How To Build Emotional Resilience, Using Ancient Kung Fu Wisdom

Life, by its nature, is never something which keeps going smoothly. Grief, sadness, loneliness are all things that we must learn to deal with at some point. And with all these hard experiences, comes pain. I’m not talking about physical pain, of course. I’m talking about the pain which is very much invisible but still can wreck our souls like a train going off a cliff.

Emotional pain. Of course. Modern psychology used to believe that the brain is driven by 2 central forces: the avoidance of pain and the pursuit of pleasure.

It has now been discovered that avoidance of pain is the central force that drives human behaviour. Which means it is truly essential to understand how we deal and work with pain. Which brings me to my central point about distress of the emotional/mental kind.

More pleasure is not the answer to emotional pain. Just like painkillers are not the answer if you’ve got a fractured bone. They can take the pain away for a while. But ultimately, unless you heal the real cause, trouble will keep coming back.

Believing that more pleasure, more YOLO nights, more picturesque places on your feed, more Instagram likes (or more of anything, really) can save us is a huge blind spot. A lot of us are subject to it (including me).

It doesn’t happen unless you accept yourself, no matter how badly you might be lost or injured. Unless you have the humility to look at your most broken self and take responsibility. Own it. Love it.

Which means we must have an ability to honestly look at ourselves and accept what we’re good at, and where we need help. In fact, most of the times, our most vulnerable parts, if nurtured correctly, end up being some of our biggest strengths.

This an outlook inspired by a version of an old Kung Fu tradition. In some Kung Fu schools, the fighters in training get their shins broken. It sounds bizarre.

But they do it for good reason. Once their shins get healed, the disciples come back stronger than they were before. More diligent of their own weaknesses so they can protect themselves better. And much more fearless. Having gotten over such pain, their body finds new strengths they weren’t aware of before.

All of this can be put in context with our own emotional body, and the distress it goes through. Continuing the metaphor, once we heal our broken “emotional bones” we can bounce back, better than who we were.

May we have the strength to love our weaknesses.

Love our broken bones until they get healed and eventually become our strengths.