Have you ever wondered how some people can pursue their online dreams unscathed by the setbacks and disappointments they encounter? What is the secret to resilience? And that's what we're going to talk about today: how to cultivate daily resilience for online success in today's Resilient Faith Online Show, Episode 2. Welcome, I'm Marissa Shatterick, host of the Resilient Faith Online Show. I'm a digital strategist and certified copywriter, but more importantly, a woman of faith. In this podcast, you'll find a biblical perspective to the external and internal challenges we face as online content creators. Join me for some inspiration and practical tips as we let our faith shape our work to create positive change online. To connect with our private Facebook group of faith-based online entrepreneurs, go to Marissa Shadrick.com forward slash faith. Oh, hello everyone. How are you doing today? Thank you for listening today to the Resilient Faith Online podcast. I am Marissa Shadrick, and I'm excited to talk about daily resilience. We're going to talk about how to cultivate daily resilience for your online success. So let me ask you this: why is resilience so hard? Right? Good question. I think it's because we need it the most when we're facing our own weakness, when we're feeling vulnerable, when we're feeling fearful, when we're not feeling very courageous. And that's when we need resilience the most. We tend to get pushed back into our security bubble rather than pursue those things that we know we need to do. And so today I'm going to share a little bit about my story and how I've been discovering daily resilience. I had a lot of hangups when I was a kid. I mean, I don't know exactly why, but I was a daughter of immigrant parents. My dad was from Ecuador, and my mom was from Colombia, my sister was born in Venezuela, and my dad ended up taking a job in the United States for Pan Am Airways way back. And I was born in New York City. But I think living between those two cultures were so different. You know, we spoke Spanish at home, spoke English at school, the food was different. I mean, everything was different. And I kind of withdrew and I was afraid of speaking in front of the class. I, when I didn't understand things, you know, I couldn't really take it to my parents because they were still learning English. And so that created a little bit of a problem. And I was afraid to go to the teacher because I felt it would be confrontational for some reason. And so I kind of fell back, and especially in English because I didn't speak up. I don't know if they thought I didn't know English because I didn't speak up. But in any event, um, I was put in remedial English and that kind of follows you as you go through grade school and high school. And so I ended up with a lot of insecurities and things. And I just don't know if it was the time period or what it was, but I I lived with it for so long and um always wanted to be one to blend in with the walls and not stand out and just very, very shy. And so this created a problem for me, right? And a lot of times some of the things that we experience as adults, it's rooted in our childhood. And sometimes we have to go back and kind of see where did that start and begin to unpack that a little bit. So here's the problem that I see that today we see a lot of people that for whatever reason, whether it was when they were young like myself, or even the result of situations like we've had with the pandemic in uh 2020, whatever it might be, resilience has gotten worn down. People are less resilient these days. It seems like it's a struggle to get back to a rhythm. And it could be possibly because we're listening to too many voices. Um, I know when I was a kid, you know, it was I'd listen to my parents' voice, I'd listen to the teacher's voice, you know, you listen to pure voices, and then you listen to the voice in your head. And the voice in your head seems to dominate and tell you things that are not true. So I think today people are struggling with resilience simply because of the external voices or maybe external noise that there is nowadays, and uh really wearing them down. And it could be their own internal voice, like myself, when you just don't think that uh you're enough, or you don't have enough skills, or you don't have enough money, or you don't have enough time, or you don't have enough experience, or it could be the opposite where you think you're just too much, right? That you're too idealistic, you're too Pollyanna, you're too naive, you're too young, you're too old, and it goes on, right? Or it could be from disappointments. Disappointments can also have a way of affecting us where we're not as resilient the next time come going around, if there's something new that we want to pursue, if we've been disappointed in the past, we're more reluctant to try something new, simply because that brings us to the fear of the unknown. Even when you're initiating it, even if it's your idea, the unknown can be kind of scary, right? So here's the truth, and here's something that I practice as I was trying to get out of a lot of my fears, because as a child I had all those fears, and as an adult, there were things I felt God wanted me to do. One of them was writing. And, you know, when you have gone through remedial English for so long, you don't think writing, I mean, writing is the last thing you would think that you would do, right? And so um it was a mindset shift for me to go back to school and I went to a local community college. I took Shakespeare, I took English classes 101, 102, 103, all the other literature classes they had. And I started joining, uh, going to writers' conferences and learning about writing simply because I wanted to write. But I was the writer that didn't want anybody to read my writing, right? So, which is not going to get you very far. But I finally went to a writer's conference and I decided um to face my fears and with a lot of fear and trembling, even though I, you know, went to talk to acquisition editors and so forth, I was really nervous. I did I felt like I was out of place there. But there was one that wanted to read my article, and lo and behold, it was published in um In Touch magazine, which at the time Charles Stanley uh oversaw that he's Andy Stanley's dad. That article was published, it was international, it went international. Um, and I couldn't believe it. I I really literally just cried because I couldn't believe that they accepted the article and published it because I was so convinced I was a terrible writer from being in remedial uh writing classes. And so the same thing happened with public speaking. I was terribly afraid, I mean, so fearful of public speaking. I had joined Toastmasters and I thought maybe this would help me get over fear of public speaking. And I was there six months and had not even given my first speech, which is a little seven-minute icebreaker speech where you just talk about yourself. So, I mean, how hard can that be, right? Seven minutes about talking about yourself, and yet it was so hard for me to do. And when I finally got around to doing it and scheduling it, and I got up there, you know, I saw them taking notes, which they're supposed to do because they're supposed to give you feedback. I just, I froze. I went blank and I said, I can't do this. And I went and sat down. And so a lot of it didn't come easy for me, but I was so, so tired of bowing down to fear, right? That I thought, I need to try this again. I need to get over this. It's it's like a hold on me. And so one thing led