Planting Resilience: Self Practice

Photo by Devi Puspita Amartha Yahya on Unsplash

Being in lockdown feels a bit like hibernating, deep under the earth through one really weird spring. But in that enclosed dark, new life can grow, new habits can be cultivated. It's time to come back better than you left. Adding Resilience skills to your coping praxis can help with that. Garden your mind, body and soul.

When you’re in the Resilience zone, imagine you’re a bit like a green traffic light – dealing with stuff is pretty easy. But it doesn’t take much to take a person out of the zone to red. This is why coping strategies can help us – it’s a bit like applying emotional first-aid.

One technique is emotional hygiene. Guy Winch has a good video on it:

Another therapy is to embody a ‘Growth Mind-set’. Basically this means that Resilience is something we can all develop- as Chris Johnstone says it’s something we do, it’s an action-state. Watch Carol Dweck's TED talk on this:

There’s also a way to work with five senses. There’s a mindful NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) checkin that helps me, to buffer storms with gentle awareness. It allows me to stay PRESENT. I ask myself in that moment of panic (and we’re in a panic-demic) these senses-based reflections:

What am I SEEING around me?

 What am I HEARING around me?

What am I SMELLING right now?

 What am I TASTING?

What am I FEELING in my whole body?

The self-help strategies can compliment other methods you might already be using such as soothing mindfulness, practicing compassion, developing a problem solving attitude, practicing acceptance and patience, thinking creatively and coming from a place of deep gratitude to minimise anxiety. We need to always re-frame the struggle into a positive, by asking ourselves something useful such as “what’s my anxiety/depression/fear motivating me to fix here?’

I hope these help at this chaotic uncertain time. In a future post I’ll share more of my favourite methods (all of these are learnt from the Chris Johnstone’s training) such as: The Spider Diagram, Storyboarding and Boat & Water Level Mapping.

Keep your head in Covid-times, practice resilience! Let new shoots of life grow.

<1/12: This is day 1 of my 21 Days of Soul Writing Therapy>