Did you know that the word resilience stems from the latin word reslire meaning to ‘bounce back’ and that is exactly what resilience is all about, the ability to bounce back from stressful or traumatic situations.
Masten’s work on resilience centres around the ability of children’s bounce back capabilities but she opens up her book talking about the fact that the word is used in many different walks of life. For example, A metal’s ability to withstand cracking under high stress is called a resilient metal…we put all our electronic and engineering innovations through stress tests to establish how much pressure they can withstand before they break.
In life we test a person’s resilience by at how well they can recover after a knock back or bad experience. When they are able to do this quickly and, with some people, are even better from having had the experience we tend to imbue them with some sort of mystical or as Masten suggests magical power that escapes ordinary humans. However, the simple fact is that this magic is ordinary and all it takes is the ability to access simple resources to make everyone as magical as the next resilient person.
Here are a couple of resilient resources borrowed from Paula Davis-Laack the founder of the Stress and Resilience Institute in America and the people that she borrowed them from.
Amy Cuddy’s Power Pose – Simply put, this is using your physicality to trick your brain. When you are feeling in a weak position then strike a ‘Power Pose’ such as the ‘Superman stance’, no not when he is flying that would just be a bit ridiculous, his standing pose of hands on hips with leg shoulder width apart, chin held high and body perfectly balanced. Cuddy’s research showed that adopting a power pose literally tricks your brain into feeling more powerful and therefore resulting in you feeling more empowered. So the next time you feel as if you are being overpowered by work or just life think ‘Superman’ and strike a power pose for a minute and feel your power grow from within.
The second is so simple that you can do it right now and that is to change the password on your most used electronic device. Think of how many times you actually enter your password. So instead of it being a boring throw away moment make the password mean something. I.e. link it to a goal you are trying to achieve or something that makes you smile or a short empowering statement almost like a mantra and see how this continual reminder of your brilliance impacts your feeling of confidence and wellbeing.
If you would like to explore more from Ann S Masten or Paula Davis-Laack here are a couple of websites that might be useful
Peace
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