Solo - The Contrarian Mindset Skill 11: Practice Equanimity.

“True resilience comes not from controlling the world around us but mastering the world within.”

In this Bite Size Friday episode of It’s an Inside Job, I explore the powerful concept of equanimity as part of my series on building a contrarian mindset. Equanimity goes beyond just staying calm under pressure—it’s about building an inner harmony amidst life’s chaos, whether it’s a personal health challenge, workplace crisis, or emotional turmoil.

I share actionable strategies to develop equanimity by harnessing cognitive flexibility and emotional regulation, emphasizing the importance of mastering our internal world rather than trying to control external circumstances. Drawing from my personal experiences, I provide practical tools to help you respond to life’s inevitable storms with clarity, composure, and resilience.

Key Topics Discussed:

What Is Equanimity?

• Moving beyond conventional notions of “staying calm.”
• Embracing challenges without suppressing emotions or seeking total control.
• Finding clarity and steadiness amid chaos, like the calm eye of a storm.

The Contrarian Approach to Resilience:

• Shifting focus from controlling external circumstances to mastering internal responses.
• Viewing adversity as an opportunity for growth rather than a setback.

Building Equanimity with Foundational Skills:

1. Cognitive Flexibility:
   • Adaptability in thought, like a sapling bending in the wind.
   • Reframing challenges as opportunities for growth and learning.
   • Examples include professional setbacks, health issues, or financial difficulties.
2. Emotional Regulation:
   • Understanding and channeling emotions constructively rather than suppressing them.
   • Practicing a pause to reflect and respond thoughtfully in high-pressure situations.

Practical Strategies for Cultivating Equanimity:

• Pause and Reflect:
  Ask yourself questions like “What am I feeling?” and “How do I want to respond?” to foster deliberate reactions.
• Reframe Challenges:
  Train your mind to view obstacles as lessons or stepping stones for personal growth.
• Mindfulness Practice:
  Dedicate time to sensory awareness to anchor yourself in the present moment.
• Emotional Agility:
  Journal to identify triggers and develop emotional intelligence.
• Letting Go of Control:
  Focus on influencing thoughts, actions, and attitudes rather than trying to control outcomes.

Additional Resources:
Interested in building a contrarian mindset for resilience, fortitude, and psychological strength? Check out the other episodes in this series linked in the show notes, and subscribe to It’s an Inside Job for more insights on resilience, well-being, and personal growth.

Part 1 – Discover the Power of The Contrarian Mindset: A New Approach to Rewiring Your Brain for Resilience and Growth

Part 2 – Discover the Power of The Contrarian Mindset: A New Approach to Rewiring Your Brain for Resilience and Growth

Chapters

• 0:16 Introduction to the Podcast
• 1:42 Practical Tips for Everyday Challenges

Transcript

[0:00] Music.

[0:08] Well, welcome to It's an Inside Job Bite Size Fridays, your weekly dose of resilience,

[0:13] optimism, and well-being to get you ready for the weekend. Now, each week, I'll bring you insightful tips and uplifting stories to help you navigate life's challenges and embrace a more positive mindset. And so with that said, let's slip into the stream.

[0:27] Music.

[0:34] Welcome back to the series on building the contrarian mindset now the contrarian mindset is about strengthening our resilience our tenacity our fortitude our psychological strength our ability to confront and meet uncertainty and the unknown especially when it shows up on our doorstep uninvited.

[0:56] And for those new to this series, what is a contrarian mindset? Well, contrarian thinking is not about being disagreeable or purposely going against the grain for the sake of it. It's about challenging the status quo of our minds. It's about questioning the usual ways you respond to life's challenges and exploring new, often unconventional paths to resilience and success. So these series of episodes invites you to think like a contrarian, not to complicate your life but to simplify it by cutting through the noise of common fears, dysfunctional thinking and unhelpful mindsets. So in total there are 12 skills to the contrarian mindsets and I have clustered them under three headings. So the first cluster of four skills is mastering self, the next one is mastering

[1:41] perspective and finally it's mastering resilience. So this week we are going to explore one of my favorite skills in the contrarian mindset and that is practicing equanimity. And that is the third skill in the cluster of mastering resilience. So now let's slip into the stream to a skill that I think you were going to find very useful.

[2:06] So today we're going to take a fresh look at equanimity, going beyond the usual ideas of staying calm, being resilient, keeping our cool, because that's not always going to float. Equanimity at its core it's about maintaining a steady mental and emotional balance even in the face of stress turmoil and turbulence because what it's not about it's not about ignoring the challenges or suppressing emotions but finding clarity and a sense of steadiness in the midst of them like the calm at the center of a storm when we retract back into the eye of the storm, So equanimity is not just about keeping it together, but it's about finding this harmony, this balance in the chaos. Whether it's dealing with some sort of work chaos or some sort of heated argument or some sort of financial challenge. Or in my case, as it has been, a health challenge.

