A Skill You Work on Your Entire Life?

Have you ever had life throw something at you that you didn’t expect? And it hit you really hard.

Of course you have. We all have. It’s one of the ways that life teaches us lessons.

When life knocks us down, we have to get back up and keep going forward.
It’s not easy. The skill we use to get back up is resilience.
Resilience is a skill we work on our entire lives.

Resilience is getting a lot of attention lately. In his research, Dr. Dennis Charney has determined 10 psychological and social factors that make for stronger resilience. In no particular order, the factors are:

•  Face your fears
•  Have a moral compass
•  Draw on faith
•  Use social support
•  Have a resilient role model

•  Attend to physical well-being
•  Make sure your brain is challenged
•  Practice cognitive and emotional flexibility
•  Have meaning, purpose and growth in life
•  Keep an optimistic outlook

You may want to spend a minute or two reviewing this list to determine
which factors you’ve used when you had to get back up,
and maybe one or two you’d like to work on.
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Adults in resiliency studies said that determination is an important component of resiliency: A determination to do whatever it takes.

When life knocks us down, most of us need a little time to process what happened. We need to take the time to go through our full range of emotions which may include: shock, terror, disbelief, sadness, and grief—to name a few.

The trick is not to stay in those emotions for too long. The goal is to move through the feelings, not build a condominium around them.

Being aware of self-talk is absolutely crucial for resiliency. It takes determination not to get sucked into the negativity storm that can rip like a tornado through our head in hard times.

Being resilient means to acknowledge the negative thoughts, but then quickly transition to positive thoughts that will lift you back up. Many times this feels easier said than done!

When I was first working on my self-talk awareness a few years ago, I would often feel a drop in my energy and mood before I could identify what the negative self-talk in my head was. I quickly learned to pay attention to my energy drops because it was my clue that negative self-talk had taken hold.

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Stories of Resiliency

I was at a Women Leading in Technology (WLiT) event recently in Minneapolis. A panel of executive women shared their stories of resiliency.
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One of the things the women talked about was the self-talk they use to
bounce back when their negative self-talk tries to kick in.
Here are a few of my favorites:

I hope you try some of these out. And then create your own.
Adversity will inevitably arrive. You will do well to have positive self-talk mantras prepared and practiced.

WLiT is open to all women.
​To learn more click below.

Visit WLiT Website

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And remember this lovely quote from Terri St. Cloud, shared by one of the panel members:
“She could never go back and make some of the details pretty.
All she could do was move forward and make the whole beautiful.”

Let me know what you try out and how it goes.

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