Mindful resilience is a way of paying attention, thinking, and behaving that helps us to effectively cope with and respond to adversity and difficult times. Resilience is a factor that shapes our wellbeing. And we now know that mindfulness and resilience are interconnected, as studies have shown that certain mindfulness meditation practices increase resilience.
“You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.” – Jon Kabat-Zinn
Difficult events are bound to happen in our lives. We can’t control that, but we do have some say in how we respond to these events. Mindful resilience is about cultivating an inner sense of strength and adaptability that helps us to buffer the impact of difficult events and also helps us to bounce back more quickly and easily with less stress when we encounter difficult times.
We can cultivate mindful resilience by:
- practicing certain types of meditation
- practicing mindful self-care
- mindful attention training
- cultivating a positive outlook
- developing inner strength
- developing healthy relationships with others
- practicing meeting difficulty skillfully
- cultivating positive emotional and mental states
- accepting that impermanence is a part of life
Life will always include difficult times, but even in the midst of it, we can learn skills to help us to navigate the difficulty with greater ease and feel more connected to the good that remains. And as chaotic as this world can seem sometimes, there is still so much good and beauty that remains.
When we bring ourselves back into balance with mindful resilience skills, we are able to more fully experience a sense of joy, happiness, gratitude, compassion, awe, and wonder. And we are eventually able to make meaning from the difficult times and move forward with a renewed sense of purpose.
Life is not measured by the number of breaths you take but by the moments that take your breath away. – Maya Angelou
A recent study found a significant link between mindfulness and resilience, noting that mindfulness predicted resilience and resilience mediated the relationship between mindfulness and life satisfaction and mindfulness and positive affect.
How LovingKindness Meditation Changes the Brain
Another study showed that compassion meditation training increased altruism and resulted in increased activation of areas of the brain that are related to understanding others’ suffering, regulative emotions, and positive feelings related to a goal or reward, including the inferior parietal cortex and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.
The results of this study suggested that individuals can cultivate compassion with training. It also suggested that increased activation of areas of the brain related to understanding others’ suffering, executive and emotional control, and reward processing may result in increased altruistic behavior. Studies have suggested that altruistic behavior fosters resilience.
Why Resilience Matters
Creating mindful resilience matters now perhaps more than ever before, because we are living in an ever-changing world filled with more ongoing stressors than most of us have had to deal with in our lifetime– stress related to extreme weather events and climate change, political upheaval, stress related to discrimination, and burnout and compassion fatigue. Frontline workers, including healthcare providers – physicians and other medical providers –and mental health providers are at increased risk for burnout and compassion fatigue.
Resilience training and mindfulness training can teach practical skills for burnout prevention and compassion resilience to support healthcare professionals to reduce stress and become more resilient during these difficult times and rediscover a renewed sense of purpose and meaning in their work.
Increasing resilience supports overall wellbeing, including our capacity for stress management and our overall sense of life satisfaction and work satisfaction. Having an overall sense of wellbeing supports our physical health and mental health and helps us to feel a greater sense of peace and happiness at home and at work.
Contact Jen Johnson for individual mindfulness coaching or resilience training for your business or corporation to support you in creating mindful resilience. Jen’s areas of speciality include mindfulness for resilience, resilience training, stress, anxiety, trauma, illness, compassion fatigue, and emotional resilience in climate change.
References:
Badri Bajaj and Neerja Pande. Mediating role of resilience in the impact of mindfulness on life satisfaction and affect as indices of subjective well-being. Science Direct. Volume 93, April 2016, Pages 63-67.
Weng, HY, Fox, AS, Shackman, AJ, Stodola, DE, Caldwell, JZK, Olson, MC, Rogers, GM, Davidson, RJ. Compassion training alters altruism and neural responses to suffering. Psychol Sci. 2013 Jul 1;24(7):1171-80.