This month's topic is resilience. The American Psychological Association gives this definition:
"Resilience is the process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility and adjustment to external and internal demands."
More simply, resilience is being able to cope with and recover from setbacks. Here we discuss how to develop and cultivate the skills and resources needed to become more resilient.
I initially learned about resilience when studying social emotional learning in the youth development field. Teaching young people how to develop resiliency is critical for healthy emotional growth. For example, when I won against my niece at Candyland and she cried and flipped the board over, I knew we needed to work on skills like mindfulness, self awareness, and self regulation. We know everybody encounters hardships and adversity throughout their life, so learning what tools work best for us is essential.
This article from Michigan State University lists 10 Traits of Emotionally Resilient People with resources and ideas on how to develop these traits for yourself. How many of these traits do you practice already?
1. They self-regulate and set boundaries.
2. They keep good company.
3. They cultivate self-awareness.
4. They practice acceptance.
5. They're willing to sit in the space of non- judgment and not-knowing.
6. They look for meaning.
7. They have a menu of self-care habits.
8. They practice an optimistic worldview.
9. They entertain alternative endings.
10. However, they also get out of their head.
One activity we do in our AE training is to get folks to list where they find resilience in their lives. Feel free to find inspiration from the February 2023 AE training cohort!
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