Resilient State of Mind
Photo: Pawel Czerwin
LET THAT SINK IN.
It sums up one of the biggest lessons that I’ve learned in my life. It enables us to see all of our experiences as part of our path in life, no matter how ‘good’ or ‘bad’ we deem them to be. This does not mean that all the things we encounter are in our control. There are things in life we can’t control. The GOOD NEWS is that as we build our personal resilience, we gain more capacity to choose how to process and move forward - both internally and externally. We DO have control over how we experience our life, and personal resilience empowers us to have a choice in how we relate to the people, places, and things we encounter. Personal resilience is power.
What is a simple way to shift into a resilient state of mind?
Try this simple, yet powerful somatic grounding exercise for one to five minutes or more:
Take a seat in a comfortable chair. As you settle in, notice your physical comfort. Breathe. Take a slow, full breath in and exhale a slow, full breath out. Do that three times or more. Sense your body - doing a body scan from top to bottom. Does your chest feel open or tight, how do your hips feels, etc.? Just notice, no need to fix anything.
Be present with what is. When you have a good sense of how your body feels - connect to your surroundings. Feel your back on the chair, see the colors in the room, listen to the sounds around you, feel your feet on the ground. Keep breathing.
Find something in your surroundings that is resourceful, a tree out the window, your pet, a calming color, etc. Soak up the feeling of resourcefulness.
Staying with the breath, get curious about how your body feels now. Do you notice a difference?
It can be surprising how different our bodies will feel after 1 or more minutes of doing this grounding exercise. Simple somatic exercises bring us back into our bodies and ground us in the present. This is one of my go-to exercises when I want to ground.
Pro Tip: When you feel like you can’t find a way forward in your mind, go to your body and let it guide the way.