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After I posted about the importance of having a tribe in your life, my friend and colleague, Martha Clark Scala, wrote to me:

I had a client in an Early (Alcohol/Drug abuse) Recovery group who articulated so beautifully how she felt like such a stranger in a strange land in her life in San Francisco. I very distinctly remember her asking, “Where is my tribe?” I suspect a lot of people turn to addictions out of lack of connection to a tribe.

I asked Martha to follow up on this idea a bit more.

BE: In your story about the woman in your Recovery group, what was important to the woman about having a tribe?

MCS: Tribal peers are a comfort because they speak the same language. There is something shared amongst tribal members that increase feelings of affinity and belonging. Without these feelings, the isolation is hard for some people to take. This woman was aware enough in her early recovery to know that what she longed for was a safe, healthy place to belong.

Can you say more about why you think people may turn to addictions due to lack of a tribe?

Paths to addiction vary widely. However, most paths seem to involve a person who turns to alcohol or other addictions to block how isolated or alone they feel. Some people drink and drug in isolation from the start. For others, the initial pull to alcohol or drug use is that while under-the-influence, they might feel less isolated because everyone in the bar is part of a drinking tribe. Over time, however, most addicts I have known report that their addiction resulted in more, rather than less, isolation.

Do you see the Recovery process as an initiation? If so, how important is the idea of receiving a Homecoming from the tribe? What happens if a Homecoming doesn’t happen?

My bias is that a Recovery process that includes initiation and homecoming is more likely to have success. Twelve-step fellowships are merely one option for the pursuit of recovery but as an example, meetings are structured to welcome the newcomer immediately. Not all newcomers successfully switch from their drinking or drugging tribe to a clean-and-sober tribe but the likelihood of this is greater if there is an alternative tribe to go toward. I’ve known some folks to find their clean-and-sober tribe in a residential recovery treatment but as soon as they leave (typically 28 days later), they can relapse if they don’t transition to a more local tribe that promotes sobriety.

What happens if a person in Recovery doesn’t have a tribe? Or maybe they don’t want a tribe because they are used to being alone?

It is entirely possible to get clean-and-sober without a tribe; I just think it is much, much harder. It’s also important to note that for some, the goal of Recovery is not sobriety but more responsible substance use. But even if this is the goal, it would help to achieve that goal if one were part of a tribe of folks with that same goal. A chosen tribe will have values that bolster you when you are inclined to falter. Without that support, it is almost as if the individual must be a tribe unto him- or herself and that is very hard to pull off, especially in early sobriety or moderation. I’ve also known some folks who are successful at being “dry” (i.e. alcohol- or drug-free) but their Recovery sort of gets arrested; they have no tribe to support their forward movement and growth.

Takeaway points: Being a part of a tribe is important throughout life, but it is essential to have one when trying to make a huge life change such as recovering from alcohol and drugs.

What are your ideas about the tribe’s role when trying to make a significant life change?

Each of us has a gift that we bring to the world. It is so essential and such an integral part of us that we have to capitalize the word – it’s your Gift. And since it emanates from the center of us, it is called the Core Gift.

The Core Gift is a bit different than your life purpose because your Gift is something you give – it’s an action you do. For example, my Gift is to help people and ideas achieve their highest potential. My partner’s Gift is to move things forward. Notice how action-oriented those statements are. Your Gift is the action you take within the framework of your life purpose and it’s an essential part of your purpose, but it’s not the same thing.

Why do you need to know what your Core Gift is? The answers could fill up an entire book, but the short answer is that your Gift helps to ground and guide you in life. Knowing your Gift allows you to choose the path in life that is meaningful, flows easily, and inspires and energizes you.

How do I find my Core Gift?

I have an interview process that I use with individuals and groups that elicits each person’s Core Gift, but apart from that, think about these essential questions:

1. When do you feel the most alive? What are you doing when you feel the most energetic and as though your actions flow easily from you? For example, I feel most alive when I’m with a group of people and I’m facilitating a new learning process for them, helping them toward their vast potential.

