In this post, you will find a 60-minute recorded webinar, workshop handout, effective strategies for developing resilience, an exercise to help expand your support network, plus additional resources for cultivating resilience in yourself and others.
Over the past year, many of us have been thrown kicking and screaming into a crash course called Resiliency. While some may have enough grit to last a lifetime, even the best of us can benefit from tips to recover balance amid persistent challenges. In this recorded workshop, you’ll get some best practices and strategies for cultivating strength in ourselves and in others.
Resilience is the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or significant sources of stress.
About the Recording
This session was a 60-minute virtual workshop for community college educators. I led this workshop for BPCC and CLTCC faculty and staff on October 28, 2021. You can download a sample handout at the end of this post.
Effective Strategies for Building Resilience
According to the American Psychological Association, resilience is the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or significant sources of stress. It is a skill that can be nurtured and trained. To learn more, listen to the recorded webinar! Here are the effective strategies for building resilience shared in the webinar with resources to learn more about each.
Calm the mind.
When you focus on calming and clearing your mind, you slow things down. The effort to calm the mind allows you to pay attention to what is going on around you and what feelings and thoughts are coming up within you.
Look out the window and breathe.
Stress does lots of things to our body. One of the most powerful changes is with vision. Stanford neurobiologist Andrew Huberman describes it as, “Your visual system goes into the equivalent of portrait mode on a smartphone.” Looking at the horizon dilates your gaze. Then, slow your breathing with deep breaths, and you experience a physiological reaction that biologically/neurologically reduces stress.
Learn more about how vision and breathing directly affect the brain and can reduce stress:
Set goals and reflect.
When experiencing difficulties, it is easy to feel stuck. One way to help you move forward and feel less stuck is to set goals, and track progress. Small goals are best! Reflect on and celebrate even the smallest of milestones. Download one of our tools to help!
Connect with others through compassion and empathy.
Expand your support network.
We can nurture and build our resilience through a wide variety of interactions with people in our personal and professional lives. According to Rob Cross, Karen Dillon, and Danna Greenberg, there are eight areas of relational sources of resilience.
Exercise
Download the handout (at the end of this post) to review the relational sources of resilience, and consider the following:
- Which sources of resilience are most important to you?
- Identify the top three sources of resilience that you would most like to strengthen in your life.
- Make a note of those that are most important for you to work on developing.
- Make a plan to expand your network.
Request this workshop
Are you interested in this workshop for your team? We can do it in-person or virtually for up to a full-day workshop, extending on each topic and increasing engagement through breakout groups.
Download a sample handout as a printable PDF and digital worksheet.
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