to another, and I was talked into um registering for the international competition, and I figured, well, as soon as I lose at the club level, it'll be done and over with, and I won't have to worry about it anymore. Well, I started winning and I ended up uh winning at the club level, area level, regional level, and I became district champion. That positioned me to go to the semifinals. And out of 30 to 35,000 contestants, only a hundred people go to the semifinals. And so, right there, that was a win for me to get that far with public speaking. And it was simply because I was trying to embrace courage and not let fear dominate my life and be obedient to what God was telling me to do. That was really the tipping point for me to move forward with other things and take my what I was doing online because I was blogging online, but to take it seriously and develop a business. And that was in 2015. And so I I took it seriously and started developing a business, and you know, the rest became a certified copywriter and so forth. But here's the truth the resilience comes by practicing it every day. Um, most people, by definition, resilience is a comeback from a setback that someone has experienced something in their life, or maybe it something traumatic that really floors them and they're able to come back from that, right? But what I'm talking about is daily resilience, facing those things that make us feel weak and vulnerable and fearful that cause us to put off or ignore and or not even move forward and progress, right? To confront those things on a daily basis and practice daily resilience. And this is what helped me is to practice daily resilience. And so, especially when I was going through that speech competition, because it was a six-month competition, it was a long one, and I I really uh took scripture to heart, the scripture about renewing the mind, because I knew God had given me a healthy mind, right? And these things that were going through my mind, the thoughts, were not anchored in truth. I love 2 Timothy 1.7. This is in the New Life version. It says, For God did not give us a spirit of fear, he gave us a spirit of power and of love and of a good mind. A good mind, not a mind filled with fear and self-deprecation, but a good mind. I feel that resilience is having the capacity to recover to a good mind, the mind that God has given you. So daily resilience helps us face all those things, whatever they might be, those weaknesses, those vulnerabilities, the fearfulness, to face it and allow God to help us recover and bring it back to a good mind on a daily basis. Return to a good mind. So, how do we apply this? Okay. So as we realize that when God calls us to do things, God's plan for our lives doesn't have any previews, you know, like you have a preview to a movie, you know what to expect, right? But there's no previews in life and there's no practice run. It's a real-time thing that we're doing. So we don't know the outcome often. And that can be kind of scary. But one thing I do know is that your purpose begins to unfold as we take steps of obedience because we're not going to know what that outcome is going to be. Oh, yeah, you can say I want to be this or I want to be that, but we don't know what detours it's going to take or how it's going to unfold, right? So I've noticed that as I take a step of obedience, things begin to unfold. It's kind of like uh going, driving through a road that's foggy and you can't see the destination, but you keep moving forward, maybe a little slower, but you're moving forward toward your destination through the fog or heavy rain, and you're moving, you're not stopping and you're not putting the car in reverse, you're moving forward. And pretty soon the fog clears or the rain stops, and you can see the destination. It's kind of like that. While we're driving through the fog, it's scary, but we're headed somewhere, right? So here's what I do to practice daily resilience. And I got this from Nancy Missler years ago. We're 20, I don't know, it was seven years into my Christian faith, and I've been a Christian for like 35 years, but I kept uh having this emotional roller coaster. And so I was trying to figure out a way how to have more peace in my life. And I came across this book from Nan Nancy Missler. She wrote a number of books and uh was in ministry, and it was all about uh starting with the thought. See, I was trying to change the actions, and she was explaining how you actually have to change it in what you're thinking first. You can't change your actions without adjusting your thoughts. So you you consider what you're thinking because your thoughts are gonna stir emotions, whether they're positive or negative, they're gonna stir emotions, and those emotions are going to influence your choice, whatever that might be. And that choice is gonna end up as a result. It could be in procrastination, it could be whatever that result is. So your thought, if it's a positive or negative thought, is going to stir positive or negative emotions, which is gonna influence the the mental choice you're making, and it's gonna end up as a physical result. And so when I realized that instead of trying to change the actual actions and change my thinking, everything started changing. Um, everything became different. I started experiencing what people call freedom. In closing, I just want to reassure you that this is a journey, but this is possible for everyone. Resilience is possible. And boy, we need resilience, don't we? This is a crazy world we live in. It's a broken world. We need resilience, but we can do that because we're not alone, because God is there with us and the spirit of God lives in us, helping us. Intentional living leaves no regrets. And that's one thing that helped me move forward, overcoming my fears is I I feared more living with regrets than I feared fear. So, so I moved forward. And we can coexist with tension and not let it debilitate us, right? I love the verse that talks about the fruit of the spirit. You know, as we have the spirit of the Lord in us, you know, we're able to have joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness and gentleness and self-control. And that inspired me to write something about the fruit of the spirit and how we can coexist in a broken world. So I like to read that to you and hopefully you can find some encouragement from it. Love can coexist with hate because love is a choice. Joy can coexist with disappointments because joy is abiding in Christ. Peace can coexist with hardship because peace is embracing the truth. Patience can coexist with unanswered prayers because patience means surrendering. Kindness, goodness, and gentleness can coexist in a fractured world because these virtues overflow from humility. Faithfulness can coexist with imperfection because faithfulness has an eternal point of view. Self-control can coexist with daily temptations because self-control is spirit-led. I hope that encouraged you today, and I hope you practice daily resilience every day. It will make you stronger and you will achieve more in your business because fear will no longer be your master. So until next time, stay resilient to create positive change online. If you found this podcast helpful, then subscribe from wherever you're listening today so you never miss an episode. Every subscription, review, or rating means so much to me. So keep them coming and share this with a friend. For more free content, go to marissashadrick.com and remember keep cultivating resilient faith online to create positive change in the world.