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Developing Personal Resilience

Last weekend, I attended a day-long personal development
workshop in a meditation and retreat centre down by the
River Cam here in Cambridge.

There were about 20 participants, so the atmosphere was very
different from some of the big-ticket personal development courses
I have attended in the past. The small number of people
made for some good discussions within the group, and I’d like to
tell you a bit about our conversation on the subject of
resilience and dealing with adversity.

Difficult situations affect all of us at various points in our
lives, and for some people they get to crisis point. At these
times, such strong emotions are swirling around that it is often
difficult to be sufficiently in control of ourselves to take the
actions required to best manage the situation. I know from my
own experience that it be really hard to meditate or do
relaxation exercises to ‘calm down’ under such pressure.

A ‘lightbulb moment’ for me was when someone in the workshop
suggested that our emotional resilience (and so our ability to
cope with adversity) is like a muscle which grows stronger with
use. It’s not that we are de-sensitized to these situations
– most of us will always be reactive to some degree – it’s just
that we can learn to better regain control of our emotions
and therefore are able to do what needs to be done to address
the problem.

Now, here’s the key point: It is when things are generally going
*well* that we should consciously practice these techniques of
self-mastery. This has the dual benefits of making everyday life
less stressful,but, more importantly, it strengthens our ‘resilience
muscles’ so that they are up to the task of dealing with more
demanding issues.

So what does this mean in practice? Well, it means consciously
dealing with the trials and tribulations of everyday life in a
different way from how we might have reacted instinctively before.
For example, when someone cuts across us in traffic, we can
practice self-restraint and calm instead of swearing at them.
When we spend too long talking to a colleague and so miss
our train, we can practice calm and acceptance. I’m sure you
can think of many other examples.

We may not consciously ask for these irritations, frustrations
and annoyances to come into our lives, but they will happen anyway.

Why not use them to build up your power of resilience for when you
really need it?

Until next time,

Warmly,
Chris

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This entry was posted on Monday, July 9th, 2007 at 11:28 pm and is filed under Meditation, Personal Resilience, Self-management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.