Learning how to be more resilient has been a hot topic in the training industry for the past few years. Once you master the art of resilience, you’ll not only become a better leader but you’ll also find yourselves becoming better partners friends, parents… whatever role you find yourselves in.
One of the many ways to be more resilient is by having awareness of your energy. In this post, you’ll discover ways you can start to do that.
What is Resilience?
I define resilience as how we react to change and bounce back from challenges. During stressful times, many of us lose sight of the fact that we are in total control of how we respond to every external event, whether it is a big change happening in our lives or a smaller situation where someone said or did something that triggers us.
One of the many ways to build resilience is to learn how to manage our energy and our reaction to any external event. Once you master this skill, you’ll find that others also show up differently around you.
Energy Attracts Like Energy
In face of challenges and conflicts, many of us, whether we know it or not, default to an energy of resistance and defense. How many of us have responded to comments and behaviors we find offensive with another offensive/defensive comment or action?
Energy truly attracts like energy. If we show up with defensive energy, the chances are, we’re getting back a lot of defensive energy. Just typing that sentence feels exhausting to me. So how do we start to show up differently to the world, to get back the positive energy that we’d like to cultivate in our lives?
Building Energy Awareness to be More Resilient
The first step is to have awareness of all of your own emotions and that truly takes practice.
To bring light to the emotions and judgements you have throughout your days, I invite you to try out the Judgement Log exercise below, taken from Bruce Schneider’s book, Core Energy Leadership.
You would be surprised to see how judgmental you are of yourself, others and situations around you! After gaining awareness, you can then start to work towards shifting your perspective and then ultimately shifting your energy. And that is exactly what I’m here to help you do.
Judgment Log
- Start a two-column journal on a piece of paper.
- In the left column, write any “positive” judgments that you make for the rest of today. In the right column, write any “negative” judgments that you make.
- Pay attention to all variants of “good” and “bad” (e.g. “hard working” and “lazy”).
Source: Core Energy Leadership by Bruce D. Schneider
