How to Become Indomitable
By: Jason Mcbride
Tags: Happiness, Self Improvement, Life Lessons, Mindset, Resilience

The challenges of life are not evenly distributed. Some people will suffer far more than others. Some will be protected from extreme suffering by wealth, race, or some other form of privilege. There isn’t much you can do about struggle inequality when you have been kicked in the face by life.

But it is possible to overcome even the worst challenges. The new self-help buzzword for the ability to bounce back is resilience. I prefer to think of it as becoming indomitable. Indomitable sounds much cooler than resilient, and it doesn’t instantly trigger pity from the well-meaning privileged people watching your struggle.

There is nothing worse than hearing a pep talk about struggle from someone who has never suffered. When I was scrambling after having lost my business that I had invested nine years of my life into, I had two people tell me about how hard it was when they had been fired from jobs. They both got severance packages and got hired somewhere else within two weeks. That wasn’t quite the same thing as filing for bankruptcy and knowing your career was over.

I have been through some shit. A short list of some events from the past couple of years includes a mystery illness, a gut infection, kidney cancer, both of my parents dying in their early 60s, my wife having a pre-cancerous tumor removed from her face, two children with anxiety disorder diagnoses, and one child with autoimmune disease diagnosis. This is on top of my diagnosed anxiety disorder, and all the other stuff life has dished out since I was a child.

I don’t want to turn this into pity porn. Many people have had things much worse than me. I’m very privileged. But before I tell you some of the things I have done to become indomitable, you need to know that I’ve experienced more trauma and challenges than just having my favorite show get canceled.

I imagine that life is a long, grueling hike around a mountain. Sometimes you trip and stumble. Sometimes you fall off the path back down the mountain, losing some or all of your progress, and end up in a ditch. When you are the bottom of a ditch, you have to decide if you are going to stop climbing or if you are going to try again.

This is not an easy choice.

However, if you want to see what’s on top of the mountain, you have to keep walking and climbing. You have to become indomitable. Here are five strategies you can use to find the strength to keep going when saner people are telling you to quit.

Cry

Crying, mourning, and sadness are not weaknesses. When you have suffered something awful, you cannot move on until you have accepted what has happened to you. You need to take time to mourn your losses and cry over them.

As a culture, we barely tolerate crying in the wake of someone’s death. But, it is also good to cry when you have lost a relationship, opportunity, or business. You need to mourn these losses to heal.

Crying helps us emotionally purge and process our anger and confusion. It also helps us physically purge the stress hormones that build up inside of us. There is a physiological reason you feel better after a good cry.

Toxic masculinity makes it tough for men to cry. It also makes it hard for women who want to be successful in the business world to cry. But the truth that every strong person knows is that vulnerability is not a weakness. It is the source of true strength.

After suffering a setback, take time to cry before you get started conquering the obstacles.

Scream

Since I was a small child, I have had an incredible store of anger inside of me. Some of that is how my anxiety manifests itself. Some of that is from the way my father dealt with me. Some of it is because the world is often cruel, and life is hard.

However, I have don’t desire to make my wife and children fearful. I do not want to yell and scream at them. Bottling up my anger is not healthy, and I can only process so much frustration at a time.

When I feel like I am going to blow, I go to my car and take a drive. I park my minivan far away from any other vehicle, and I scream as loudly as I want. Sometimes, I have so much anger that I scream while I’m driving. I’m sure I look like a maniac.

But, after I have let loose a few primal screams, I feel calm. Peace returns to my soul. I have given an outlet to my rage and am ready to think about what I need to do to solve the problems that have triggered my anger.

It is okay to get angry. It is not okay to victimize other people with your anger. Sometimes the only way to deal with life is to scream into the void.

Laugh

Laughter is connected to crying. Have you ever cried with a friend or family member only to have your tears start to turn to laughter? More than a decade ago, my wife lost two brothers to alcoholism in the space of six weeks. They both literally drank themselves to death. They died of alcohol poisoning.

They both left young children and spouses behind. Their funerals were solemn affairs. But, in both cases, after the funeral there was a luncheon. While there were some tears as we ate, we all laughed.

We shared stories about the boys and their antics. Laughter helped us get through a horrible experience.

Just like tears has a physiological role in regulating your stress and mood, so does laughter. Laughter releases dopamine and increases serotonin. It makes you feel better.

Sometimes the best thing you can do when faced with the ugly parts of life is laugh. I like to watch the movie Tommy Boy with David Spade and the late Chris Farley when I need to laugh uncontrollably.

Laughter doesn’t make your problems go away, but it can give you the strength to deal with your troubles.

Forgive

There are three sources of problems in your life: Other people, the Universe, and yourself. Sometimes bad things happen because people do bad things. It’s not fair, and it’s not your fault. Sometimes bad things happen because that is the way life is. It’s not fair, and it’s not your fault.

Sometimes bad things happen because you screw up. It’s fair, and it’s your fault.

Ultimately, the source of the obstacle matters less than how you handle it. My business failed because people I trusted were dishonest, the entire economy blew up in the Great Recession, and because I made some catastrophically bad decisions.

I spent years working through my anger. I was able to forgive the people who had cheated me. I could even forgive the Universe for the horrible economy. I couldn’t forgive myself. I could not enjoy success in my new career as a freelance writer until I forgave myself for my past mistakes.

Forgiveness is not easy. It is a personal matter. But, I know that until you forgive people who have hurt you and until you forgive yourself, you will be carrying around extra weight. Worst of all, that weight will keep getting heavier.

Forgiveness does not mean you have to keep toxic or dangerous people in your life. I believe that you can forgive someone from robbing your house, but that you should be wise enough not to ask them to housesit when you go on your next vacation.

When someone has hurt you, you need to protect yourself. You also need to let go of your bitterness as much as possible. This is something I am still working through when it comes to my parents. But the closer I get to forgiving them, the lighter I feel.

Serve

When you have been thrown to the ground by life, all you want to do is curl up in a ball. You tend to focus on all the bad things that have happened to you. You take stock of your injuries. You wonder why life is so unfair to you.

It’s all you all the time.

Being self-absorbed is not healthy, and it keeps you in a cycle of despair and anger. There is no room for healing.

The best thing you can do to heal from a tragedy is to spend time serving other people. You need to help other people without any expectation of reward. When you start putting positive energy out into the world, you can’t help but keep a little of it for yourself.

You may still have work to do on yourself, but you need to spend some time giving to other people.

The most rewarding service tends to be when you are physically doing something for someone else. Working at a soup kitchen is more powerful than just cutting a check.

Donate, volunteer, and connect with people who are less fortunate in some way than you are. This will help you experience gratitude, and it will improve your confidence. You will see that despite your failures or trauma that you still have something to give.

How Do You Know When You Have Become Indomitable?

Life seems to be set on an adaptive difficulty level. The more skills you learn, the harder the test becomes. The only way you can know if you are indomitable is to get back up and keep journeying up the mountain when you get knocked down.

Whatever you have experienced in life can be used as fuel to get you closer to the top. It can also be used to help you recover from the next setback.

The world needs you. It’s time for you to climb out of the ditch stronger than you were before. You will make it to the top of the mountain because you are indomitable.