Resilience. The part of you that knows how to bounce back up when you get slapped down.

Resilience is our best friend on the road to beautiful spiritual growth. It’s also our best companion when tackling the hard things in life: starting or growing a business or a family, facing difficult relationships, rebuilding health, and living through the results of tough decisions we’ve made.

Sometimes, we don’t know how strong we are until we are tested and tested some more. Life is really awesome at throwing us curve balls. In fact, it’s designed to. And it’s all in service to us getting to know this amazing, strong friend called Resilience.

Getting knocked down in life is a guarantee. No one has it easy here, not even the people who appear to have easy lives. While they might appear to be rich, happy, successful, and beautiful on the outside, they too might struggle on the inside—with self–worth, guilt, shame, insecurities and fears.

And so life tests us, again and again, to see what we are made of. It’s okay to get knocked down, but the opportunity is in rising back up—again and again!

I know that if we get knocked down in life far too many times without periods of healing and introspection in between, we might feel like there’s nothing left within us to get back up again just this one last time.

Well, my friends, this is the point where I want you to feel the flicker of flame within you, however dim or small it may be, where Resilience is still alive, not ready to be extinguished, and never will be.

If you can sense this small, dim flicker, you will know that if you give it some more air, it will burn a bigger flame and it’ll keep growing until you feel a passion inside to try again.

We sometimes don’t believe in Resilience because it’s so much easier to believe in those who pretend to be our friends but aren’t. You know, Fear, Doubt, Shame, Distrust, Resentment, and all those in the same variety. These are the non–friends who eat away at Love and Resilience.

Some people might say, don’t listen to them. Push them away. Ignore them and push past them.

But, I have a different suggestion.

Do listen to what those non–friends have to say. Don’t push them away. Don’t ignore them. Rather, give them a seat at the table! Let them in and through.

You’ll find that if you allow those negative voices in and through, they actually start to lose power and loudness. Why? Because they’re just drama queens seeking attention. Once you let them in and through, you’ll realize they’re just firecrackers: a huge, loud burst in the beginning, and then it dies.

Pushing it away only magnifies how loud that firecracker would be. So let it in, out, and through.