Raising your resilience tip1#

“I was alone in my head without adult supervision.”

I read that quote recently in Iyanla Vanzant’s book One day my soul just opened up – and it struck me as so true, and it’s the cause of so much toxic, self sabotaging thinking.

So my first tip for raising your resilience is to check in with your thinking, your self talk, and question whether it’s true and whether it is serving you.

For example, I went through a time when I was constantly telling myself I couldn’t cope.  Once I realised I’d got stuck with that thought, which was overwhelming and made me feel helpless, I asked myself to define what I meant by ‘coping’ (getting through the day) and was that true. And I found that I wasn’t struggling to get through the day – I was in fact out of bed, washed and dressed (ok, without lippy) working with my clients perfectly well, running my home, paying my bills and dealing with all other day-to-day admin mostly on time.

I was indeed coping, thank you very much!

What was really going on was that I was angry and resentful about a certain obligation I had. Once I saw it, named the emotions arising and accepted them all I was able to make a plan to handle the situation better.

So there’s probably more than one tip there: notice your self talk (without judgement), check if it’s true, reflect on what else could be happening and then consider some options for dealing with that.

I’ll finish with another quotation:

“My barn having burned down, I can now see the moon.” ― Mizuta Masahide

Submitted with love

Jackie