2. What would everyone you know say was the one thing about you that drew them to you? Your leadership qualities? Your peaceful nature? Your ability to create fun wherever you are? The way you listen deeply? Your capacity for sharing the intricacies of art and music in a way that all can enjoy it? Think about your friends and write down what you think has drawn them to you.

3. What is something you have been doing with ease your whole life? Your Gift is a thread that has been with you your entire life. Looking back, what is something that has always been easy for you and, when you’re doing it, makes you feel alive and inspired? For me, it has always been easy to take groups of people and, using my leadership abilities, form them into a cohesive team to achieve its potential. Even when I was young, although quite shy, I was always the captain of my sports teams. As I grew older, I found myself in management positions, developing social service programs and creating teams to support them. What have you been doing your whole life?

4. What is the opposite of your wound? We all have tender spots in ourselves that come from being wounded earlier in life. The Core Gift tends to be the opposite of this wound as we try to heal ourselves and others around us. While my Gift is to help others achieve their highest potential, I have wrestled all my life with questions about the worthiness of my own potential. What have you wrestled with?

Look for the threads

Write down your answers to these questions. Don’t think about them too long; it’s best just to go with what comes up first for you. Now, look at your answers and see if any similarities, or threads, arise among them. Although the process I use with groups and individuals is more in-depth, these four questions form the foundation of eliciting your Core Gift.

When you find the similarities in your answers, choose the one that resonates most with you and try it on as your Core Gift. Again, ask yourself: Do I feel the most alive when doing this? Is this what has drawn people to me? Have I been doing this my whole life? Does the opposite of this point to the tender spot within me?

If you can answer ‘yes’ to each of those questions, you have likely named your Core Gift. And, as the indigenous peoples do when welcoming a young initiate back to the tribe, I welcome you into our universal tribe with your honored Gift!

If you or your group would like to participate in my Finding Your Core Gift process, please send me a message or call me at 650-529-9059.

Takeaway points: Each of us has a Core Gift that we bring to the world. Naming it requires us to think about the points throughout our lives where we are “in the flow” and feel the most alive.

What is your Core Gift? Please feel free to ask questions about the process as well.

Wise words of resiliency from ancient and modern sages:

1. Samuel Rutherford

Whenever I find myself in the cellar of affliction, I look about for the wine.

2. Steve Jobs

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

3. Hannibal

You must find a way. Or make one.

4. Gilda Radner

I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next.

5. Longfellow

The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide.

Takeaway points: Overcoming adversity is part of the human condition. We do it daily and throughout our lives. We just need to remember that it can be done!

What’s your favorite quote?

A key component of resiliency is acceptance and there are many sub-components of acceptance as well. One of them is the idea of letting go or surrendering. Let me be clear: I’m not talking about giving up. I mean letting go of your clinging need to know what the outcome of any situation will be. Surrendering your controlling nature for one that sees opportunity even in crisis.

My friend and colleague, Martha Clark Scala, wrote a wonderful poem for those of us who still want some kind of structure to our surrender . . .

The Mathematics of Surrender

It’s not about giving up,
not about defeat.
If you insist on an equation,
embrace your limited impact on outcome,
subtract old beliefs that you should be able to fix it,
add willingness to let others meet their fate.
Divide this by two, as in yin and yang,
right and wrong,
good and bad.
Let it multiply until
all things are equal.

© Martha Clark Scala, 2007

Takeaway points: Surrender is not about giving up. It’s about allowing all things to be equal.

What are your thoughts on surrender?

