Mindfulness and Resilience are correlated, as some studies have shown. If you have a regular mindfulness practice or meditation practice, you have likely experienced the positive benefits of meditation. Mindfulness practices can help us to reduce stress, anxiety, and depression and increase a sense of peace, happiness, wellbeing, and resilience. Practicing mindfulness helps us to better respond to difficult situations with less automatic and non-adaptive reactivity. When we are less reactive in difficult situations, this may help us to hold a decentered attitude toward the difficulty and foster resilience.
For over 30 years, research has shown that mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) programs are effective for increasing a sense of peace, happiness, and wellbeing and reducing symptoms of stress, anxiety, depression, pain, and symptoms of a number of medical disorders. Mindfulness practice teaches us how to observe our experience rather than becoming entangled in it, as entanglement involves lack of awareness and leads to reactivity.
When we are more responsive to our experience and less reactive, this supports a greater sense of wellbeing and resilience. Mindfulness teaches us to approach difficult experience by observing it from the perspective of our inner objective witness and then using our inner wisdom and discernment to decide how to respond.
Several studies have shown that mindfulness correlates positively with life satisfaction and positive emotion and correlates negatively with negative emotion. (Bajaj & Pande, 2016; Kong et al., 2014; Schutte & Malouff, 2011). Bajaj and Pande’s research showed that resilience is a significant mediator between mindfulness and greater life satisfaction, higher positive emotion, and lower negative emotion.
Kemper et al (2015) found that “Resilience was strongly and significantly correlated with less stress and better mental health, more mindfulness, and more self-compassion” in a group of young health professionals and trainees. They found that both sleep and resilience were significantly correlated with mindfulness and self-compassion.
How to Begin a Mindfulness Practice
When you begin a mindfulness practice, try to start small. If you’re already feeling stressed and overwhelmed, and you try to begin with an intention of practicing 30 minutes daily, you’re likely to feel more overwhelmed. Start small, and try gradually increasing the amount of time that you’re practicing meditation. Some people find that the accountability of taking a meditation class or working with a mindfulness coach can be immensely supportive in developing a regular meditation practice, while others may have a greater ease developing a practice on their own.
Some people love using a meditation app, while others feel more stressed and overwhelmed by all of the choices that an app offers. I always encourage new students to keep is simple, and start small. Try choosing one guided meditation that you listen to 3x/week and then increase the frequency gradually each week, and notice what happens. After three weeks, try introducing a second meditation, and try alternating the meditations on different days.
Once you become established in a regular mindfulness and resilience practice, the rewards that you experience from the practice will likely serve to keep you motivated to continue. As you experience future stressful events, you may likely notice that you feel more resilient and less tossed around by these events, as your mindfulness skills will serve to sustain you.
References
Bajaj, B. & Pande, N. Mediating role of resilience in the impact of mindfulness on life satisfaction and affect as indices of subjective well-being. Personality and Individual Differences. 93 (2016) 63-67.
Kemper, K., Mo, X., & Khayat, R. (2015). Are mindfulness and self-compassion associated with sleep and resilience in Health Professionals? journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine. 21 (8): 496-503.
Kong, F., Wang, X., & Zhao, J. (2014). Dispositional mindfulness and life satisfaction: The role of core self-evaluations. Personality and Individual Differences, 56, 165–169.
Schutte, N. S., & Malouff, J. M. (2011). Emotional intelligence mediates the relationship between mindfulness and subjective well-being. Personality and Individual Differences, 50, 1116–1119.