Let’s Be Resilient!
Resiliency: It's What You Think and What You Do
If you are a runner you know what resiliency feels like. It is the "second wind" you get after running for some time and wondering if you will ever reach your destination. That burst of energy propels you forward even though your body demands that you give up. Runners, regardless of their individual abilities, point to this feeling as one of the reasons they finish the race.
Resiliency is a mindsetIt is the determination to keep going even though it is difficult to do so. Resiliency looks toward the future and determines our behavior in the present. Carl Jung was a 20th-century psychiatrist who described resiliency this way: |
|
Resiliency is also a set of behaviors and skills
These behaviors and skills allow people to bend, but not break when experiencing adversity, stressful situations, or even trauma. Individuals can learn these skills throughout their lives and apply them as they encounter tough times.
At SPC, our concept of resiliency looks like this
We’ve been researching and working on the resiliency of SPC students since 2017 and have developed the following concept of resiliency based on what we’re discovering in our students.
Individual Skills
Embodiment
This is the ability to feel safe, comfortable, and confident in your skin. It includes being able to name and freely talk about how your body feels at any given moment, how to notice when your body feels stress, and how to care for your body in order to feel healthy and balanced.
Executive skills
These include emotional intelligence--the ability to name emotions that you and others are feeling as you are feeling them--as well as life skills like time management, prioritizing, setting goals, and making plans and adapting them based on outcomes.
Spirit
This includes a positive outlook, hopefulness, mindfulness, confidence, creativity, celebration, reflection, and restorative practices.
Social Skills
Resiliency is when you use these three areas of skills to take action with others. For example, you might be struggling in a class, so you rearrange your time to study for 30 minutes each day and you also schedule a tutoring session with your instructor.
In other words, resiliency is not just something you do by yourself. Resiliency is helping other people when they are struggling or reaching out for help when you are struggling.
Resiliency Skills
A skill is the ability to do something well. How well do you incorporate the following actions and beliefs into your life? These skills are not in a particular order; they are all important. This list has been adapted from The Road to Resilience.