Did you ever feel like your "get-up-and-go" got up and deserted you? Has a stressful situation left you feeling drained and unmotivated to perform simplest tasks? Most of us have experienced times of stress followed by fatigue. The resiliency to work, play, and enjoy life after stressful times requires enough reserve energy to bounce back.

Bruce Lee said that "… stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while bamboo or willow survives by bending with wind." Flexibility is indeed one key to resiliency. Those bamboo trees, in bending one direction, build potential energy to bounce back. However, human minds and bodies are not made of bamboo. We might expend more energy while bending under stress than we have in reserve. We can easily break before we bounce. Depleted energy results in career burn out, depression, and physical illness. Relationships suffer. Periods of intense apathy can steal much of joy in living. Springing back after a stressful time requires a storehouse of reserve energy. How can we generate and conserve enough energy to keep us resilient in times of crisis or stress?

Choose Equanimity

Webster defines equanimity as a habit of mind that is only rarely disturbed under great strain. Equanimity is practice of right disposition, stability, and balance.

Energy reserves can be replenished daily through discipline of balance. Balance provides flexibility, a quality essential for responding in positive ways to events in all of major life areas. How can we begin achieving equanimity and balance?

Do Something Enjoyable Every Day Balance includes taking time daily for relaxation and participation in activities that we enjoy. What do you like to do? Take a sheet of paper or open a text file on your computer now, and write ten things that you love most. Then pick one of those things and do it today.

A wise friend once told me that she kept a happy book. It contained hundreds of things she loved most -- things that made her smile, laugh and daydream. Each day, she made sure she did a few of things in her happy book. This became a great way to replenish energy consumed during daily living.

Maintain Total Wellness

Wellness is an actively sought state of health. It includes spiritual, mental and physical well-being. We can perform better under pressure, recover from setbacks, and minimize resiliency fatigue by strengthening our spirits, minds and bodies.

I hear most amazing stories, as an EQ coach (and see and hear things when I’m out and about) that corroborate latest surveys showing that majority of US citizens are concerned about growing rudeness in America.

One woman’s boss considers it appropriate to strip down to his boxer shorts once business day has begun.

In another office, senior partner has a brain tumor, and is incontinent, and doesn’t care. “For what I pay them,” he snarls, “they can watch me pee my pants.”

I “dine” in a booth at a restaurant and am assaulted by kindergartner in booth behind me, who screams, throws food, and keeps trying to leg his way over to my side.

My friend Anita has started a new job. The woman in cubby next to her burns scented candles and plays loud music on her radio. When asked to cease and desist, she claims seniority.

I receive a receipt from a fast food restaurant, and for some odd reason actually read it. There it is: “F*** you for eating at XXX” it says across top, a manager’s nightmare. I am not making that up!

I move into audience at a cruise presentation I’m giving, and sit down to work with a gentleman. He tells me he’s too “sexually turned on (by moi?)” to concentrate.

And then there’s cell phone abuse, and retail clerk ‘attitude.’

WHAT IS RUDENESS? Rudeness is something upsetting. It’s something that assaults our “space.” We can’t escape from sight of other people, nor their odors, their noises, nor, should it come to that, their bodies or parts thereof. As they say in Supreme Court, “your right to swing your arm ends at end of my nose.”

But there are other things more frequent and more invasive than fisticuffs, and our personal “space” extends beyond our noses, inches to yards depending upon your culture.

IT IS BRAIN SCIENCE Now, since I’m an EQ coach, let’s do a little brain science here. We “are” our emotions, which come from our brains. We like to feel good, and we hate to feel bad. We don’t like to get angry; we like to be soothed. We hate insults; we adore compliments. We like to be able to concentrate and think. We don’t like to be disturbed and interrupted. A single noise at too high a decibel level can render us immediately deaf, but too much time in a sensory deprivation chamber drives us nuts. Like Goldilocks, we don’t want too cold or too hot; we like it to be “just right.”

We like our brain waves around beta and alpha. Beta is normal waking consciousness, associated with concentration, arousal, alertness and cognition. However, at higher levels, it’s associated with anxiety. Too much arousal is not a good thing.

When we can relax into alpha range, we feel really good. This is “twilight” state between sleeping and waking. It’s relaxed focus at its higher levels, and causes increase in serotonin production – “feel good” chemical. This is when you stare at a sunset, play with baby, listen to beautiful music, or get a massage. (The other two are theta (dreaming sleep) and delta (dreamless sleep).

Our optimal state is just going about our business, in pleasant surroundings. Rudeness is anything that jars us; anything that puts us into too high a state of arousal. It is IDEAL that we could stay in equilibrium. It is RUDENESS to be thrust out of it.

Being RUDE isn’t just saying certain words, it’s failing on any number of levels to RESPECT other person – their thoughts, feelings, body, and soul.

What assaults us most are things that go directly to reptilian brain – things that trigger sex or aggression. There you are quietly enjoying your bagel and coffee and someone shoves past you, saying “Move it ass****” and you start churning stomach acid, yes?

Rudeness is a violation of other person’s sensibilities, but line is blurred and varies. It’s like your mom told you about sex – it’s not that you can’t do it, it’s when, where, how, and with whom.

LEARN HOW TO BEHAVE IN PUBLIC Studying Emotional Intelligence with an EQ coach can help you determine what’s appropriate and what isn’t. There are things appropriate to intimate relationships that don’t work in work place, and things that are appropriate in private, that are not appropriate in public. As saying goes, “We never grow up, we just learn how to behave in public.” It’s okay to scratch where it itches when you’re home alone. When you do it in front of me, in a store, it’s rude. The same act, too, may be OK in another culture or country. Pay attention!

Be particularly respectful of things we can’t defend ourselves against. Your WORDS, we can defend against – tell you to stop, counter, plug our ears, or leave. Your body odor, in an elevator? There isn’t much we can do, and it’s offensive. Be particularly mindful in forced situations (if you share an office for instance) and of those who are helpless (is it just “rude” to smoke in car with a toddler?) and of those you can assault most because you live with them (like your marital partner).