Emotional resilience is our ability to bounce back quickly and with relative ease during difficult times and meet future stressors with greater ease. When we experience stressful times, such as the pandemic, loss, illness, or climate related disasters, we may experience fatigue, anxiety, sadness, or overwhelm. Even in the midst of stressful times, there are things that we can do to feel more peaceful and inspired.
When we cultivate resilience, we feel an increased sense of inner peace and strength that enables us to get through difficult times with greater ease. As we practice resilience skills and begin to feel greater inner strength and peace, we can more readily experience moments of calm, inspiration, joy, connection, and awe, which allows us to be more purposeful.
How to Develop Emotional Resilience
There are a number of ways that we can increase a sense of resilience, including the following:
- Practicing mindfulness – Mindfulness is awareness of the present moment with kindness. When we practice mindfulness, we are growing our awareness. We can practice mindfulness formally, through mindfulness meditation, and informally, through mindful awareness of everyday activities. The cultivation of awareness is at the foundation of personal change. When we can see ourselves clearly and see the mental habits that are causing our suffering, then we have the freedom to change.
- Practicing Lovingkindness Meditation and Radical Compassion Meditation – compassion is an antidote for stress, anxiety, anger, resentment, and other emotions that we tend to view as difficult. It’s only human to experience difficult emotions, and it’s healthy to express them and then let them go. Holding on to anger can be detrimental to our well-being. Practicing lovingkindness meditation and radical compassion meditation can nurture wellness.
- Cultivating Inner Strengths – Identifying and increasing our inner strengths can help us to feel more steady and flexible during difficult times. What are your inner strengths? How do you express them in your everyday life?
- Cultivating Positive Emotions – Cultivating positive emotions can support the development of well-being. Learning how to cope skillfully with difficult emotions is vital for our physical and mental health. It’s equally important to our well-being to experience more positive emotions – joy, compassion, inspiration, gratitude, love, awe. During periods of chronic stress, our nervous system is continually perceiving potential danger, and it signals the body to prepare to flee, fight, freeze, or fawn. When we experience positive emotions, this can signal to the brain and nervous system that we are safe, and we then experience more feelings of peace and ease.
- Being in nature – Experiencing ourselves as a part of nature has so many positive benefits. Nature offers endless opportunities for appreciating beauty. Appreciation of beauty can serve as an inner strength and resource, and it can activate feelings of safety, comfort and connection. Sitting or walking underneath a canopy of trees is calming. Trees actually emit a chemical that is calming to human beings. Being in nature offers opportunity to practice sound meditation – listening to the birds singing, the wind in the trees, the sound of water in an ocean, river, or stream, a squirrel rustling through the leaves. When we pay attention to nature, we grow to understand that we are in an interdependent relationship with nature and that, indeed, we are a part of nature. We realize that the well-being of the Earth is dependent on our well-being, and our well-being is dependent on the well-being of the Earth. We become more committed to our own self-care and to caring for the Earth.
- Creativity – creativity practices allow us to become fully absorbed in the present moment and in creative flow. When we are fully present and aware of the present moment, this can help to regulate our nervous system and bring us back to a state of balance to experience a sense of ease and safety. The more we cultivate these moments of ease, the more resilient we become. Try exploring your own creative spirit with creative writing, photography, drawing, painting, cooking, music, dancing, singing, knitting, quilting, woodworking, or pottery. There are infinite ways to express creativity!
Cultivating mindful resilience can help us to grow our emotional resilience and reconnect with inner peace, inspiration, and happiness.