Window of Tolerance - Part 2
5 strategies for widening your window of tolerance and cultivating greater resilience in times of uncertainty and challenge.
In the spring of 2016, I stood at the helm of a boat in the blue-green waters of the off the coast of Italy. It was a balmy 78 degrees, and a cool breeze, carrying bits of salty sea spray, kissed my cheeks. Travel was a regular part of my life—the space in which I flourished and felt immense gratitude and joy for the life I was living. As a result, my window for stress tolerance was wider than most. The wider window allowed me to be more tolerant of uncertainty and ambiguity and more flexible and quick to adapt when things didn’t go as planned, which was often in the nomadic existence I was living. It allowed me to tap into my own sense of agency and choice, and kept me feeling connected to myself and the people around me.
Cut to me sitting on the floor of my living room in the spring of 2022. My chest was tight, and I was overwhelmed by feelings of panic and anxiety. My thoughts were racing as I thought about getting back on a plane again for the first time in over two years—the longest I’d ever gone without traveling since starting my career almost twenty years earlier. So what happened between that feeling of being alive on the sailboat in 2016 and this moment on the floor of my living room in 2022?
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