“I’m not my most resilient self today,” is one of our most useful phrases at Dovetail Learning. Especially during the pandemic, this phrase has a fantastic tool for helping me locate myself during stress. It has also been helpful when a colleague shares it during our organization’s morning ‘heart check in meeting’, so I can understand how they are showing up on any given day.
The beauty of this phrase is that it instantly helps me Positively Reframe a moment, by acknowledging just that – it is one moment. Resilience will come when I access my curiosity, make a choice to use a Resilience Skill, and have courage to apply it to the situation I find myself in. I can be more or less resilient at any moment. Placing our own resilience on a continuum normalizes the ebb and flow of life. It also helps remind me of the possibility of an easier time, and it helps me not get stuck on what’s ‘not working’.
The Five Types of Resilience that we work on with the We Are Resilient™ approach not only helps me when I’m low, it helps me find a place to grow resilience between people and in groups. For instance, just last week I was co-facilitating a group discussion, and we were balancing the idea of ‘safety’ and ‘healthy discomfort’ in conversations around equity and social justice. By honoring the resilience of each individual person, we could move out of fear and into the brave space needed to take healthy risks and advance our collective growth edge on difficult topics with people from all over the country.
As we emerge from over a year of isolation, it will serve all of us to remain Centered as we look to re-build our Relational and Group Resilience with others. With school starting back up in many places (in some form or another), we have the opportunity to find new ways forward, together. There will be some days that are more difficult than others, and that is to be expected. We can all use our Resilience Skills to respond to the day’s needs. Remember, We Are Resilient.
Yours on the resilience journey,
Bryan