One of the things I have been doing over the last couple of years is design and deliver workshops on all aspect of the Genki Journey, including resilience, to private and corporate audiences. This has been particularly topical in recent times.
Let’s define resilience. One of the dictionary definitions is: ‘The ability to bounce back after a setback’. When I ask my audiences what resilience means to them, the following comes up: ‘adaptability’, ‘strength’, ‘recovery’, ‘ability to deal with change’.
As a bit of fun, I like to play this clip from one of the Rocky films, where Rocky is lecturing his son on resilience and says: ‘It ain’t about how hard you can hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and still keep moving forward.’ To me, this is a somewhat outdated way of looking at resilience.
We want to be able to fight our own fight, roll with the punches, slip and weave and be clear on the reasons why we are still in the fight, why we still ‘keep coming forward’. We want to be self-aware enough to choose our actions and nurture ourselves during the hard times. Whenever possible, we want to turn up to the fight having trained and prepared for it.
In addition to becoming resilient by enduring hardship or challenging circumstances, I believe we can cultivate resilience through consistent practices of self-care and self-knowledge. Ultimately, we are aiming for self-mastery – the ability to step back from our automatically conditioned patterns and respond flexibly and courageously in a challenging situation.
Self-care boils down to looking after ourselves physically through enough sleep, staying hydrated, eating healthily and leading an active lifestyle. Most people know the things that they could be doing to improve their self-care. The question is: If you know what you should be doing, are you actually doing it? If not, then why not?
Self-knowledge in my mind is about being clear on what matters to us, being aware of our internal goings on (our thinking and our emotions), and cultivating mindset practices to prepare us for uncertainty and challenges.
Here are some of the practices we can adopt to cultivate self-knowledge:
We can practice gratitude, which has positive effects on our moods and brains and contributes to overall increased happiness. We can reflect on small things we are grateful for each day. We can make a list of 20-30 things we are grateful for and keep that list handy so we can refer to it regularly.
We can keep a notebook with our progresses and successes, even small ones, to remind ourselves of how far we have come in times when there seems to be so far to go and so much left undone.
It is essential that we periodically do the reflection and deep work that is required in order to connect with our values, the guiding principles in our lives about who we want to be, how we want to turn up and the mark we want to leave in the world. Being clear on our values helps us make decisions and take action with more clarity and confidence. If you would like a copy of my Values Workbook, please drop me an email at eva@genkiproject.com.au .
We should mentally prepare ourselves for uncertain times. We need to keep in mind that even if we turn up as our best selves, in alignment with our values, we have no control over the ultimate outcome of a situation or the duration of an adverse event. When we drop expectations about how things turn out, we are also reducing the likelihood of being disappointed if others do not do what we would have ideally liked them to do. We only have control over our own actions, and no one else’s.
In circumstances where we can foresee the obstacles (internal or external) we are likely to encounter, we can visualise ourselves overcoming those obstacles. Note, this is not the same as catastrophising about imaginary things. This is about realistic preparation, a Plan B, so we can still stay true to ourselves when we encounter a curveball.
We can become aware of our internal dialogue and our emotions so that we can notice if we are getting ‘hooked’ by unhelpful thinking or letting difficult emotions get in the way of doing what is important to us. We can practice and develop the skills that allow us to manage our thoughts and feelings and navigate our internal weather in a way that takes us closer to what matters in life and the kind of person we want to be.
There is so much more to write about this, however in the mean time you can refer to my articles on The Power of Self-Reflection and Befriending Your Emotions.
Resilience can be forged through the fires of challenge and misfortune, and we can also cultivate it through self-care and self-knowledge. We can look after ourselves physically, mentally and emotionally in order to strengthen our bodies, minds and have the emotional management skills to help us through difficult times.
I would love your thoughts on how we can cultivate resilience. Get in touch by email eva@genkiproject.com.au or find us on Facebook and Instagram.
Yours in the pursuit of Genki,
Eva