How Are You Building Resilience?
How do you build resilience?
Previously, I wrote about preventing burnout with the following tips (the first three are in Recognize and Prevent Burnout and the next four are in the Be Proactive to Prevent Burnout post):
Recognize your personal symptoms of overwhelm
Permit yourself to say no
Use your body to reduce tension in the moment
Recognize what drains and fills your energy
Notice your comfort, growth, and freak-out zones
Prioritize time to connect with those who support you
Pad your calendar to get the most out of travel and big events
Since writing the post, I’ve been tracking other ways I build resilience in the moment.
1. Repeat a mantra or phrase. Do you have a mantra or phrase you repeat to yourself when you are facing challenging situations?
My new thought is, “I am doing the best I can with the resources I have at the moment.” It’s helped me reframe situations in the present, things that happened in the past, and things others do or have done.
Next time you find yourself ruminating about a past experience, see how it feels to say, “I did the best I could with the resources I had at that moment.”
How does it feel for you?
2. Surf the situation by imagining gently moving over waves of discomfort. Ask yourself the following questions.
What am I thinking?
How am I feeling?
Where do I feel it in my body?
When have I encountered something similar and what did I do? In hindsight, what do I wish I did?
What am I assuming?
What story am I telling myself?
Look around you and find something that catches your eye. What is that object trying to tell you about the situation?
3. Move - We can often take a new perspective just by shifting our focus. Movement can help!
Stretch
Make the physical movement of pushing something away
Stand up
Take a bio break
Wash your hands (studies show you can “wipe the slate clean”*)
Do you use any of these techniques? What are some of your favorite ways to build resilience?
*Wiping the Slate Clean: Psychological Consequences of Physical Cleansing, Spike W. S. Lee, University of Toronto and Norbert Schwarz University of Southern California, October 2011Current Directions in Psychological Science 20(5):307-311, DOI:10.1177/0963721411422694.
