Prior musings have outlined a method of optimizing physical, mental and spiritual health by focusing on self-care and embracing the mindful attitudes of non-judgmental acceptance, patience, curiosity, trust, non-striving,letting go and kindness. This musing explores using mindful attitudes and practices to enhance resilience to effectively meet life’s inevitable challenges.
Life is a journey with twists and turns, surprising pleasures as well as challenges. No matter how much we plan and try to control our circumstances, unexpected difficulties arise.
These can be viewed as frustrating roadblocks or as “mindful opportunities”. Attitudes of acceptance and curiosity help manage the unexpected with calm, clear problem-solving. Mindful meditation practice prepares us for these twists and turns by honing our ability to pause, notice and reflect. We can access our wisdom and emotional stability even during severe challenges.
Given the inevitable ups and downs of life, it is important to continually build our emotional resilience. When we feel mentally flexible and emotionally stable we can feel confident about handling challenges. This reduces worry and anxiety significantly. We save our strength for reality instead of expending it on imaginary “what ifs” or the illusion of control.
Building and maintaining resilience needs a foundation of good self-care (sleep, nutrition, fresh air, exercise) as well as vacations, meditation and spiritual practices, hobbies and healthy social connections. It is helpful to have a wide variety of resilience-building practices. It is important to seek professional counselling when needed. Effective self care permits us to be creative and flexible, better able to adapt to changing circumstances.
Having a large reservoir of resilience allows us to ride waves of difficulties with perspective, patience, trust, calmness and humour. We can maintain a steady,but more relaxed grip on our goals.
We can more quickly recover from illness, family or work stress, financial setbacks or any other
challenges.
Continually developing emotional strength and resilience allows us to fully embrace the moment by moment journey of life.
Mindful Home Practice:
Pause for reflection frequently to assess the depth of your “resilience reservoir”.
Keep a list of enjoyable resilience-building practices. Choose activities from the list as often as possible to maintain or recover your emotional strength whenever needed.