How to Build Your Emotional Resilience Muscle

Sep 07, 2022

Warning - this made me cry when I wrote it...

As many of you know, I love to swim in the North Sea – every day, if I can. Once my body adapts to the shock of cold water, something magical happens. For me, it feels like a kind of ‘surrender’ to the present moment; I am forced to focus on physically adapting to my environment and on using my breath as an anchor to remain calm.

My swimming buddies are challenging themselves to swim one mile in the cold North Sea to raise money for a much-loved sister who has been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. Whilst I haven’t actually met this lady, I feel inspired by her strength and courage, and deeply moved by her tragic circumstances. I feel a strong urge to do what I can to support her, and those who love her, just as I am sure you would too.

I can only imagine how difficult it is to witness the journey of a beloved sister through such suffering. My own experience of ‘bearing witness’ was with a coaching client-turned-dear-friend, Hazel, who lost her 2-year battle to cancer in June 2021. Hazel told me she needed a place to express the fears and feelings she didn’t want to burden close family with, who were already bereft at the prospect of life without her. We agreed that I would be her listening ear and supportive coach. Though I undoubtedly failed her sometimes, I pray that she felt some relief – as well as hope (her favourite emotion during this time), as a result of our conversations. My Friday calls and visits with Hazel over those two years were precious to me, and taught me much about what it means to be emotionally resilient.

Hazel often asked me, ‘what would the Thrivers do?’, referring to the research I’d done to understand how we can all build resilience in the face of difficulty. Each week Hazel had a new mountain to climb; a broken hip, a painful wrist, the inability to easily move around her home. The backdrop to every conversation, though, was how her beloved son would survive her passing, and flourish into the incredible man she knew he could become.  Every discussion focussed on what might provide her with some relief, hope or progress.  I fell in love with Hazel over those two years. I loved her spirit, her courage and her frailties too. I will be forever grateful to her loving family for allowing me to be with her in those final days, to say ‘farewell, my friend’. I know this may sound odd, but I wish she had been at her own funeral (and perhaps she was in some ways) to see how utterly loved and treasured she is – and how profoundly she has touched many, many lives.

Whilst Hazel and I spoke sometimes about preparing for her own death, and how to prepare her son for a life without her, we spoke much more about how she could live fully in the shadow of her terminal diagnosis. More than anything, she told me, she wanted to be deliberate about how she spent her precious time with loved ones and to create memories that could be treasured by those she would leave behind. She needed to dig deep to do that, to find a way to create joy and peace in the everyday events that make all of our lives meaningful. 

In fact, that’s something we must all do if we want to live our lives fully. The truth is, none of us know what lies around the next bend. Living fully means being present when life is good – and especially when it’s not. Being emotionally resilient doesn’t depend on what’s happening ‘out there’ but on what’s happening ‘in here’ – in our minds and our hearts. We have to actively maintain our hearts and minds, to nourish them, if they are to carry us beyond the tough times. Hazel and each of the ’50 Thrivers’ taught me how we can do just that. They showed me that it is the everyday practices that build our emotional resilience ‘muscle’, so that we can live and love fully, even in difficult circumstances. 

I want to share those insights with you. If you’d like to hear them (and perhaps share a few of your own) then please come along to my online (FREE) Masterclass at 5pm to 6.30pm on Tuesday 27 September 2022. You can register HERE. During this Masterclass, we will be exploring 5 key strategies that can best enable each of us to maintain emotional resilience and savour what life has to offer, even if it’s not what we had hoped for.

Here is what you can enjoy when you join The Thriving Force Programme

 

Access to 25+ coaching videos.

A downloadable workbook that accompanies each video to help you embed learning and identify the changes you can make to thrive, right now.

A coaching video at the end of each section that supports you to set goals and make lasting changes in your life.

Guided visualisations and questionnaires to support you to achieve change.

The opportunity to attend a quarterly 2-hour Masterclass (for free) to take a deep-dive into the topics covered and work with other delegates who want to make changes in their lives too.

You will become a member of The Thriving Force Programme Community which is an online interactive community where I will share blogs, answer questions, provide even more valuable content - and give you the opportunity to share your successes - and get advice about overcoming obstacles too.

All for the incredible price of just £195

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