How to Develop a Resilient Mindset

Guest (Male): This program is sponsored by Focus on the Family, helping families thrive in Christ for more than 40 years.
Jim Daly: Hey, this is Jim Daly with Focus on the Family. I don't do this very often, but I want to address an important issue before we jump into today's broadcast topic. By now, you may have heard about a troubling Massachusetts court case in the news involving the parents of a child who has experienced sexual confusion, but I want to recap the story for those who aren't familiar with it. Like many moms and dads, I'm sure you value religious liberty and believe that government should have a very limited role in family life. A Catholic family in Massachusetts, the Cutzcos, are fighting for custody of their minor daughter after she was removed from their home because they wouldn't affirm her sexual confusion. In December of 2024, a girl named Sophie came to her parents and claimed she was a boy. The Cutzcos discovered that officials at her school had begun to secretly transition her without their knowledge. Then the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families removed Sophie from the home after the mom and dad declined to recognize her as a boy. The case is complicated and it's still in the courts with another hearing scheduled for October 29th. A Massachusetts judge has temporarily blocked the state from administering testosterone while the legal dispute continues. Meanwhile, in the name of transgenderism, radical activists are working overtime to destroy parent-child relationships, attack parental rights, and violate free speech and religious freedom. So, let me encourage you to remain vigilant about what's going on in your state and in your own child's school. Don't hesitate to ask questions. Do your best to keep up on what your son or daughter may be struggling with and who they might be talking to. Politics aside, this is a spiritual battle. The Cutzcos and other Christian parents are battling against the darkness of transgender ideology and they need our prayers. So, please lift up these moms and dads asking God to give them strength to prevail and to have restored relationships with their children. You can read all the details of this story from our great team at the Daily Citizen. We've provided a link at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast.
John Fuller: This is John Fuller and please remember to let us know how you're listening to these programs, on a podcast, app, or website.
Valerie Burton: Your vision is a tool. So, if your vision is clear and I would say from a the standpoint as a believer, you're asking God, what's your vision for me? Where am I headed? What is that endpoint look like? And it should pull you forward. So, the rule is focus on the vision, not the obstacle.
John Fuller: Well, that's Valerie Burton and she's with us today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly to share about developing resilience so you can overcome obstacles in your life. Thanks for joining us. I 'm John Fuller.
Jim Daly: You know, right from the get-go, John, if the listener, the viewer, if you're in a bad spot, life just isn't moving in a good direction for you, we're here for you. Focus on the Family's been at it almost 50 years. We have great resources to help you kind of move through that log jam of life and be able to begin to get back on top of things and make sure you're you're feeling good spiritually, emotionally, hopefully physically, and all of it to drive you toward a deeper relationship with Christ because we, as a Christian organization, we think that's where the fountain is at. The answers are found there and then you apply them to your life. And today we're going to talk about taking steps to prepare for those challenges ahead of time, building resilience so you can, you know, not only get through it, but conquer this life in a way that the Lord intended.
John Fuller: Right. And Valerie Burton is our guest. She's a best-selling author, international speaker, a life strategist. And she's delightful. We're going to be talking about one of her books called Rules of Resilience, 10 Ways Successful People Get Better, Wiser, and Stronger.
Jim Daly: Valerie, welcome to Focus on the Family.
Valerie Burton: Thank you. It is so good to be here.
Jim Daly: It's good to have you here. Thanks for making the trek and the journey. So, with resilience, you know, you can walk away with a lot of, you know, slightly different perspectives about what resilience means. So, what is the definition of resilience?
Valerie Burton: So, most of us when we think of resilience, we think about bouncing back from setbacks. I think of it as being able to thrive and grow and be effective in the face of adversity and challenges and change. But the difference in how I define it in this book is that it is a personal system you create that enables you to withstand stressors and and challenges. And so, whether you realize you've created a system or not, you have.
Jim Daly: Yeah.
Valerie Burton: And so, what I wanted to do was be able to tell people, okay, what what are the three pillars that make up this system so you can look at it and say, ooh, I'm good there, but here's where I have room for improvement.
Jim Daly: Yeah. You did a degree in psychology. So often in the Christian community, we're yeah, we kind of bounce from what we'll say is psychobabble because we want to be rooted in the word. But man, when you get into it, and of course, Dr. Dobson was PhD in Child Development from the USC School of Medicine. And he saw this route where you could incorporate good science, honest truth-telling science with biblical truth. And the two will not conflict. They usually run together because of the architect of the universe, God. He put it together. He created our brain. He knows how we tick. He created how we tick. And so, when you study psychology, especially as a Christian, these things tend to get reinforced. You're going, oh, wow, there's a scripture that talks about that. In that context, to give that big disclaimer for you, how many ways can human beings fool themselves about resiliency? And what I mean by that is a person who's trying to just code it with maybe a spiritual you know, icing and just to put the good foot forward. But deep down inside, it's not there.
