Resiliency & Mindfulness
Resiliency is your ability to withstand adversity and bounce back and grow despite life’s downturns. Mindfulness is learning to direct your attention to the present moment with curiosity and kindness to whatever arises.
Resiliency
You are not born resilient. You are born malleable, shaped by the environment and therefor learn resiliency. Your learnt capacity of resiliency is called your ‘window of resiliency’.
Each of us has a window of resiliency. From this window of resiliency we face life’s challenges, adapt and bounce back. Everybody has a different sized window. Some of us have a small window and are easily overwhelmed whilst others have a large window and it takes a lot to knock them off their stride. No matter what size your window of resiliency is, everybody can grow and become more resilient than they are now.
When we are within our window, we are able to respond to life’s stresses creatively. We stay grounded and emotionally responsive. Most importantly, we have full access to all of our executive functioning. This is critical because executive functioning is responsible for many skills including:
Paying attention
Organising, planning, and prioritising
Starting tasks and staying focused on them to completion
Understanding different points of view
Regulating emotions
Self monitoring
Problem solving
When we are outside our window, it is quite a different story. We can feel overwhelmed and in over our heads. Critically, the part of our brain that is responsible for executive functioning becomes less accessible. This explains why resiliency is so important. Evidence shows us that staying within our window of resiliency is a skill. This means it is something we can all develop in ourselves.
Some benefits of growing your resiliency are:
Improves physical and emotional wellbeing
Improves cognitive functioning
Reduces the effects of stress
Accept and manage change more skillfully
Strengthens emotional stability
Seeing nothing as insurmountable
Maintaining a hopeful outlook
Learning from your past
“ I found Blair’s training with us extremely helpful. It gave me insight into my response to matters, how other people respond, and how the different responses can increase conflict. I learned some invaluable tools to help keep me in my window of tolerance, that I continue to practise every day.”
Mindfulness
Mindfulness is a technique you can learn to cultivate in your every day life. Anyone can learn to do this. Mindfulness is the ability to pay attention to the present with kindness. We now know where you put your attention directly shapes your brain. So mindfulness is a superpower!
Mindfulness helps us shift out of painful patterns, such as rumination and resistance, to drop into a better head space. Our capacity to be present with focused attention is the key ingredient for personal change. Mindfulness is then best thought of as a key ingredient to making change within ourselves. By being mindful we learn to use our awareness to direct our attention in a more life enhancing way. We are not focusing on changing our experience such as thoughts, but, to redirect our attention from thoughts to the present so we can learn to relax, thrive and live well even when faced with life's challenges.
Studies have shown that practicing mindfulness, even for just a few weeks, can bring a variety of physical, psychological, and social benefits.
Some of the benefits of mindfulness are:
Reduced rumination
Stress reduction.
Boosts to working memory
Focus
Less emotional reactivity
More cognitive flexibility
Relationship satisfaction
Other benefits associated with the brain's middle prefrontal lobe area; enhanced self-insight, morality, intuition and fear modulation