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The Path to Resilience Journaling Challenge

by | Jan 12, 2021 | Resilience | 0 comments

I am formally inviting you (yes you!) on a Path to Resilience Journaling adventure.  I am sharing our first week of the Path to Resilience journaling blog with everyone.  If you would like to receive journaling prompts for future weeks (it is a sixty-day challenge), you can sign up for the challenge here.

Before you begin this journaling challenge, I invite you to consider your “why.”  Why would you want to go on a two-month-long journaling adventure?  What would you like to have more of in your life?  Joy, connection, freedom, strength, hope, well-being?  If you feel so moved, make a list of what you would like to invite more of into your life.  You could use this list of values from NVC to get some ideas.   If you have a moment, go ahead and do this now.

If you have made a list of good things that you would like to invite into your life, this can be your “why.” If you are not up for making a list of good things right now, you can borrow my reason to begin this adventure: following the tips and journaling prompts from the Path to Resilience has helped me to become the best version of myself.

Now…on to week one of our journaling challenge.   On week one of the Path to Resilience, we begin by focusing on mindfulness and our emotions.  As James Baldwin famously said:

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it’s faced.”

Emotions deeply affect the way that we experience life.  And depending on how we relate to our emotions, we will have more or less well-being.  Feel free to click here to watch a two minute video if you would like to hear me explore the concept of well-being as it relates to mindfulness and integration.

In order to experience well-being, we need to be able to integrate our emotions, life experiences, and the various parts of our brain.  The journaling practice for week one helps us to name our emotions so that we can integrate them.   Additionally, the journaling activity for week one includes a hint of gratitude (the science of the inclusion of gratitude is touched on in the video recording below).

So, our adventure begins with a little gratitude and a lot of awareness. Click on the three-minute video below to listen to me explain the week 1 journaling challenge, or if you prefer, you can continue reading below the video.  Be sure to not just listen to the video/read about the journaling challenge, but also try what is suggested.  We have something called “experience-dependent neuroplasticity,” which means that what changes our brain is experience rather than knowledge.

Our journaling prompt begins each day with the phrase, “Today I am grateful for awareness…..”  As the weeks progress, you will be invited to focus on different aspects of your life experience, but for week one we focus on our emotions.

For week one, all that you need to do is pause to remember your “why,” and then write down, “Today I am grateful for awareness…” at the top of a blank sheet of paper.  Go ahead and do this now.  Pause. Now, write down three emotions that you feel and the corresponding trigger (see above example).  Please be sure that at least one of the emotions is negative.  We need to integrate both negative and positive experiences, which means that it is important to be aware of and name both positive and negative emotions.

Please note that when we say that we are grateful for awareness, we are not saying that we are grateful for the things that have caused difficult emotions.  We are simply stating that we are grateful for an awareness of our feelings.  If you don’t feel authentically grateful for an awareness of your emotions, you can denote that as well (I touch on this in the above video).

For week one, this is all that is asked of you each day:  1) Remember your “why” 2) Write “Today I am grateful for awareness….” 3) Write down three emotions that you are feeling in response to situations in your life.  If you like, you could follow up your journaling with a mindful awareness practice such as feeling the soles of your feet, or a kindness practice such as kind wishes. 

If you would like to receive weekly journaling on the Path to Resilience blog and guided practices for the sixty-day challenge, you can sign up for no cost using this link.

If you would like to learn more about the Path to Resilience training you can click here.

I wish you peace, joy, and integration.

Resilience Toolkit

by | Aug 24, 2020 | Resilience | 0 comments

A friend of mine recently sent me an article from the New York Times entitled, Is Resilience Overrated?  As I read the article, I reflected on the many ways that people define resilience.  I looked up the word resilience and found this definition: “the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.” 

Yes, I thought, if that is how one defines resilience, I can see where a person might think that resiliency is overrated.

I agree that the ability to bounce back from adversity is a hallmark of resilience, but the strategies that one uses to bounce back can make the difference between resilience feeling fatiguing and resilience being uplifting.  I consider myself to be a very resilient person, but the word “toughness” is not part of my working definition of the word.

Long-term resilience involves being able to integrate difficult experiences and then respond skillfully.  But just how, you might ask, does one do that?

To begin, I would like to talk about what resilience is not.  Truthfully, when adversity hits, I oftentimes try my “not resilient” strategies first. Here is what “not resilience” looks like for me: Telling myself there is no problem.  Compulsively doing things that distract me from the problem.  Trying to look on the bright side of things to avoid feeling difficult feelings.  Repeat.  When I experience something challenging in my life, I oftentimes practice “not resilience” until I become too anxious or too tired to continue.  Then, I surrender to reality and turn toward my resiliency toolkit.

My resilience toolkit includes the following:

        1. Talking with friends
        2. Journaling
        3. Getting angry and sad and scared and messy
        4. Cloaking myself with kindness and compassion
        5. Practicing yoga or exercising to get into my body and out of my head
        6. Spending time in nature
        7. Gathering resources
        8. Continuing to take steps forward, often with the support of friends
        9. Beginning to hope, take in the good, and see silver linings
        10. Experiencing another setback
        11. Repeat
        This resilience toolkit creates resilience that is both sustainable and uplifting.  It is something that I can go back to again and again when life gets messy and hard.  Setbacks in life are inevitable, and a supportive resilience toolkit cannot be overrated.

Calm Your Body to Calm Your Mind

by | Apr 27, 2020 | Mindfulness | 0 comments

“Not everything that is faced can be changed.  But nothing can be changed until it is faced.” -James Baldwin

We are in the midst of a pandemic.  Let’s imagine that you sit still to practice mindfulness – the simple art of non-judgmental awareness.  You observe your breathing.  You notice that your breathing is tight and that your body is tense.  You feel anxious.

What do you do next?  Do you continue to sit and observe?  Do you label your emotions?  Do you get up and do something else? What is a wise and compassionate response to an observation of a body and a mind filled with stress?

It can be a skillful choice to call a friend, journal, or go for a walk.  We might practice art, spend time in nature or dance.  It can also be a wonderful choice to practice yoga.  Yoga is an excellent way to calm the nervous system because it links the mind and the body together through the power of breath and movement.  When we intentionally slow down our bodies and our breathing, we often slow down and calm our mind. 

This story begins with an essential element—the power of observation. But what we do when we notice distress – whether we continue observing, try to ignore it, or take an action to intentionally calm our nervous system – is up to us.  Small positive choices can make a big difference over time.

Want to experiment with linking movement and breathing?  Notice how slow, intentional movements affect the state of your body and mind.

The Healing Power of AND

by | Apr 10, 2020 | Growing the Good, Resilience | 0 comments

If you are like me, you are on a roller coaster of feelings during this coronavirus time at home.  Sometimes, I momentarily forget about the virus while walking in nature or laughing with my kids, and then suddenly I remember once again. Hope, grief, sadness, joy and despair flicker in and out of my awareness.  I experience moments of awe at the way we are working together in community.  Other times I feel loneliness and worry about the physical and social isolation—both for myself and for others. 

During these challenging times, I remind myself again and again to create space for AND.  AND what? you might ask.  By AND, I mean allowing for both sadness and joy.  Loneliness and connection.  Despair and hope.  If we don’t create space for all of it, we run the risk of either anxiously clinging to positivity, or conversely, wallowing in despair.

Creating space for AND involves: A = Allowing the full range of emotions and becoming Aware of the present moment.  N = Nurturing—nurturing ourselves as we struggle, and nurturing a healthy mind that is also able to see what is good.  D = Discovering.  We can cultivate curiosity to move beyond our typical ways of responding and discover new and beautiful possibilities.  Allow, Nurture, and Discover (AND).

It’s not easy to open to all of our emotions.  Yoga, mindfulness, self-compassion and growing the good all help.  It also helps to journal and pick up the phone to call a friend to remember that we are not alone.  There are a lot of things that we cannot control in this situation, but practicing AND paves the way for a healthier emotional life and a more peaceful mind.

Creating Space for Grief

by | Mar 22, 2020 | Self-Compassion | 0 comments

When I learned that school had been canceled due to the coronavirus, I was more than a little shocked.  My default coping mode was to get busy and stay positive.  I also knew that I had to move my body and spend time in nature each day. 

Simultaneously, I became less diligent about my daily meditation practice.  Unconsciously, I think that I knew that if I sat still for long, grief and despair would catch up with me.  Anxiety mounted as I tried to stay busy, positive, and focused on service to others.

This past Saturday morning, I awoke at 5am, unable to fall back asleep.  I decided to spend the next couple of hours journaling, meditating, and doing mindful yoga.  The discomfort was immense.  I had a strong urge to get on my computer and start DOING SOMETHING.  But I disciplined myself to stay present until 7am.

An hour later while I was making breakfast for my children, I suddenly broke down sobbing.  I was crying because I felt so much empathy for all of the people struggling.  This situation is somewhat challenging for me, and I offered myself compassion for that.  Additionally, I am aware that there are many, many others who are suffering in big and small ways: people who are living alone and completely isolated from human touch, people who don’t have enough savings to cover their bills, people that might not have enough money to buy food, and people who are dying from this virus. 

My children came into the kitchen to check on me, and I told them that I was crying because this situation is sad.  It is really, really sad.  The three of us hugged one another and mourned together in the kitchen for a period of time.   I cried for a bit more, and then I went back to making pancakes.  I noticed that I felt markedly less anxious after my tears. 

During this pandemic, I am reminded that in addition to practicing gratitude, noticing what is good and being of service to others, we also need to create space to acknowledge and hold ourselves while we grieve.  This situation is incredibly sad, and it is healthy and natural to mourn during these times of collective pain and social distancing.  We can remember that we are not alone in our distress.  We can both grieve and rise together.