Valerie Burton: Yeah.
Jim Daly: And they're faking it for whatever reason to show an outward resiliency that isn't there. Speak to that need for understanding what it means to have deep resiliency, not the flippant comment when at church on Sunday, how you doing? I'm good. I'm good. Yeah, I'm good. And you're not.
Valerie Burton: Yeah.
Jim Daly: How do you manage that and how do you become more honest first with yourself and then with people who say, man, I heard you lost your your mom or your dad or your spouse or I heard about the affair or what is the healthy way to respond with that?
Valerie Burton: So, I think it's really important that we understand that a hallmark of resilience is authenticity. Real resilience does require us to be honest about our fears, about what's not working. And a lot of times if we don't know the answer to how to fix it, we can pretend it doesn't exist. One of the rules, one of my favorite rules of resilience here is don't pretend, don't defend.
Jim Daly: Uh.
Valerie Burton: What that means is don't pretend things are okay that are not. And we can conquer what we're willing to confront, but if we won't even say, hey, our marriage is struggling right now or really don't like this career that I'm in. I don't know how to get out of it, but like could I do something different or I'm stressed and overwhelmed.
Jim Daly: Yeah.
Valerie Burton: And maybe as a mom, I feel like I shouldn't be and I feel all the pressure of what everybody says I should be able to do and I should just be happy about things all the time. If you're able to say something's not right, then you could admit what you need to work on.
Jim Daly: One of the things I've often noticed in that kind of application, we often say, you know, I I want to talk or walk with people that have a limp. Another way of saying that is people that are only on the mountaintop don't go very deep. And people from a valley where they've had the hard knocks of life and have turned to God for help are usually the people that have great wisdom, that know what they're talking about, that know about life and those kinds of things. Speak to that aspect of differentiation between a life of ease and then a life of difficulty and what are the benefits of both?
Valerie Burton: Well, first of all, we can't measure resilience unless there's been a challenge, right? So, someone says, oh, I'm resilient. The first thing you think is and what have you been through, right?
Jim Daly: Right. I didn't get my lunch money one day.
Valerie Burton: Yeah. Yeah. So, we grow through our challenges when we're resilient. We don't just go through them. And we have to recognize that there is that opportunity. One of the rules is find the opportunity in the challenge. There is an opportunity to grow your resilience when you are going through things.
Jim Daly: Your father who it sounds like you guys have had a great relationship which is so awesome. I always love to hear that. And but he went through some difficulty with a congenital heart issue. But you were able to, I 'm sure, talk with him and and he kind of maybe directly or just indirectly developed a system to deal with his difficulty. Speak to that.
Valerie Burton: Yes. So, my dad in his mid 50s going for a routine physical and the doctor is like, your heartbeat is a little abnormal, which he had heard before. My dad retired from the Air Force after 24 years. He played sports in high school. They did an angiogram and the doctor when he came out he said, I've got good news and bad news. He said, good news is your arteries are in perfect condition. Like no blockages, nothing.
Jim Daly: That's good.
Valerie Burton: So, the bad news is one of them is going to the wrong place.
Jim Daly: Oh.
Valerie Burton: He said, this is a a birth defect that normally would kill you at 6 months old, but definitely by the age of 10. We've never seen anyone get to this age with this condition. It was obviously a shocker. He did have the open heart surgery. But when we were curious about why, like I wonder why didn't he have other issues? They said, well, you know, he could have had a heart attack in his 20s or his 30s. They would have just said it was a fluke.
Jim Daly: Yeah.
Valerie Burton: They would never have known that there was this birth defect. They said, but you know, you you've never smoked. You've always been pretty healthy physically. And we think these were basically preventative choices that you made that actually compensated and helped keep you alive all this time. So, the the idea there is, as I said, we have our adaptive skills, the internal resources, the protective resources, the external. But then there's the preventative choices. What could you do today? And this is my favorite coaching question around this. If you're looking back 5 or 10 years from now in any area of your life, your relationships, your finances, your health, what would you wish you had done? And so, that's what happened with my dad. It was like because he had made some other good choices not knowing there was a problem,
Jim Daly: Right.
Valerie Burton: he was kind of cushioning himself from a a problem that he didn't even know could have taken his life.