Photo courtesy of d3Dan

I was buzzing around the house the other day and NPR was on in the background as usual. It was my favorite show, Talk of the Nation, but, distracted by my chores, I was only vaguely aware that the topic was how participating in military service can change lives. A part of my mind, though, heard Neal Conan’s pleasant voice say, “And joining us now from his home in St. Petersburg, Florida, Michael Jernigan. He served in Iraq from 2002 to 2005 as a Marine corporal. He was hit by a roadside bomb and suffered extensive injuries, including the loss of both eyes.”

I stopped mid-task. Wait a minute. Did he say “the loss of both eyes”? Not “he was blinded” or “he lost the vision in his eyes” . . . but the loss of both eyes?

I listened carefully to the rest of the Talk of the Nation segment and then went to the internet to find out more about Michael Jernigan. Yes, he did indeed lose both eyes. To a roadside bomb that severed a major artery in his leg and crushed his forehead into his brain, literally tearing his eyeballs loose.

“How can someone bounce back from that?” I wondered to myself.

But, as I read on, I was once again flabbergasted at the human capacity for resilience. Michael Jernigan’s bounce back to peace in his life was a slow one. It took years for him to physically and emotionally recover. Yet, today, he is able to say:

I had an incredibly catastrophic thing happen to me. That is what I was told by someone in passing.

I do not agree. I was given a second chance at life.

Jernigan chronicles his story in a New York Times online blog called The Opinionator. The post that caught my attention was To Hell and Back With a Smile. He very succinctly talks about the twin hells of war and his injuries. He shares how he allowed the support of his family and friends to re-ground him to the point where he now feels gratitude and peace. This young man who had his dreams literally blown apart in Iraq is now able to tell the reader:

I can stand tall today and wear a smile on my face that is a country mile wide. I can do that because my family loves me. God blessed me with more days in this world. I beg of you, when it gets too deep and you feel like that it will never get better, smile. Sometimes it is all that we have to fight off the blues and get back on our horse and push through.

Takeaway points: Sometimes physical and emotional recovery takes a long time. Yet, if we open ourselves up to healing agents – such as the love of family and friends – we may get to a better place than we were before.

What do you think of Michael Jernigan’s story?

I love this video. And I love it not only for the courage and high spirits of little Kandu, the Jack Russell terrier born without front legs, but because it also shows what a little flexibility and creativity can bring to life.

In her book, Mindset, Stanford University’s Carol Dweck discusses two different views people tend to adopt for themselves: fixed mindset and growth mindset. In a fixed mindset, people tend to think that intelligence and other attributes are set in stone, unable to change. People who have this mindset tend to try to prove themselves over and over. After all, if you only have a certain amount of intelligence, than you better show that you have a lot!

Growth mindset people believe that intelligence and other qualities are fluid and can be improved upon them throughout life. Unlike fixed mindset people who look at challenges as something that may show their weaknesses, growth mindset people look forward to challenges as a way to grow and learn. They enjoy expanding their flexibility and creativity to solve problems.

The growth mindset is a strong attribute of resiliency. Problem-solving, creativity, flexibility, and seeing the ability to grow through adversity are all characteristics that help us to bounce back in life.

So, one of the things I love about the story of Kandu is the growth mindset of his loving owners. His first owners, upon seeing a puppy born without front legs and perhaps having fixed mindsets, took him to the shelter to be euthanized. After his story was shown on television, over one hundred people applied to adopt him. His new owners, Ken and Melissa Rogers, were not daunted by Kandu’s physical challenges. Instead, because they have a growth mindset, the Rogers did some problem-solving and called someone with a ton of creativity – an expert in orthotics for pets.

Watch the video to see the joy of little Kandu as he scoots about on his growth-mindset-created orthotics. And listen for the creativity and flexibility of his owners and the man who designed the orthotics.

Takeaway points: A fixed mindset has you believe that your intelligence and other qualities are set in stone and there isn’t much you can do to improve them. A growth mindset allows you to look at yourself and others as constantly changing and open to new challenges as a means to grow. Having a growth mindset is a terrific characteristic of resiliency.

