Building Psychological Resilience - Stress

The current global realities and prolonged state of uncertainty have impacted our lives and those we love. For even the most prepared, these forces tend to destabilize us - creating anxiety, and fueling fear and doubt. In most instances, these are forces we cannot control. But we can influence our response and even build up our resilience to them.

Experimental Methodology: - Acknowledge the external distractions. 

• Our Road Map: 3 Steps: Science and Practice
• How Stress reduces resilience
• My Resilience tool kit
• What do I do differently tomorrow? 
• Share - in the chat 
• Pause and Reflect - Exercise

In this session you will learn to:

- Develop the stress map

- Build resilience toolkit

- Commit to an action plan and much more. 

Stress:

One cannot eliminate stress in life. One need to differentiate between good stress and bad stress. 

 “Stress comes from not taking action, about something that you can control. As soon as you identify and take action to address the situation, helps reduce stress. It comes from ignoring what you need to do. You can be in or out of work and be in stressed. If you keep worrying and do nothing, you would be stressed.”

Do what you love, Stress happen when you procrastinate. Life takes over and you are stressed. Stress comes by not taking action. The mere fact that you are addressing the problem, relives the stress. Good stress is working and bad stress is not taking action. Take on positive pressure and action."

Step 1: Looking at Stress holistically: 

Breaking point is the issue. How stress reduces your resilence?

It can be put in three buckets:

• Physical
• Emotional 
• Behavioral

In which areas do you experience the highest stress today? 

Pick top two.

• A change in heating habit
• Somatization - pains
• Sense of sadness
• Feeling trapped
• Neglecting appearance
• Difficulty in concentration

Step 2: Our Road Map - To build Resilience:

It does not mean we focus only on happy emotions. We need to acknowledge and embrace all our emotions. It's okay to be not okay. Don't hide or deny your feelings. Acknowledge and Embrace it, but don't continue to live in it. Get help. 

3 Scientific ways to Build Resilience:

1. Your Resilient Life Story moment:

We each have an unique story to share - which have good, bad and ugly part. Be aware of all the parts. We are the stories we tell our selves.  Embrace negative and acknowledge positive. 

Post Traumatic Growth: - Trauma - A really hard life challenge, Human's can be changed by life challenges - in positive or negative way. 

Post Traumatic Growth: It is an evident that we all possess the ability to come up. 

Let's do an imagery exercise: 

Sit straight and strong. Feel grounded. Plant your feet on the ground.  Close your eyes. Take deep breath in and out. Know you are safe. In the hear and now. Travel in your life to a time, where there was challenge. Think of that time, in the past, that was tough. As you think of that time, even though it was painful and you would not want to go through it, you went through it. In some way has it made you:

• Stronger
• Deepened your relationship
• Gave renewed sense of appreciation for life
• Found a growth area and it grounds you today
• Discovery of new possibilities

Come back and see you are safe. Hope it was not triggering. There is always hope. You may feel alone. But you are not alone. 

Capture your thoughts:

   We all have a story to  tell. Knowing your life story- the good, bad and ugly parts- helps you become more self aware and improves your relationship with yourself and others. It builds your resilience and grit. 

 As we individually introspected earlier, you know that you have had these resilient life moments-  some deeply personal. While the scars may remain (as an evidence of healing), through those experiences you may have a newfound appreciation for life, discovered personal strengths, a sense of enhanced relationship with self and/or others, discovery of new possibilities and/or a sense of deepening spiritual changes (Tedeschi & Calhoun)

In this breakout activity, while the choice to share any personal BUT resolved  resilient life story moment is yours to make, use the table below to capture your thoughts. Each of you should have your own self-assigned row.

Take about 5 minutes to capture your thoughts. 

Room 

1. Resilient LIFE MOMENT [in one or two sentences per person]
2. How does that help today?

Key take away:

• Life is not easy, and there are tough moments, but we have something to learn from which make us stronger. 
• Be empathetic
• Niceness costs nothing

2. Perspective Lense:

Power of perspective on our problem. - Catastrophize. Take a mindful pause. Figure out Where am I standing?  Am I magnifying my problem? Don't minimize. Have I made it bigger than it actually is? 

Closer:

Complete:

 3. Recharging Station:

P&R E 3: Am I magnifying my problem? Don't Catastrophize life problems. 

What's my recharging station? Take a break guilt free. 

Resilience is about how you recharge...not how you endure. Take micro brakes. 

Just close your eyes and breath. 

Step 3: What do I do differently today and going forward?:

• Start here - Go anywhere