Category: Tools for Life

How to Grow Your Resilience

How to grow your resilience comes from many sources including an innate ability. We don’t often hear the word resilience. A Google search results in this definition for resilience – the capacity to recover from difficult circumstances or simply toughness.
In addition, it involves:

  • Connecting to a positive attitude
  • Developing a determination to work through
  • Saying “Yes” to difficult emotions
  • Developing the capacity to allow

Is This Something I Can Develop?

First, it’s nice to know resilience is a common occurrence in most people. However, we need to cultivate more of it. In fact, anyone can develop toughness or build upon it.

A meditation practice is key to developing all the qualities to build resilience. In fact, the capacity to recover (equanimity) is built-in to the meditation practice on Ten Percent Happier. A short meditation by Sebene Selassie is the basis for this article. Furthermore, you can watch a YouTube interview with Dan Harris and Sebene titled “The Joy of Allowing Life to Be”.

Practice

Although I recommend a set time for developing the habit of meditation, you can use these steps anytime you find yourself upset about a difficult situation. Allow your intuition to determine whether or not you remove yourself to a private location, safety first, always.

  1. Find a comfortable posture
  2. Either close your your eyes or gaze downward
  3. Begin with slow breathing, in through your nose, out through your mouth
  4. Soften any tightness in your body on the out breath
  5. Connect to the breath or whatever sensations in your body are prominent
  6. Accept anything happening right now; annoyance, distraction, ease, even pain
  7. Say to yourself, “Allow”
  8. Slowly open your eyes

Meditation practice is just that… practice. It doesn’t matter when you lose your way with distraction or thoughts. Noticing and starting again happens for everyone. Make space for exactly what’s here. Saying yes, starting over, allow.

Learning how to grow your resilience, your toughness, through cultivating a positive attitude, determination, and the capacity to allow result in working through difficult times.

Learning from Their Life Choices

Learning from their life choices is a great way to avoid some pitfalls. In this instance I’m referring to my mother. I have cared for her the last five years. In spite of my age (67), this past week I’ve seen clearly how my own choices can be improved.

Choose Your Viewpoint

Learning from their life choices, is influenced by the viewpoint we select.

  1. Looking downward in judgement
  2. From a place below them, feeling defensive
  3. Stretching out with care and curiosity

#3 is a viewpoint that enriches our lives and the lives of others. We are equal on this earthly plane. In fact, the equality is based on our sameness. Furthermore, we are all on this earth to learn, grow, and find our uniqueness, our special way we can help each other.

You Don’t Need to Feel Apologetic

If you feel a burden to others, remember “It’s okay.” You are teaching them something valuable.

If you feel you are or have been burdened by others, remember, “It’s okay.” Their difficulty is a window into your internal struggles. This is even true when they are no longer in your life.

We can bring memories into the present moment, activate our curiosity about what we can learn from it and transform the memory into a peaceful, heart-filled new reality.

Add a Dose of Gratefulness

I find meditation is a beautiful way to start the day. The Ten Percent Happier app is my go to place each morning. For instance, today Anushka Fernandopulle led me through a ten minute Grateful for Your Body meditation. It was exactly what I needed.

I invite you to download the Ten Percent app and try it. If it resonates, keep it and pay for it. Yes, I know there are tons of free meditations on YouTube. If you are happy with that and use it everyday, you need look no farther. For me, I find the helpful words of the meditation experts on Ten Percent Happier app are exactly right for me.

Curiosity Fuels Our Inner Joy

Curiosity fuels our inner joy by offering different viewpoints than our first default observation. Using the photo above, what comes to mind? What do you feel in your body? Where do you feel something in your body?

How Curiosity Changed My Perspective

The first night I settled into my North Carolina home, the image above was just like the photo. Yet I didn’t see it. Rather I saw a hideous green security light streaming into my bedroom that ruined my night sky view. The light had been there before, but it wasn’t as high or as bright. My default observation was anger and resentment. As the days went by, my curiosity grew. I stopped by the house and met my neighbors, a lovely family of four who are renting while buying their own lot to build on. The father is a police officer, his marked vehicle a fixture during his off hours.

I never asked about the security light. Afterward, it didn’t seem important. In fact, that night was the first time I noticed the heart on my ceiling as I was lying in bed, recalling the day. It was extra bright due to the full moon, which I captured just before. The blue orb I’m so familiar with now has a green hue. If you are familiar with the chakras, green is associated with the heart chakra. Perfect.

Tips for Cultivating Curiosity

The next time your feel sad, angry or upset about something outside yourself, I invite you to try these actions.

    • Excuse yourself to a comfortable, safe location
    • Sit, stand or lie down
    • Close your eyes or lower your gaze
    • Take one or two deep breaths
    • Ask yourself, “What am I missing in this situation?”
    • Gently open your eyes fully
    • Slowly move your head and shoulders back and forth
    • Notice the objects in your view, stopping for anything especially pleasing
    • Be open to your intuition
    • Practice patience with yourself, then others

Curiosity fuels our inner joy when we invite it in.