Emotional Resilience 💖 and Structural Resilience 🏛
I believe that we need these two types of resilience to weather the life storms that can hit us when we least expect it. ⛈
Let’s take an example of unexpected job loss: The #layoffs and #redundancies in the past few months have been utterly ferocious and incredibly heart wrenching. 💔
How can I protect my children from such horrible things in the future?
The short answer is: I can’t.
I can only prepare them.
This involves getting them to understand the importance of building the foundation of emotional and structural resilience in order to withstand the unpredictability of life. 🛡
This foundation building work is ongoing, and is best done when the weather is dry and the proverbial floods is just a line item in the RAID* log. 😉 (As my dad says, in the army when you’re in the jungle – you don’t wait until you need a Number 2 before you dig a hole!)
𝗘𝗺𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗹𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 is the resourcefulness to ‘bounce back’ emotionally from unexpected crisis.
This depends on how full and how deep my ‘Emotional Resillience Well’ is on any given day.
🍩 The well is topped up every time a loved one or someone in my world gives me support or sincere encouragement. 📈
🍩The well is depleted every time an unkindness a sadness happens to me or to the world I care about. 📉
And so, I teach my children to surround themselves with people of similar values who will elevate them, challenge them, and support them.
𝗦𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗮𝗹 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗹𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 refers to the actual strategies to cope with crisis, such as:
🍩 Financial – Saving, investing and managing money
🍩 Professional – Keeping skills & certification up to date
🍩 Health – Eating healthy and moving daily
🍩 Relationship – building your network, nurturing friendships and looking out for family
🍩 Emotional – consistent self-care and ❤
These are all the things that will help push us through when things get rough – as they inevitably will.
How dark my winter gets depends on how well I’ve built my foundation of Resilience.
To my kids’ disappointment – structural resilience do not include “Crushing your enemies on Roblox”. 😑
How do you build your foundation of Resilience?
* Couldn’t resist the #ProjectManagement reference here 😁.
RAID = Risks, Assumptions, Issues & Decisions