Jim Daly: Yeah. So, in these 10 rules of resilience, number one, let's hit number one. We're not going to cover them all, but hopefully people get a taste of it. So, what's number one?
Valerie Burton: It's expect the unexpected.
Jim Daly: Okay, that's good.
Valerie Burton: Expect the unexpected. And you got to be ready to handle it.
Jim Daly: That's your dad right there.
Valerie Burton: Yes. Expect the unexpected. Be ready to handle it. And that means, you know, we can have our best laid plans. We all know that we typically don't go to from A to Z in a straight line. There's a setback. Things don't go as planned. And if you prepare for that, if you expect that, then when it doesn't go as planned, it doesn't take as long for you to recover and find your plan B. It's oh, yeah. I I didn't know what was going to be a setback, but I could pretty much guess that there was going to be one. And that's the unexpected.
Jim Daly: The most obvious question with that one is for that person that struggles when the setback comes. It's so deep. And even as a spouse, you might as the spouse go, wow, that is a molehill, not a mountain. Um, how does that person find deeper resiliency when that is the typical reaction from you? You know what I mean?
Valerie Burton: So, when you're the person that is feeling overwhelmed by the challenge, but maybe you have a spouse that minimizes it,
Jim Daly: Yeah, or not that's an aspect of it, but that you're you're low resiliency, if I could say it that way, that you're you're always making a mountain out of a molehill. It's not a big deal. We can get through this.
Valerie Burton: So, if you expect the unexpected, then when these things happen, if in advance you've said the unexpected is going to happen, I can't predict what it was. Some things you can predict. I'll give you an example. We bought a house a little over 8 years ago. It wasn't just a house. It was a property. We had been living in a normal house with, you know, in a cul-de-sac.
Jim Daly: I can tell you really like this place.
Valerie Burton: It's wonderful. It is absolutely
Jim Daly: It's a project. I can hear. It's a project.
Valerie Burton: It's a project. So, because it's a project, okay, and my husband Jeff and I I'd say we're both visionaries if that means we're very optimistic.
Jim Daly: Right. Exactly.
Valerie Burton: So, when we bought it, Jeff was still flying commercially. Like I mean, it's like, okay, you're gone 2 weeks a month. We've got acreage. We've got all this stuff and the house was, you know, 40 years old. So, we were renovating. There was always something going wrong. And so, after a while, after about a year and a half, it's like, maybe we should move. And this would happen like once a year until I was writing this book. And I realized I keep my husband, he's he's like, yeah, okay, he's very laid back. I am like, I'm tired of these things. And then I said, but if I expect the unexpected, if I expect that yes, there's going to be some fences that need mending or, you know, maybe we're going to have to replace some thing in the house and that should every year there's going to be something and it's going to be something big. So, let's have the expect the unexpected fund, right? That it it's no surprise, right? It happens all the time.
Jim Daly: Yeah, septic tank.
Valerie Burton: Septic. We've replaced the septic tank. We've replaced multiple HVAC units. We've had all kinds of things happen.
Jim Daly: I knew I knew that would be on your list.
Valerie Burton: And now, when it happens, rather than I might at first go, uh, but then I go, oh, this is part of the unexpected.
Jim Daly: Yeah.
Valerie Burton: And this place has been such a blessing and it's realized some dreams both of us had and we've been able to host family reunions and it's lovely. It's wonderful. It's a blessing. But it's not a cakewalk. There are things that happen we don't expect. And it's completely lowered my stress level. And I'm not talking about moving.
Jim Daly: Yeah, that's good. That's good.
Valerie Burton: Yeah.
John Fuller: Well, Valerie Burton is our guest today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly and we're so enjoying the conversation. Her book is called Rules of Resilience, 10 Ways Successful People Get Better, Wiser, and Stronger. And I will encourage you to stop by our website to get a copy of the book at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast.
Jim Daly: Valerie, let's move to vision. This one can get pardon the pun, a little blurry. I didn't think of that until I just said it. But but vision for people, like what should my vision be? We talk about mission statement, vision statement. So, in the context of resiliency, what what does it mean to have vision for something?
Valerie Burton: Your vision is a tool. So, if your vision is clear and I would say from a the standpoint as a believer, you're asking God, what's your vision for me? Where am I headed? What is that endpoint look like? And it should pull you forward. So, the rule is focus on the vision, not the obstacle. Gives you that perspective.
Jim Daly: It might be too personal and just tell me we can move on, but what what are elements of that that were important to you? What again, I'm I'm sorry. I just need the practical tools, a vision statement for my marriage. You could tell how Jean might get frustrated here. Like what are you talking about, Jean? What what are those elements look like? What you know, I want to be happy. I want to be joyful. I want to love you. I want to be committed to you.
