Resilience

In my previous post I introduced the principle of taking the cube back just one step; 'take it back to the blue'.

I talked about just focusing on fixing 'the top layer' - in life terms, bringing things back to a workable level.  It may seem then, like it really doesn't matter what state the bottom two layers of your cube look like - I mean, hey - it's not like anyone sees those two layers. 

So let's consider things a bit more.  If you have a completely solved cube and then someone rotates one side of the cube 90 or 180 degrees.  Your blue side is definately going to be messed up.  Now consider a cube where the top layer is perfect, but the bottom two layers are completely messed up.  Until someone messes up the top layer, both cubes technically look the same (since we can only see that solved surface layer).  But when we rotate the side layer of the cube that started with 2 messed up bottom layers, the two cubes look very different.  The cube that started completely solved will be easy to analyse and 'repair' once the side is rotated.  The cube that started with messy bottom layers will be somewhat more complicated to look at and analyse what is going on once the side has been rotated. 

With the second cube it will be harder to work out what needs to be done to just fix the top layer.  To an untrained eye, the cube may appear to be in a worse state of chaos than it really even is. 

You can see where I'm going with this.  Both cubes started out looking the same to everyone (except the cube owner - ie. person living the life).  Then each cube suffered the same insult/disaster.  One cube was nicely organised and solved prior to the insult; it was easy to recognise where things went wrong and what needed to be done in order to repair the blue side.  It doesn't take much intellectual energy in the first scenario to bring the top layer back into place.  The second cube looks worse once the insult has been suffered; this is because all of a sudden when the side got rotated, people can see some of the 'mess' that was below that perfect top layer.  So other people can see the mess, and the person trying to fix the cube has to filter out that mess in order to determine the damage and repair it. 

It makes sense then to try and keep your bottom two layers as close to solved as possible.  It will then take less energy to analyse and fix the cube when it suffers some kind of insult.  This will make you resilient.  Obviously, if you set yourself up such that problems are easier to solve, each problem will take less energy to deal with. 

So what constitutes the bottom two layers of your cube.  The answer is "I don't know".  This is because everyone is different.  But there are some basic things that affect most people's bottom layers.
- Your health status:  Look after your health, keep it in order, exercise, eat right, sleep appropriately
- Your financial status:  Plan, budget, don't spend beyond your capacity, you don't have to be wealthy to manage this part of your cube well
- Identity:  Know who you are, know your values, know what your goals are and what you want to achieve.  Know what your cube should look like!
- Support:  Have people who know you (and who know your cube).  If your cube get's really messed up it's likely they'll be able to help guide you as to what it should look like while you try and fix it - hey!  They may even be able to help you repair it.
Those are just the basics of the bottom two layers of your cube.

Summary:
- Plenty of people have got the top layer of their cube solved and beautifully presentable for the rest of the world.
- Depending on how tidy your bottom two layers are, your problems may be easy or hard to solve (even if you suffered the same insult as someone else, the state of these bottom two layers can change the degree to which it is easy or not to repair the damage).
- Keeping your bottom layers as organised and solved as possible will minimise the trauma you experience from problems and maximise you abililty to cope with life. 
- Basic things to help keep your bottom layers looking good are knowing who you are, maintinaing good health, planning things well, and knowing who you can turn to for help and support.

(c) Arlene Taylor 2010