Thought for the Month: Resilience

Developing resilience is about being able to cope with adversity and push through difficulties.

The benefits include growing a deeper sense of well-being, feeling less anxious and irritated and bouncing back from life’s challenges with more ease. Also, when the waves of life come at you, you can meet them differently.

It all sounds easy! But of course it isn’t! It takes work, cultivation of mindfulness and compassion, finding and building resource, growing gratitude and being courageous. But as we build a strong back to support ourselves we can also cultivate a soft front to be open and receptive to the challenges we face and hold it all with an open heart of kindness and love as we learn to care for ourselves.

Resilient people know that life throws curve balls! They are impossible to escape - see if you can find someone who has managed a lifetime without any! Resilient people are really good at knowing where they select their attention. By realistically appraising situations, you can look at things differently. Change happens; good changes to bad, bad to good. This is life! By selecting attention through mindful practice you don’t have to live in the negative in the mind, you can see and grow the good that is always available. There is another aspect to resilient people; they ask themselves “is what I am doing helping me or harming me?”.

Pause and reflect on all of this. As Albert Einstein said, “In the middle of difficulty, lies opportunity.”

Tina Gilbert lives in Livingston and teaches** yoga and meditation. Visit her website at www.yogamed.co.uk (**All my classes are currently running online)