[3:05] So instead of trying to control an unpredictable world, equanimity encourages us to cultivate a sense of inner calm by mastering our responses and to avoid the pitfall that our brain tries to do because of its evolutionary biology is to try to control circumstances around us. So again, equanimity, if we're going to use a metaphor, it's like if you can't escape a hurricane, or tornado? Well, maybe what we want to do is retract into the eye of the storm. So the storm rages around us, but within the eye of the storm, it allows us time to not react, but to reflect, to find that sense of harmony.

[3:49] So equanimity, it captures a key aspect of human experience. You know, while we can't control life's challenges, what we can do is choose to remain steady amid them. From the perspective of the contrarian mindset, which questions conventional thinking? Well, equanimity becomes a deliberate choice to resist being overtaken by external pressures. It encourages us to step away from impulsive reactions and to focus on building a stable inner foundation. The contrarian philosophy, it acknowledges a fundamental reality that the world around us is inherently uncertain. It's filled with moments that disrupt our plans and test our resolve.

[4:36] Traditional thinking might encourage us to seek control over people, over situations, or our outcomes in order to achieve a sense of inner peace.

[4:46] But the contrarian mindset, it flips this narrative. It urges us to find peace, not through control, but through acceptance and adaptability. But it's not about being passive or indifferent. It's about being active, finding an empowered practice of meeting life's challenges more calmly and clearly. It's the ability to feel deeply yet respond thoughtfully, to experience adversity and challenge. without it consuming us. The skill of equanimity, it moves us from a passive state into a deliberate choice. And it's a skill that is honed, that is sharpened through reflection, through practice, and through the willingness to embrace discomfort as a teacher, which experience is, it is the best teacher. To cultivate equanimity, we need to integrate two foundational skills that align with a contrarian mindset. And this is cognitive flexibility and emotional regulation. These skills are not just beneficial, they are key in the practice of equanimity. It equips us with the tools to handle the ups and downs of life with more grace and with more composure. So let's talk about the first skill, cognitive flexibility.

[6:06] Now, equanimity begins with adaptability in thought. Think about a young sapling, a young tree that is able to bow and bend in the strongest of winds and not snap. That's the kind of adaptability I'm talking about when it comes to our mental processes.

[6:25] Now, this involves shifting perspectives. It's trying to break free, and it's not always easy. It's trying to break free from rigid beliefs and consider challenges from multiple angles. How can we reframe what is in front of us? So cognitive flexibility, it allows us to see setbacks, not as absolute failures, but opportunities for growth. I mean, this might be a professional setback where a project has fallen through. We've lost our jobs due to cutbacks or due to a merger or some sort of acquisition. Maybe it's a health setback. Maybe it's a financial setback. Maybe you're not able to meet your physical goals because you've been injured in some way or another. So instead of spiraling into frustration, cognitive flexibility helps us to explore alternative paths and solutions, which allows us to pivot around those challenges more gracefully with more forethought. So when it came to my own health issues, when I was diagnosed with cancer, you know, I found myself saying, why me? Why me? You know, I trained, I ate well, I slept well, I lived well.

[7:42] That doesn't mean that bad things are not going to happen to you, that sometimes the roll of the dice don't always turn up. They turn up snake eyes. And in my case, it did. But I shifted from saying, why me? I shifted from thinking that this was a bad thing, that the gods had lined up to strike Jason. No, I had to shift. And it wasn't easy, folks. It wasn't easy. But I needed to use cognitive flexibility. And it was an evolution over time that I decided that this was just something that happened to me and yes it was frustration but I didn't allow the frustration to wind me down and yes it does on some days I find myself in a deep hole but what I decided to do was to reframe it I decided to figure out what I could deal how I could deal with it with immune therapy with metabolic therapy,

[8:37] with my own psychological therapy, using the contrarian mindset. And so the second pillar of equanimity is emotional regulation. You know, equanimity, it thrives on the ability to manage emotions constructively. Now, I'm not saying be positive all the time, because sometimes you find yourself in a shit situation, and any way you cut it, it's not a good situation. But emotional regulation does not suppress feelings.

[9:06] What it does, rather, it invites us to understand, to process them, and to channel them, to understand what those emotions are trying to communicate to us. Because when we feel anger, fear, sadness, when any of these emotions rise up, emotional regulation offers a pause. It's a moment to reflect and to choose a response that aligns with who we want to be, how we want to show up in the chaos, how we want to show up in the complexity of the challenge.

