Becoming more resilient
Resilience is what gives people the psychological strength to cope with the stresses we all experience in life. It is the mental reservoir of strength that people are able to call on in times of need to carry them through, whatever it is they are experiencing from the small stuff to the big stuff, without falling apart.
We all experience anxiety and stress throughout our lives with the levels of intensity fluctuating. When we have greater resilience it's not that we don't experience the same stresses but it's how we react to stress, approach stress and allow stress to affect us, which changes.
Psychologists believe that resilient individuals are better able to handle adversity and rebuild their lives after a struggle.
Someone who demonstrates resilience is someone who…
Has high emotional intelligence and doesn’t get swept away by their emotions.
Who can gain clarity over things and respond with awareness.
Who see’s the good in the moment and in people.
Who have a positive outlook on life and doesn’t get trapped in blaming or victim mode.
Who’s able to reframe thoughts and train their inner voice to be their friend.
Hold positive views of themselves and believe in themselves.
Are connected to their core and act from their core values.
Are problem solvers and are able to see things from different perspectives.
Are good listeners and good communicators.
See’s challenges as an opportunity to learn and grow.
Most likely you embody a lot of these qualities already or sometimes you embody them and sometimes you don’t. The good news is we can learn to be more resilient!
10 practices to help you be more resilient
Mindfulness / meditation - Mindfulness and meditation based practices helps us to be more aware of our thoughts and ourselves. Cultivating greater self-awareness is KEY to resilience as we start to find the ‘sacred pause’ between the stimulus and our response.
Breath practices - learning how to utilise your breath is powerful as when you are feeling triggered by something you can use your breath to down regulate and shift your nervous system from a stressed out state to one of greater coherency. This gives us more resilience to respond from our centre.
Investigating you emotions - instead of unconsciously reacting when a strong emotions comes in, pause, and investigate the emotion. Notice how the emotion feels in your body. Begin to label the emotion. What colour it is, intensity, where you can feel it. This brings the rational part of our brain back online. Notice the story you are telling yourself behind the emotion. Notice what is true and what you’re catastrophizing.
Mastering your mind - give up all negative self-talk! Master your inner voice and begin to speak to yourself like a best friend. Use thought monitoring exercises - read blog post on this here.
Abundance - with a strong negative bias we are programmed to notice what is lacking in our life. Consciously choose to see through the lens of abundance rather than lack and scarcity.
Widen your lens - widen your lens of perception so you’re seeing things from all perspectives. This helps us be more fluid with our thoughts and less rigid in our perspective.
See The Good - train yourself to see the good in life. To see the good in others, to see the good in yourself and to see the good in the moment. It’s too easy to discount the good and just notice what isn’t meeting your expectation.
Journalling - when we write stuff down and ask ourselves powerful questions we can see ourselves beyond our habitual reactions and we begin to forge new pathways in our brain.
Appreciate - appreciate what you have. Appreciate the journey. Appreciate the silver linings. Flex this muscle as much as you can! Appreciation is as much of an inner feeling as it is thoughts in the mind, if not more!
Get grounded - get in your body and ground your energy. In a world that is so ungrounded we need this more than ever to be more resilient and respond from a greater place of calm.
You could try the below two practices on my yoga & meditation channel to help you cultivate greater resilience.