run! Run around the house. Leap frog over each other. This helps because it’s so diversionary. And it gets your body shaking off the anger, the hurt, or the frustration in the same way you can watch a horse shake after a spook.

If you wanna learn to shake like I show my clients, listen to our bonus 60-second-shakedown:

Bubble gum saved my marriage

It let my husband and me heal and come together after we encountered one of life’s big bumps.

It was those big square chunks: Bubble Yum, pink lemonade flavor.

“It’s a race to see who blows the first bubble,” I said, doling out the gum as we got in the car.

We promised to take the kids to the park. But we were suffering under the weight of the same old bumps, hurdles, and detours. The same, tired marriage communication failure.

I grabbed two packs of gum on the way out the door.

My five-year-old son sat in the backseat along with his eight-year-old sister. The gum was so juicy my son began to drool, which made us all laugh.

So much saliva and so much Bubble Yum, none of us could talk.

Not talking was the fix to our fight

It was the laughter we needed. Because inside our house it was tense. The tension that comes from facing a bump, a hurdle, or a detour. It was the same argument we always had:

Me: You never have time for us.
He: I can never do anything right.

And then the bubbles started blowing. Puny bubble blobs at first. Sticky fingers. Popping on faces. But the laughter glued us back together.

You’re busy. You’re married. You fight.

You want to stay in love.

But those same issues trigger the same fights. How can you find your way back to laughter and connection?

Give yourself a handful of bubble gum tricks.

Little toys to lighten the mood that give those bumps, hurdles, and detours a chance to let go. Keep these little toys stockpiled in your sock drawer where no one will find them in the everyday normal.

This is your reserve. Because when you and your spouse face a bump, a hurdle, or a detour you become unresourceful. You can’t count on yourself to find your way to happiness and healing.

Why do 4-minute fixes help you cultivate resiliency?

Because you and your spouse want smooth sailing. We all do. And when hurdles come along they can cause icky feelings.

Resentment and anger hang on with tenacity.

You need something completely different. Something that digs in and upends all those bumps. Something that makes the detour feel like a sight-seeing trip.
When you have a powerful diversion—like bubble gum!—it reawakens your resiliency.

You find you have imagination to begin again.

Here’s some other gimmicks as good as gum:

A balloon: Balloons are fabulously versatile. How many volleys can you do? Get two going and, as a team, try to keep them both in the air. Fill the balloon with water and play catch.

Bubbles: Those simple things you get at weddings or you blew when you were two while standing in your plastic wading pool, diaper hanging out the side. Bubbles are magical.

Have a shaving cream fight: If you’re not the type to smear shaving cream on your lover, just mound it up and sink your hands into it. The texture is so wacky it will reset your senses.

Silly walks: This one has saved my family on multiple occasions. If there was a tangle in the car—if you have kids you’ve tangled in the car—these silly walks heading into the grocery store save the day. You can get inspiration from Saturday Night Live sketch from decades ago.

How about you?

I want to know how you cultivate resilience in your relationship. Text me at 970-210-4480 and let me know.