Rule 7 Know Who You Are

 A friend of mine was diagnosed with a very serious illness. Of Course people kept asking her how she was, what was happening with the treatment, what she was and wasnt able to do and how could they help. She found this very frustrating and in the end she sent round an email to everyone saying that she really appreciated their concern and their offers of help, but she didn't want to talk bout it thank you. She explained to me that it wasn't that she actually minded talking about the illness per se, it was that she felt she was starting to be defined by it.

Now this particular friend of mine is amazingly resilient and had an instinctive recognition that in order to cope with her diagnosis she had to separate it from her own identity. She had to go on being the same person she was before she became ill and, for her, that meant discouraging other people from talking about it.

She didn't want her friends to see her only in terms of her illness, because - more importantly - she didn't want to get sucked into seeing herself the same way. She had several important roles in life - at work, as a mother, as a partner, as a friend - and those were the ones she liked and had created for herself. So those were the things she wanted people to see when they thought about her.

By drawing these lines firmly around herself, she was separating her own identity from that of the illness.

This is central to being resilient, coping with stress, enabling yourself to overcome hardship. A lot of us muddle the boundaries between ourselves and our problems. Once you recognise that this is making it harder for you to cope, you can focus on thinking about your situation differently. You don't have to adopt my friend's strategy of asking people not to talk about it, but its a useful tactic for some. One friend whose husband died refused to use the word widow because it described her situation and not herself. This is crucial when you're coping with serious illness or bereave-ment, and its essential when you've had a serious blow to your self-esteem that you're tempted to see as a rejection of some kind.

Redundancy, for example, or a relationship break-up. If you see these as a direct criticism of everything you are, then you call into question your entire identity and indeed your value as a per-son. Redundancy might have nothing whatever to do with your value as an employee and, if you personalise it, you give your self-confidence an unnecessarily tough mountain to climb. You've got enough on your plate finding a new job without the added stress of feeling you're a failure.

A relationship break-up or not getting a job you're after is not a reflection of your entire self. Think about all the aspects of yourself that it doesn't relate to - the rest of your life, your friends, your values, your skills, your strengths. If you and your partner split up it doesn't mean that you're a failure, it simply means that the relationship didn't work. Yes, I know it's hard to see it like that at times, but you have to keep reminding yourself that you are still the same you, and this is only one aspect of your life. However much your relationship means to you, it isn't actually who you are. This way of thinking, this separation of yourself from your troubles, is going to make it so much less difficult to cope.

IF YOU PERSONALISE IT, YOU GIVE YOUR SELF-CONFIDENCE AN UNNECESSARILY TOUGH MOUNTAIN TO CLIMB