Valerie Burton: Yeah. Can I read part of my vision statement from the book?
Jim Daly: Of course.
Valerie Burton: Part of my vision manifesto. So, it's unique to you, but what you want to be doing is writing in the present tense what vision looks like uh, for you, what ideally you want to be doing in your everyday life. And when you read in the present tense, it does something to your brain because you're saying this isn't what I'm going to do.
Jim Daly: It's what I am.
Valerie Burton: It's what I am. And so, I I've even like actually recorded myself reading my vision manifesto and I listen while I'm on the elliptical or taking a walk. And sometimes what it does
Jim Daly: Good for you.
Valerie Burton: is I might be dealing with the challenge in that moment. When I read this, it reminds me of who I want to be. So, I'll read mine for my relationships. I am kind. I am gentle. I am loved and I am loving. I'm supported. People's lives are better when they cross paths with me. I allow others to be responsible for their choices and me only for mine. My approach to relationships is healthy, peaceful, and reciprocal. My marriage is joyful, unified, and romantic.
Jim Daly: And the question is what is the balance for Christians between pursuing their vision and accepting God's will for their life?
Valerie Burton: So, I think be content in all things is not the same as be happy about it.
Jim Daly: That's right.
Valerie Burton: So, I think of Jesus's words specifically in this world, you will have tribulation. Cheer up.
Jim Daly: Cheer up. Cheer up.
Valerie Burton: Cheer up. What do you mean cheer up in tribulation? So, there is a an acceptance of the things you don't control. So, this goes back to another rule, might be my favorite rule. Control the controllable, except the rest.
Jim Daly: Yeah.
Valerie Burton: Control the controllable so we know this is a psychological concept of internal locus of control. The people who are most resilient and most successful have an internal locus of control when they're dealing with challenges, they ask what do I have control over? I do have control over my attitude. I do have control over my prayer life. I have control over certain things that I can do or choose not to do. And they let go of the things they don't control. Whether this is, you know, you dealing with a a boss or an organization where things are shifting, this could be the things going on in the world. You don't have control over what other people do.
Jim Daly: Yeah.
Valerie Burton: That doesn't mean except the rest doesn't mean that I approve of the rest. It means I look at it and I realize I'm not in control of everything.
Jim Daly: You know, you know, it's so true. And one of those other common things that we say is woof, that person really has low self-awareness. You don't want to be that person. People are saying that about. I'll give you an example and you know, again, I mean this for constructive purpose, but I remember in my late 20s, Jean and I were already married and I had a good friend who um, was lamenting that he had he he didn't have a girlfriend and how badly he wanted to be married. But I've given it over to the Lord and I knew he had it. You could just hear it in everything he was saying. It was, you know, and and he was aiming quite high for the type of girlfriend he would like. First of all, beautiful, you know, and then all the other attributes. And I, you know, I was trying to be a good friend and I just said to this person, I said his name and I said, it doesn't sound like to me you've given it over. And it really, I could tell it was an arrow, but I it's it was that lack of self-awareness I was sensing like, bro, come on, you're saying you've given it up and given it to the Lord, but you haven't. And that's just an application of how you know, real world circumstances work. You could probably share examples of that, but to speak to that awareness issue inside your heart and inside your relationship with Christ and then with those right around you, the need to be aware of what you say and what you do need to line up.
Valerie Burton: Yeah. So, um, having what I call it thought awareness, being aware of what you're saying to yourself about your circumstances, but also being aware of where you may have an opportunity to to grow. I call these growth gaps. So, take your friend, for example, wanting to get married. I in in the book I would describe that as a performance goal. That's something very measurable. You have the girlfriend and not have the girlfriend, right? Um, but every goal that we have that's a performance goal, that's measurable, we need a growth goal to go with it because there's a reason we haven't reached the goal already. So, how will you need to grow in order to get to where you want to go? You may need to grow in your faith. You may need to grow in your trust of God. You may need to grow in your communication. You don't communicate well and you're throwing people off. So, understanding what's the growth goal that goes with this performance goal?
Jim Daly: And Valerie, let me ask this question. This might be the most important question I've asked during our entire time. I first have an image and then the question. The image is being on a riverbank wanting to be on the other side, but there's no bridge. There's no way to get there. And that person you're asking the right questions. You're saying the right things. That is the building of the bridge to that other side. But they're standing there perilously, incapable of asking themselves those questions. How do you go from that paralyzed moment of I've got something my the problem might be me.
