Are you resilient? Our lives are full of challenges and change, many unexpected. Being resilient is vital to navigating through the noise, growing in the midst, and not wasting time recovering from “what life throws at you”. We may not be able to choose how life unfolds, yet we can certainly choose what to do with it. In this vlog, I offer four resilience strategies to cultivate it in your life. From understanding your current state to connecting with others, these insights will guide you in bouncing back from setbacks with strength and grace. Join me to gain new insights in bouncing back.
I’m so excited you’ve joined me to talk about resilience. So first, let’s level set what resilience is. It’s a word that’s bantered about quite a bit these days, being resilient or having resilience. So I’m going to go with the old definition of resilience, and we’re going to start there. So resilience is the ability to recover quickly from illness, change, misfortune. It’s also the property of a material that enables it to resume its original shape or position after being bent, stretched, or compressed, or a synonym is elasticity. So we are going to talk about how to be more resilient, more flexible, more elastic, to bounce back from things that happen in So it could be a thing in your business. It could be a personal thing. It could be something that just comes out of left field, all of these things. And the benefit of becoming more resilient is that we have the opportunity to enjoy the ride. It also gives us the opportunity when we know how to bounce back from things, then we’re not We’re so fearful about taking risks, making a mistake, going outside our comfort zones. So we’re going to look at four ways to become more resilient today.
The first one is know where you are. So often when we have something that affects us or something that comes in, that our foundation gets shaken in some way. Often, what will happen is we’ll go into a reaction. We’ll go into fight, flight, freeze. Our whole body will say, Okay, something’s being threatened. And so now I’m going to react. And the way that our brains have evolved, our brains still react in a very binary way, meaning if it senses that there’s a threat, it’s going to react all the way to the extreme because there is no small reaction, medium reaction. Our brains are still wired in the way that we’re still on the tundra, and a bear or a sabre-tooth tiger is chasing us. So when there’s a threat, our reaction can often be out of proportion to what’s going on. Because in our current life, we have threats all the time, what we perceive as threats. We have all these inputs coming in so many more than when we were living in tribal villages or in different communities only a couple of thousand years ago. So I’ll get back to this. Know where you are.
This It means come back into yourself. And it can be as simple as acknowledging that there’s something that is threatening you. It feels like a threat that your body is doing. Your brain has told your body to go on high alert, and you do have a choice. You have the ability to make decisions that are different. So notice that you are in You can fight, fight or freeze, and you can breathe. You can do what I’m doing right now, right? You can come back to where you are, be where your feet are, And this is actually resourcing to bring your physical body back down, back to the present, because 99.99 99% of the time, this threat that has just come in or this thing that has rocked our foundation, a mistake, a failure, a comment, all this stuff, it’s not life-threatening. But our body physiologically is, or physically is reacting as if it is. So the awareness of that and the choice to take a deep breath, feel where you are in the world, know that you have the option to do that. Know where you are. Okay, I’m in. This is being recorded on a Wednesday.
I’m in Wednesday in the afternoon. Okay, this doesn’t dismiss it. It’s not trying to push it away and ignore it, but it’s allowing you to bring yourself into a place to make better decisions about just what happened, to make choices, to respond, instead of being in this reaction and then trying to make those decisions. Because physiologically, like I said, when you’re in fight, flight, or freeze, you’re not properly resourced to make the most aligned decision. So know where you are. Next one. Know who you are. And this really means this is a conversation with yourself yourself. We do some identity work in programs that I offer. This is really taking a look at who you are. This is being curated Curious. For example, say you get a comment that’s not very flattering in a social feed, or or on the phone or in an email that somewhere it’s coming to you or in a workplace environment. Instead of immediately taking that on and saying, oh, my gosh, I am that thing, This is an example of know who you are, meaning you can ask yourself, is that true? Is there some truth to the comment?
Is there something I need to do? This again brings you back into yourself and allows you to reflect versus taking it on and then sometimes acting it out. This can be in a professional setting. It can also be in a personal setting. One of the most powerful questions we can ask ourselves is, give ourselves the time to pause and ask, Is this true? And listen. The next one. Ask great questions. We have this wonderful thing, this organ on top of our head, this brain, that is always on the search, whether we like it or not. We have this thing called a reticular activation system that is looking out, looking for answers, whether we like it or not, subconsciously. So when I say ask great questions, for example, say you launch something and it doesn’t go well. A great question you can ask yourself is, what would it look like if it did go well? Something to look at. What are the questions I need to ask the people I’m trying to serve to see if it’s aligned. We can ask our brain questions to search for solution because often by default, It is searching for problem.
We’re always looking at… Our brain is trying to keep us safe, so it can be set out on evidence that’s not really beneficial to us. So ask great questions. Fill your mind with, How could I have done this different? Could I have done this different? Is there something for me to do here? Number four, don’t do it alone. Our most important need is connection, to be part of a tribe. That is how we’re wired. The biggest threat when we go into fight, flight, or freeze, go into reaction, when you feel that when something happens, It’s for two reasons. It’s either our social status is being threatened or we perceive that our social status is being threatened as we’re part of this group, whatever groups we’re part of, or our sense of belonging is being threatened. These are the two things that set our mind off, our brain off into, oh, my gosh, I have to do something. So just being aware of that is we’re wired to be in community. We’re also how we grow and how we learn is to be able to reflect what’s going on with us to somebody else. Because we can’t, Confucia says, We cannot fix a broken mind with a broken mind.
I’m paraphrasing, but that’s the gist. And so if you are experiencing something that you’re looking to bounce back from, to grow through, to get with somebody who’s had the experience or a group that can support you where you are. It’s so important not to do it alone. So if you have something that you’re going through and you need to reach out, you can contact me, get on a call. We can talk about it and use your resources, use the communities that you’re part of. Often, when there is a big setback, if there’s something to be resilient about, often when we do it in a vacuum, all of a sudden, the issue is something that nobody else has ever experienced. And most of the time, almost all of the time, maybe all of the time, that’s not true. So when we can get in community and be supported and even just get it out of just running in our mind and out on the table, this can help us bounce back and be more flexible in the challenges and also in the day to day. Because remember, our brains do not discriminate. Something that feels like a threat to my belonging that’s very minor, my body, my brain, by default, is going to react in the same way than if it was life-threatening.
So I hope these awarenesses really get you thinking and being curious about what you can do in this framework to become more resilient so that you can continue to grow and take risks without just the fear of what may or may not happen. This was of service to you, and I’ll see you next time.
