EP 401: The Importance of Resilience (And a Simple way to Develop it!)

Whenever we’re feeling totally overwhelmed by our emotions, there’s a very good chance our bodies are in the stress response.

And when we’re in the stress response, we’re in survival mode.

This means that we are likely to perceive anything else that happens as a potential threat, which only increases the stress and makes us react - not respond - in ways that often cause consequences that result in more stress.

I think you can see where this is going.

And this is the strongest argument for resilience.

Because the best thing we can do is to get ourselves out of the stress response where our thinking brain can take over to make decisions that result in our well being.

One of the greatest ways to develop resilience is to practice the pause.

And if you practice the pause in a certain way, you will develop your emotional intelligence at the same time.

This will result in ‘seeing’ your big emotions when they’re not so big at all and you can easily regulate yourself before you do or say something that makes things worse.

Let me know if you’d like a copy of a simple pause practice.

This is just one of the practices I’ll be covering in my course next week: Mindful for the Holidays. Let me know if you’d like info on that!