TOP 10 TIPS: Creating Emotional Resilience
- Reflect on your habitual mindsets. Pay attention to your habits of thought and your beliefs about who you are, how life “is”, and what challenges and setbacks mean.
- Remind yourself why you are doing what you’re doing. Find ways to regularly engage with whatever feeds your sense of purpose. Visualize your future successes, big and small. Recommit to your goals and dreams.
- Expect challenges and change. Often we don’t know how to do things. Outcomes may be uncertain. We make mistakes. Unanticipated events demand our attention. Priorities shift. We can respond to challenges and setbacks better if we accept them.
- Remember that you can choose how to respond in any moment. Practice creating moments of choice. Notice your automatic reactions. Breathe. Think. Buy time if necessary. Choose to act in ways that help you.
- Assume a healthy degree of responsibility. Focus on what is realistically within your control. Take small steps towards your goals.
- Build and maintain an effective support system. Find and connect with your biggest fans, people who know the ropes, some grounding voices, good listening ears, courageous hearts, and positive souls. Ask for help.
- Involve yourself in the lives of others. Connecting with and caring for others builds inner strength, offers perspective, and adds value and meaning to life. Find ways to feel part of a larger whole.
- Practice flexibility and take calculated risks. Cultivate adaptability by trying new things and mixing up your routine from time to time. Prepare for and take leaps towards your goals and dreams. By taking risks, you learn that you can be courageous and can go on whatever the outcome.
- Create outlets for stress and make time for play and pleasure. Exercise your body and express your feelings. Use humour. Find time every week for activities that make you happy.
- Engage in regular maintenance. Cultivating resiliency is a lifelong process as you and your circumstances change, but you can practice new mindsets and new habits now. Create conditions that will support you to thrive.