You can change your mindset throughout your life. What kind of mindset did you have as a child? Has your mindset changed as you’ve gotten older?

I’ve been talking about initiation for the last few posts and you might have noticed the importance of the village in the process. People in the village are very serious about their youngsters experiencing initiation in order for the village or tribe to be strengthened by the gift of the new adult in their midst.  Since everyone in the tribe goes through initiation, they all know the harrows of the ordeal and how hard it truly is.

The ordeal is worth it, though, to be able to experience the fantastic homecoming once the young person returns to the tribe as a gifted adult. The whole community turns out to welcome the initiate and honor the sacrifices s/he has made as well as the gift s/he now brings back to the tribe. The young person could not complete the process of initiation without this welcoming homecoming.

We know that part of being resilient is having a good support system. Which brings me to the title question: Who’s in your tribe? Who are the people who actually recognize when you are going through an ordeal that will teach you abundant lessons, no matter how hard it is? Who encourages you during the process? And who are the people who will celebrate when you “return to the village” after your ordeal, replete with new knowledge, skills, and gifts that will benefit both you and your tribe? Who will help you see that you need to give yourself a homecoming as well, to celebrate the unique wisdom and courage that you received from your journey?

If you can list at least a few people in your tribe, it means that you have a great skill that will help you be resilient throughout life.

But if you’re wondering, “Who really is in my tribe?” it’s time to explore creating new, meaningful relationships; a tribe that will honor your initiations as you honor theirs.

Takeaway points: We need a tribe to truly be resilient in life. Who’s in your tribe?

What are your thoughts about your tribe?

Tribal women photo by William Warby

I’ve been talking about the idea of initiation as a framework for resiliency and there are great models of this in movies and literature. Let’s take one of my favorite examples, the 1977 movie Star Wars. Luke Skywalker is unwillingly separated from his village – his family and friends – by the evil Empire who murdered his aunt and uncle. His ordeal begins as he chooses to go with Obi Wan Kenobi and learn the ways of the Jedi. Near the end of the movie, the ordeal comes to a critical point where Luke must decide whether he will stay with his old ways or obey the soft command of the ghostly Obi Wan to “use The Force.” Luke decides to embrace the challenge to use The Force and ends up destroying the Empire’s Death Star and saving his new village of Rebel fighters. His homecoming not only celebrates the return of the hero, but also his new Gift of harnessing The Force. Luke’s burgeoning power and wisdom are great boons to his community.

We find out in later movies that Luke’s initiatory experience helps him overcome more adversity as he continues his battle with the Empire and has the ultimate showdown with the evil Darth Vader. Had he not gone through his original initiation, Luke would not have acquired the gift of The Force and been able to overcome the Dark Side.

More recently, I have been astounded by Jeannette Walls’ story of resiliency as told in her memoir The Glass Castle. Here we see a very long initiation experience throughout her childhood. The separation occurs very early as Jeannette was born to parents who were eccentric, to say the least. Her alcoholic father and artist-dreamer mother had little capacity to provide for their children, so the Walls’ siblings were often left to themselves to find the basic necessities of life such as food and clothing. This created a separation from the village of families, neighborhoods, schools, and other institutions that most of us grew up with.

The ordeal lasts throughout her childhood as Jeannette and her brother and sister struggle to go to school, find food, and survive in the real world even as their parents exist in their own fantasy world.

One would think that Jeannette’s homecoming would occur when she is finally able to leave her parents and establish independence as an adult. But in actuality, it takes her many years, and the writing of her memoir before she is finally able to give herself a homecoming. Through her book, she celebrates the resiliency of herself and her siblings. The acclaim that accompanied the book completed the homecoming for her.

Takeaway points: Examples of the initiation framework for resiliency are everywhere in stories we read and movies we see. Both the fictional Luke Skywalker and memoirist Jeannette Walls are models of people who went through initiation and became more resilient in the process.

What are some of your favorite stories of initiation that you have seen or read?