[9:38] Rather than being dictated by impulse. Now, as I've mentioned many times on this show, that you can't stop emotions from showing up. They will bubble up. They will percolate up, and there they are. But what we can do is choose what we want to do. We can choose our response to those emotions. Now, an everyday example, it may be a heated argument. Well, what happens? Well, emotional regulation helps us to step back, breathe, and respond with more clarity rather than escalating the conflict. And I know it's hard to do that.

[10:17] But with time and practice, we become more adept at it. Again, back to my case. You know, when I was given the diagnosis, it was a punch in the gut. It was like the whole world just slowed down and I was all alone. My wife was in the room. The doctor who cares for me was in the room. But everything slowed down. I was in this hollow space by myself. And I just heard the words ringing through me. And the fear and the anxiety and the anger and the frustration welled up in me. And even months along since that diagnosis, you know, I've been fighting it. But those emotions still come back. They still haunt me. They're like ghosts over my shoulder. But there are also messengers.

[11:13] Those messengers allow me to figure what do I want to do with this anger what do I want to do with the fear and anxiety the concern the frustration well I decided to use equanimity I couldn't escape the storm I retracted back into the eye of the storm and I had to pause and I had to reflect you know it's like going for a hard run or doing a hard workout, sometimes we just need to sit down and let our pulse return to a resting state before we push ourselves again because we can push ourselves to a point where we can drive ourselves into a fevered sick state we need to recuperate and that's what part of emotional regulation is about it's about stopping up and allowing things to settle and then addressing the emotions than to figure it out.

[12:05] Music.

[12:16] The contrarian mindset reframes equanimity as a proactive practice of mastering our internal landscape rather than attempting to mold external circumstances. Traditional thinking often urges us to fix problems, eliminate discomfort, or to avoid adversity, to maintain peace. However, the contrarian approach recognizes the futility of trying to control the uncontrollable, which is a sense of insanity, but that's where our brains go. Instead, it focuses on cultivating an unshakable inner calm that can endure regardless of external chaoses.

[12:59] This practice, well, it invites us to fully engage with life's adversities, its challenges, its conundrums, not by resisting them, but by approaching them. Consider for a moment a leader managing a team during an organizational crisis. Now, conventional approaches emphasize controlling the narrative, controlling the story, fixing the immediate problems, or projecting unflappable confidence.

[13:25] Well, the contrarian leader, however, he or she practices equanimity. They acknowledge the difficulty, they maintain their composure, and they guide their team with more clarity and authenticity. Now, this approach not only inspires trust, but it also fosters collective resilience. Now, just as a side note, equanimity also aligns with contemporary psychological principles, including mindfulness and CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy. Now, these frameworks emphasize the importance of reframing thought patterns and responding to emotions with awareness rather than reactivity. It is through deliberate practice that equanimity becomes a tool that helps us to transform adversity into opportunities for growth and learning. So now I want to talk about some of the practical strategies that I have used over my own challenges to cultivate equanimity. And again, this was not easy, but it takes discipline and dedication in order to establish this as a mainstay, something that I can fall back on.

[14:38] You know, just as courage is a skill developed through deliberate practice, well, equanimity requires consistent effort and intention.

[14:47] There's no denying that. There's no shortcuts to this. And so what I'd like to do now is share some actionable strategies to help build this cornerstone of resilience.

[14:58] So the first skill I simply call pause and reflect. Hit the brakes before hitting the accelerator. So the next time you are faced with some sort of event that triggers you, pause before reacting. And this requires you to be self-aware. Just stop up for a second. And you can ask yourself something just so simple by managing moments. What am I feeling? What am I thinking? What assumptions am I making about the situation? How do I want to choose to respond to this? What is the narrative going through my head? What is the meaning I'm giving to the situation right now? You know, this practice of pause and reflect, what it does, it interrupts the impulsive reactions and it fosters more thoughtful, deliberate responses. Now, a second skill is reframe challenges or just simply reframing. It's about training your mind to view obstacles as opportunities.

[15:57] So when something goes sideways, when something gets derailed or goes wrong, what we want to do is reflect on our situation and maybe ask ourselves, what is this situation teaching me? Like myself, I moved from thinking this was something bad and it was something just aimed adjacent. My cancer diagnosis wasn't something that was planned. It was something that came out of the blue, at least how I experienced it. And the question is, how could I reframe it? So I tend to reframe it as something that just happened. And I choose to look at it as something that has happened to me, evidently. But how can I learn from it? How can I strengthen myself? How do I show up to the challenges? Because how we show up to the turmoils and the storms in our life, that is our true character. And if it's something that you don't like about yourself, how you react to it, Well, that opportunity, that bad news, that, that situation.