Valerie Burton: Yes. This was my question as I was at that bridge, right? At 36, divorced with no kids. And knowing that was still my dream, it was very scary to hope for it.
Jim Daly: Wow, there's a lot of women and men in that spot.
Valerie Burton: So, you you can have something you want and you won't admit it because you're so afraid you're going to be disappointed. Am I kidding myself? Should I keep hoping for this? But you know the definition of faith in Hebrews 11:1, faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen.
Jim Daly: Yeah.
Valerie Burton: The very definition of faith is that you have to be hoping and sometimes hoping is the scariest thing you can do because you're so afraid you won't get it. And when you choose to help my my thought was not only that I would walk through that fire that was so hard and it would not consume me. But I decided I will be better and not bitter. And that became a coaching question.
Jim Daly: Wow.
Valerie Burton: How could I be better? That's where my hope went. So, from a practical standpoint, I started looking for people that were better on the other side of a divorce. And I was like, is that possible? Well, if it's possible, that's what I want because I sure don't want to be worse and I definitely don't want to be bitter and I definitely don't want to close my heart to love and to what God's put in my heart. So, that became my learning. And so, I think opening yourself to hearing others' stories of resilience and what can I learn from that is a big piece of the puzzle.
Jim Daly: Yeah. You know, when you look at scripture, there's so many stories of the empathetic human being, believer or non-believer. I mean the biblical stories are full of people that just rest in their bad place. They don't become motivated to go to a better place with the Lord. Why are we wired like that? Or why why are we defaulting to that? It is irrational to stay in a bad place.
Valerie Burton: It can feel easier.
Jim Daly: Is that it? It's just more comfortable?
Valerie Burton: Hope requires discomfort.
Jim Daly: Hm.
Valerie Burton: Requires you to get out of your comfort zone. And so, it can be easier to stop hoping, to say, I thought God said I could have marriage. I I thought he could heal in this area. I thought we could get out of debt and maybe eventually be in a better place financially, but I don't see it happening yet. And why do I keep putting forth the effort? When you stop hoping, you start settling.
Jim Daly: Yeah. Yeah.
Valerie Burton: And so, I think that's what happens in settling. You're not happy about settling.
Jim Daly: Yeah.
Valerie Burton: But it's more comfortable.
Jim Daly: You know what's interesting, you look at uh, prison or during war, you look at prisoners of war. One of the things psychologically enemy combatants do is to try to take hope away, to put you into despair. I mean it's a real recognition spiritually of what the enemy is trying to do, to steal, kill, and destroy.
Valerie Burton: Yes.
Jim Daly: He's trying to remove any sense of hope because hope is a characteristic of God.
Valerie Burton: Yes.
Jim Daly: And you remove that from the human spirit, we become just not healthy.
Valerie Burton: And hope is also a requirement of resilience.
Jim Daly: Hm.
Valerie Burton: It's that little that that little light that says it could get better or I could find a way to weather this, right? I could find my contentment. I'm not content right now. Maybe, you know, sometimes we're in circumstances that are not going to change. But we have to find a way to be able to show up in that and learn how to be okay.
Jim Daly: Lord, what can I learn here in this moment?
Valerie Burton: Yeah. Yeah. And And the hope that we could somehow be okay. That's still hope. Yeah.
Jim Daly: And that's hope. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. Valerie, this has been terrific. I could just keep going. It's like sitting in the living room and having a life discussion here. I could see why you're so good at coaching and corporations pull you in to help people think differently about how to get around this obstacle or So, thank you so much for your great book, Rules of Resilience, 10 Ways Successful People Get Better, Wiser, and Stronger. It includes many more insights that we didn't cover today. We have copies for you here at Focus on the Family. When you make a gift of any amount, we'll send you a copy as our way of saying thank you for supporting the ministry and helping other families. We are a nonprofit ministry, so your donations go straight into ministry to help people like Anne. She is a stay-at-home mom of three teenagers. She wrote in and told us this. I listen almost daily to your broadcasts. The variety of your shows provides guidance and encouragement to me as a mom and wife, but also as a Christian. God is really working through this ministry. So, partner with us and be part of what God is doing. He sees it. He sees you give that gift and then it accrues to your account in heaven. Let's go save people. That's a great thing to do. And if today's program impacted you because you're struggling with some heavy challenges, we have caring Christian counselors here for you. It's absolutely free to get that initial consultation and they'll give you some next steps to grow and find healing.
John Fuller: Yeah, you can set up a counseling consultation or donate and get your copy of the book when you call 800 the letter A and the word family. Or look for details at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast. And thanks for listening to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller inviting you back next time as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ.