Ingredients to Build Resilience

I recently reviewed the Canadian Safety in Sport materials and through the course of the reading, I realized that the definition of maltreatment was all about perception, not intention. I suddenly perked up and became very concerned. If you have been following the posts, I have designed the premise of resolutions around the power of intention. In fact, it is the power of intention that will influence whether we feel positively by our actions or negatively. We are currently living in a world of The Anxious Generation - by Jonathan Haidt. 

Photo by Fabian Kleiser on Unsplash

According to the National Library of Medicine, the social impacts of Covid 19 has been, "​The COVID-19 pandemic crisis has caused widespread unrest in society and unprecedented changes in lifestyle, work and social interactions, and increasing social distance has severely affected human relations."

Bottomline... everyone is on a little higher alert. The sympathetic nervous system is more active than the parasympathetic system. When the sympathetic nervous system is active for a prolonged period of time, there can be an increase in anxiety and depression. All to say, we become less focused and have less energy (or capacity) to go out and face the world. 

Resilience is the ability to reduce the sympathetic nervous system response and to increase our capacity to face what is difficult. From the information on maltreatment to the information on bullying I have serious concerns that we are focusing too much on the problem of people mistreating people and not enough on how we handle the hard stuff. Don't get me wrong... I do not agree with maltreatment of others. BUT there will always going to be people who are mean and have negative intentions. Period. It is an impossible task to do anything about maltreatment until it has already happened. But as a society we can train people in resilience. We can offer people supports on how to apply skilled effort to protect themselves and their well being. We should as a society be interested in personal empowerment, not victimhood.

This is training people how to navigate challenge. We live in a world where we try to remove challenge and now folks like employers, coaches, or teachers who impose challenge can be considered as bullies or as mistreating their employees, their athletes, or learners. Whew... it is no wonder we are struggling and moving into safe/unsafe feelings. Our worlds are becoming smaller even though we share more than needs to be shared over social media and in our blogs and podcasts. 

Empower Yourself and Build Resilience

• Healthy lifestyle choices
  • Eat good foods
  • Sleep - get the 8 hours of sleep recommended
  • Exercise - sweat, get the heart rate up
• Healthy relationships
  • Be present when you are with people, put the phone away
  • If you are going to spend time with someone you find challenging, go with an open mind
  • Cultivate empathy for someone else's situation
  • Have a healthy relationship with yourself - stop criticizing yourself, be in the arena with yourself, for yourself
• Acknowledge different perspectives - be curious
• Practice mindfulness
  • SLOW DOWN - take your time when getting from point A to point B
  • Be in nature and while there - get off the phone and see the vastness before you
  • Meditate
  • Mindful movement like Yoga, Tai Chi
  • Yoga Nidra
  • Breathe with mindfulness
  • Eat with mindfulness
  • Pray if that works for you