[17:00] Well, it allows you to adapt, to strengthen yourself in the way you would like to show up to future challenges. So for me, it was about focusing on the lessons learned. How can those lessons inform my future efforts? Now, our third one is about practicing mindfulness. It's about dedicating time daily to this type of meditation. And that might be sitting quietly in a chair for five or ten minutes and using your senses. Something that I do. I don't do it daily, but I do it, you know, a number of times a week where I'll just sit quietly in a chair just for five or ten minutes. I'll close my eyes and then I'll stretch my hearing as far as it'll go to pick up the most sensitive of the sounds or the most loud of the sounds. And what that does is that the brain can only focus on one thing at a time. So while I'm focusing on listening to the world around me, my surroundings, that means I'm stopping up. It allows me to not get caught up in rumination and negative thoughts. And it calms not just me psychologically, but physiologically.

[18:09] This practice, what it does, it puts you in the present moment. And it strengthens your ability to remain centered amid life's chaos and turbulence. Now, a fourth skill that I used was to develop emotional agility. It's about building awareness to your emotional triggers. What you might want to do is journal about the moments when you felt reactive and explore how you might respond differently in the future. Because over time, this reflective self-introspection, well, it deepens your emotional intelligence. It allows you to be more cognizant of the triggers that push you over the edge.

[18:46] Definitely equips you to navigate challenges with more composure. And what I did, I did expressive writing. I would just sit down for 15 minutes and I would just write. It doesn't matter what it was about. I would just write. But what it allowed me to do was to confront my emotions, to understand what my emotions were talking about, and to process them through. Because once you process emotions, they kind of dissipate because the message is being received from the physiology to the psychology. And remember, what are emotions? Well, emotions are the chemical language from our bodies to our brains, where our brains have grammar and syntax and words to describe what's going on in our heads. Well, our bodies don't. They come in the form of chemical messengers of hormones and modulators. Another skill is, well, it's letting go of control. It's about identifying areas where you're trying to control the uncontrollable.

[19:44] Practice releasing that need for control by focusing on what you can influence, like your thoughts, your actions, your attitudes. Because again, your brain can only focus on one thing at a time. If you're constantly focused on trying to control the outcome, good luck with that, because rarely does that play out. What we can always control is the amount of effort. Some days we are fully energized and we'll put it 100% effort. Some days we're going to be a little bit in the doldrums where our body battery is a little low and maybe 60% of effort. That's okay for that day.

[20:24] But to a large extent, equanimity is about being at peace that you can't control every variable in play. Now again, these are not the ultimate skills. I have presented the skills that have worked for me on my travels, on my sojourn, and hopefully they can complement what you've learned along your road. Equanimity it embodies the contrarian stance by redefining resilience as an internal practice rather than a constant external pursuit equanimity asks us to engage with life's unpredictability its uncertainty but it's more about cultivating a steadiness that endures despite of it you know through cognitive flexibility emotional regulation and a commitment to being present, well, equanimity, it can help us face challenges, fostering a deeper sense of, calmness and peace and empowerment. You know, this practice is not about achieving perpetual calm or raising difficult emotions. It's like people saying, I always want to be happy. Well, good luck with that.

[21:37] There's futility in that. But what it's about, it's about meeting life's uncertainty with more grace. It's about accepting discomfort as part of the growth. And it's about choosing responses that align with who we are, with what we truly value. I mean, the true power of equanimity, it's not freedom from adversity or challenge, but it's the ability to thrive within it. Equanimity has the unique ability to turn adversity into opportunity. And it helps to create a sense of hope and optimism in the face of life's challenges.

[22:18] Practicing equanimity is a lifelong practice that builds the foundation for resilience. It empowers us to face life's highs and lows with composure. Leveraging setbacks is chances to evolve. By integrating the principles of cognitive flexibility and emotional intelligence, we establish the steady calm that helps us remain centered amid life's complexities. The contrarian mindset reminds us that true resilience does not come from controlling the world around us, but from mastering the world within.

[22:52] Equanimity is a skill, it's a practice. It's a way of being that allows us to sojourn through life's inevitable storms with more courage, more clarity, and more balance. And it's through deliberate practice that we can change equanimity into our most steadfast ally as a source of strength empowerment and an enduring peace.

[23:15] Music.

[23:21] If you're curious to know how to build a contrarian mindset for greater resilience fortitude tenacity psychological strength and a sense of well-being well you'll find the links to the other episodes in this series in the show notes. So make sure you hit that subscribe button and I'll be back next week with my long form conversational episodes on Monday and the latest Bite Sites episode on Friday. And have yourself a relaxing and rejuvenating weekend.

[23:48] Music.