Ready for More Resilience? 5 Tips
How is your resilience?
Given the level of uncertainty we are living in, perhaps you are feeling challenged. Rest assured, you are not alone.
The good news is resilience, like most things, is a muscle that benefits from strengthening.
If you feel like you want to fortify your resilience, here is my top 5 list:
1. Carry On Regardless
This is the theme of a Van Morrison song off the album Magic Time. In it, Van rants about the hypocrisies of the world but also reminds us to carry on to “satisfy your soul.”
This is about attitude. Reminding us to strengthen our resolve - to be a fighter and a winner. It’s about not wallowing, or being a victim.
The invitation is to stand strong in the face of adversity, recognizing that you deserve everything -perfect health, happiness, and prosperity.
Look around. Examples of people making lemonade out of lemons abound.
COVID-19 is a global invitation to get creative and rethink our world’s paradigm. Don’t you agree?
How can your life improve? What is your soul yearning for?
2. Be Fully In Your Body
Have you noticed that it is often our bodies that pay the price for our negative thoughts or feelings? I feel anxious so I stop eating for a day, or drink a 6-pack of beer, or walk 7 miles, or play video games for 12 hours straight, and then my entire body aches.
Yes?
How about you? What do you feel in your physical body? Could you be more loving to it right now?
Would it feel good to stretch or walk?
How about a soak in the tub?
Craving some nice, deep belly breaths?
Write down the ideas that resonate with you taking loving care of your body.
3. Deepen Your Spiritual Practice
If you don’t currently have a practice, now is a critical time to start. Don’t make excuses. You need this. The world needs this of you.
Remember- a practice is just that, a practice. It isn’t a competition. It isn’t about being perfect.
All you need is the willingness to connect to something deeper within yourself.
And there’s a myriad of ways to do that. Here are some:
Sing
Read Poetry
Chant
Walking Meditation
Breathing Exercises
Meditation
Yoga
Dance
EFT (tapping)
Prayer
Ritual
Church or Temple Service
Choose ONE thing that resonates with you. Then commit to 5 minutes a day.
Having a regular spiritual practice helps to relieve anxiety, stress and fear. It also enables you to hold the pain and suffering you experience more easily. It nurtures your soul and orients you towards what’s really real.
What’s on your list?
4. Connect
We all crave connection- with ourselves, with other people and with nature. Right now, when we need technology to connect us, it brings our yearning for actual connection right to the surface.
We need words, smiles, social interaction. We need to be touched, hugged. We desire communion with trees, animals, and loved ones.
How can you connect more with people who uplift, inspire and hold you?
5. Have Fun
It’s easy to get super serious about the crisis we face, and the suffering is immense.
BUT it is important to celebrate too.
Remembering to have fun strengthens our resilience. It also reminds us why we are here in the first place. And that is to be the embodiment of love, of joy and of happiness.
Aren’t those reasons to celebrate? Aren’t celebrations about having fun?
What is one way you could invite more fun into your life right now?
You have everything you need to succeed just the way you are.
You are whole and perfect.
You are special and loved.
You are strong and capable.
You are resilient.
Keep strengthening that muscle.