Not sure if it was because of mental health day a week ago, but I recently started rewatching “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.”
The eponymous sitcom co-created by 30 Rock’s Tina Fey and Robert Carlock, follows Kimmy (played by Ellie Kemper, the charming substitute receptionist from “The Office”), in her re-emergence in the real world. Kimmy was kidnapped by a cult leader in her teen years, and by the time she is rescued 15 years later, she is a nearly 30-year old woman.
When she resurfaces with her fellow captives, it’s an entirely new world. Having been kidnapped in 1998, she misses the turn of the century and finds herself struggling humorously to find her footing in a world with smart phones, Siris, and ultra-fast technology. The last media she remembers were “Friends,” the MTV channel, and “The Baby-Sitters’ Club” book series. Depending on your generation, you’d enjoy the nostalgic pop culture references to the 80s and the 90s.
Kimmy navigates the deluge of how the world has changed with a grade-school education and a positive attitude. While her personality is one of sunny optimism that most of us wouldn’t relate to, being “surlied” (coined by me, a term for being sullied into being surly) by the world in general (the show is set in New York, ‘nuf said), she still goes through the process of facing her past in order to have a healthy, functional way forward.
Here are some of the show’s most insightful quotes:
1) “See… you can stand anything for 10 seconds. Then, you just start on a new 10 seconds.”
During their time in the bunker, they were forced to do labor such as turn a mystery crank manually. Sometimes, even for days at a time.
What Kimmy did was to focus on the task not as something she had to do for days, but as something she had to do for 10 seconds. Then when the 10 seconds was over, she would start a new 10 seconds and focus on that. She doesn’t think about the new 10 seconds when she’s on the current 10 seconds, either, making the daunting task much more doable.
Try to completely focus on whatever it is you’re doing for 10 seconds. Maybe it’s savoring the last sip of coffee, a bite of your sandwich, or simply take a single mindful breath for 10 seconds, inhale, hold, and exhale.
2) “We are not garbage! We are human beings!”
Kimmy said this empathically to the three other women she had been trapped in a bunker with for 15 years.
Because of 15 years of gaslighting and abuse, the other three had started believing the words of their former captor and cult leader, Reverend Richard Wayne.
There are times that we need to remind ourselves of our own worth, especially when we’ve been in a toxic situation for too long, whether it’s work or personal.
Self-compassion is one of the best resilience exercises in this situation.
Reflecting on your self-talk, notice the words you use towards yourself. Are they harsh, or an echo of somebody or something in your life that keeps bringing you down?
As an exercise, try to talk to yourself as you would to a close friend who is struggling. With self-compassion and kindness.
Resilience also protects us mentally so we can maintain our self-esteem in the face of challenges.
3) "I do understand the world... It’s tough, but so are we.”
You may or may not have heard this before but you’re more resilient than you give yourself credit for.
Being human beings, as emphasized in the above quote, we tend to catastrophize or live in fear of certain events. However, when you look back, you would realize you not only survived coming face to face with your fear, butgrew as a person afterwards. For example, failing a test, not getting the job, or the promotion we aspired for – when these things happened to us, while it would hurt at first, you would later see how the experience actually enlarged you to a stronger person than ever before.
Storytelling, or rewriting your story, is a resilience exercise that helps us to process what happened in the past, rewrite it with new insights, and look for the positive interpretation to a story… leading us to new perspectives and a sense of control.
No matter how resilient you already are, you can always enhance it even more with these 3resilience exercises here, the same way we exercise muscles in order for them to grow. Try them out if you feel that they are valuable to you right now.
There are a lot more quotable quotes, life lessons, and wellness tips to be shared here, so see you around!
I do not even know the way I finished up right here, however
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who you’re however definitely you’re going to a famous blogger in the event you
are not already. Cheers!
Glad you enjoyed it and I hope you found helpful practices here 🙂 See you next time!