How's Your Resilience Storage Supply?

     Last fall I had the opportunity to attend a training dealing with at term I was not real familiar with. I found it fascinating, but it was not until a few weeks later that I really understood the meaning . My youngest daughter was in a Cross Country race where near the finish they had to go down a short steep hill that suddenly flattened out.  She came running past us at full speed and down that hill.  All of a sudden she went down, smacking her head on the ground and scraping up her back pretty good.  Somehow, she immediately got back up and ran to the finish line.  Everyone who watched it happen was in awe!  She could of easily just laid on the ground and nursed her wounds and no one would of thought anything of it, instead she rolled back on to her feet and finished what she started. She taught me a lesson that day about how important it is to have the ability to bounce back when faced with adversity and keep going when thing get tough.  This ability is known as "resilience". 
     Resilience is the ability to roll with the flow. When adversity, stress or traumatic events happen, you still experience the anger, grief and pain, but you are able to keep functioning.  In order to do this we need to build up our emotional health with what I am going to call our "Resilience Lamp".  An oil lamp will continue to give off light (function) as long as there is oil in the storage portion of it.  If we add to our resilience storage on a regular basis, it is there when we need it and we can still function when hard times or adversity hits.

A Few Ways to Fill your Resilience Storage

Get Your Sleep
Sleep is vital for our overall health and functioning. Getting adequate sleep helps your mood, thinking ability, productive and so much more.  Find ways to get your sleep.

Exercise
Exercise is not only good for you physically, but mentally too. Those endorphins are great mood enhancers.  Exercise is proven to boost concentration, memory, reasoning, better sleep to name a few.

Practice Gratitude
Emotional benefits of gratitude include, well being, life satisfaction, connection as well as many others. It is important to intentionally cultivate an awareness of gratitude in our everyday lives..  Keep a gratitude journal, make a habit of finding things each day that you are grateful for.  Practice saying "Thank You"  It is has been proven that the person you thank is more likely to continue it on causing a ripple effect.

Self Compassion
Show yourself some love. Give yourself the same kindness and care that you would give a good friend. 

Build a Support Team
Be social and make friends. Having people you can trust and confide in is important in building resilience. Plus the recipients of someone being sociable are more likely to engage in similar behaviors, thus spreading the social contagion and improving the mood and self esteem of all those involved.

Practice Mindfulness

Mindfulness is awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgementally, It is taking time to pause and breathe when the phone rings instead of running to answer it."- Jon Kabat-Zinn

Take time to ask yourself how you are feeling. Ponder on what it causing you to feel that way. Make adjustments if needed.
Focus on things you can control.

Provide Service
Serving others reduces stress, prevents feeling of isolation, increases confidence, ingnites passion, increases confidence and makes you happy. I guess these are the reasons that I've always come away from service gaining way more that I gave. 

Prayer

Prayer is surely the passport to spiritual power ~ Thomas S. Monson

It has been proven to give peace, sense of meaning, connection.  It has psychological effects on the body such as calming your cardiovascular system and reducing your stess. (Crystal Park PhD) Amazing things happen with prayer.

Have and Exercise Faith
“If ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true” (Alma 32:21).  

Faith is the glue that keeps us holding on it.  It breeds abundance, gives you strength, it helps you find purpose in life and acts as a pathway to finding solutions  It has also been proven to fight stress, anxiety and fear.  One of my favorite quotes is, "Replace Fear with Faith".  Practice having faith on a regular basis. Learn how to listen and act on promptings.  

Each time we do one of these items we are adding to our resilience storage. Ready to use when we need it.  Your light will be able to keep functioning during trials. Your light will have the power needed to keep you going.

 After the race finish that day, as I was cleaning the mud off of the scrapes on my daughter’s back. I asked her how she was able to get up so quickly her response was, "I wasn't gonna let that girl that passed me when I fell beat me”. When adversity or hard times arise, just as that day of my daughter's fall we can be follow her example.  She had been practicing and doing the things she needed to do for that race. She was not only prepared physically, but mentally also. If we focus on filling our resilience storage on a daily basis, we will be prepared to be able to bounce back up because we will have emotional health reserves in the storage of our lamps.   It is time to check that resilience storage level..

xoxo

Tiffanee

*Disclosure I started this post back in the fall of 2019.  As many of my ideas it did not seem to flow so I let it be. Suddenly this past week the thoughts keep coming and perhaps it was meant to flow at this particular time.