Straightforward strategies to pursue your purpose, accelerate your growth, show up as your whole self, increase higher order thinking and align your time with your values. What to try. Why it Works. For When it Matters.
3 Actionable Strategies to Rev Up Your Resilience
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This past week I lost my sh*t with my boys on two separate occasions. Over-tired, under-appreciated and flimsy boundaries are a tough combination to begin with… add in time pressure for me and it’s a recipe for explosion. And for disappointment. That is not how I want to show up. But was it a failure? That depends on how I look at it and how readily I can access my resilience. Resilience
/rəˈzilēəns/
the capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.
If I tap into my resilience, those explosions aren’t failures or indictments of my character… They’re data. They’re feedback. They’re opportunities. Personal growth is an ongoing process and it’s rarely linear. Those moments when an old habit or trigger comes back with a vengeance are humbling to say the least, but they’re not moments of failure… they’re invitations to go deeper. Deeper into self-compassion, deeper into self-exploration, deeper into intentionality, deeper into awareness. What matters isn’t that you took a step backwards… It’s what you do next. Do you beat yourself up over it for days or weeks, leverage it as evidence against yourself get stuck in rumination? Or do you move quickly through a recovery cycle — reflect, repair and realign? That depends on your resilience. In the last issue, we explored 3 different measures of personal growth, including the time it takes to recover from a misstep: Cycle Time. In this issue, we’re getting actionable with 3 strategies to build resilience by accelerating your Cycle Time So you can get closer to real-time realignment… (no matter what your kid (or your life) throws at you). The Recovery CycleNo matter how far into your growth journey you might be, no matter how aligned you are on a regular basis, missteps are going to happen. The process of returning to realignment after a misstep follows a 5 step cycle: The Recovery Cycle 1. Misalignment You slip into an old pattern, behavior or mindset that doesn’t reflect who you want to be. 2. Awareness You notice a reactive response, an overly critical internal monologue, an “old” habit that you’re trying to break. a moment in which you didn’t show up as your best self. 3. Acceptance You accept that it happened, embrace the misstep with self-compassion, forgive yourself for the regrettable moment. This sets the stage for being able to learn from it. 4. Integration You internalize the lessons learned from the experience — about yourself and your triggers. Internalizing means you’re not just noticing what happened, but also WHY it happened. By exploring and internalizing the why, you’re collecting a valuable data point and giving yourself the opportunity to adjust your future response. 5. Realignment You return to a state where your thoughts, behaviors & actions align with who you want to be. Cycle Time and Why it MattersIn the business world, Cycle Time refers to how long it takes to complete one process from beginning to end. Applied to personal growth, Cycle Time is the length of time it takes you to complete one recovery cycle from misalignment back to alignment. Each time you go through a recovery cycle, you build your resilience — the ability to recover from setbacks, adapt to new challenges, and continue growing. Resilience is not just about bouncing back — it’s about how quickly you can do so. The more efficiently you can move through the recovery cycle after a misstep, the more adaptable and emotionally resilient you become. The shorter your Cycle Time, the stronger your resilience, the more often you show up in your life as who you want to be. When I first started working on myself, my feedback loops were slooooow. I would Notice a misstep (Step 1) and then get stuck in Step 2. Instead of accepting right away, I would obsess over the misstep, beating myself up and imaging all sorts of worst case outcomes. As worked to better understand myself & my triggers, I observed my Cycle Time speeding up. I could Notice, Accept and Realign within a day, and then a morning, and now (sometimes) even within a moment. My resilience -- the ability to recover quickly -- was steadily increasing. I realized that this doesn't need to be a passive process… Resilience is something we can cultivate intentionally. I started to identify & operationalize strategies to rev up my resilience and accelerate my recovery time so I could get back to -- or stay in -- alignment with the version of me I want to be. These strategies to increase resilience, like the three below, have become a core pillar of my personal growth and my coaching practice. 3 Strategies to Rev Up Your Resilience 1. Accelerate Awareness: Define a VisionThe faster you can recognize when you’ve slipped into old patterns, the quicker you can complete your recovery cycle and get realigned. You strengthen your resilience and accelerate your recovery when you maintain a clear vision of who you want to be. That vision provides you with a built-in personal compass that enables you to identify when your actions, thoughts or behaviors have veered off course, triggering the next step in the process of getting back on track. How it works: When you maintain a clear and vivid image of your desired future self, you prime your brain to notice when you’ve deviated from that vision. It becomes easier to catch misalignments early and take action sooner. What to do: Visualization Picture yourself at your best — the you that you want to be. How do you speak, how do you listen, how do you feel about yourself, how do you carry yourself? What are the core traits that define this version of you? Are you compassionate, resolute, vocal, self-confident, patient, calm, flexible, grounded, focused, free-spirited, relaxed, ambitious…? There is no wrong answer, only your answer. Who and how you want to be. Take a moment to embody those qualities — Notice what that feels like. Visualize a moment where this version of you faces a typical setback or challenge. How do you respond? Now, shift your focus to the impact of living life as this version of you. What opportunities open up for you? How do you feel about yourself? How do others respond to you? Activate this vision. As you conclude the visualization, focus on how you feel in this moment of alignment. Write down what you envisioned:
Choose a compass word or phrase that perfectly describes this version of you. Take a few minutes each day to reconnect with this future self, what she says and does, how she acts, how she feels. Every morning, say your compass word out loud and ask yourself: What can I do today that aligns with or brings me closer to this version of me? When you act in alignment with this version of you, notice, recognize, celebrate and repeat your compass word. This intentional repetition will intertwine your vision of who you want to be with who you are now. It will anchor your awareness strengthen your resilience, pull you back towards this version of you, help you recognize when you’ve drifted away and accelerate your ability recover and realign. 2. Accelerate Acceptance: Cultivate a Growth MindsetAcceptance is often the hardest part of the cycle. It’s where I always used to get stuck. When you realize you’ve messed up, it can be easy to fall into self-criticism, shame, or frustration. But these emotions lock you into a fixed mindset that creates barriers to moving forward. They weaken your resilience. Cultivating a growth mindset does the opposite. The essence of a growth mindset is the belief that abilities & intelligence can be developed through effort, learning and persistence. With a growth mindset, challenges aren't failures they're opportunities to learn, and catalysts for positive change. They're resilience-builders. One of the most powerful ways to cultivate a growth mindset is by reframing challenges not as obstacles but as learning experiences. When you encounter a setback, instead of seeing it as a sign of failure, you can train yourself to look for the lesson it offers. How it works: Reframing setbacks as learning opportunities helps you shift from frustration to reflection. This reduces the emotional friction that can prolong the recovery process and revs up resilience. The more quickly you can extract lessons from a misstep, the sooner you can integrate those insights (Step 4) and get back on track. What to do: Train your Brain to Ask Reflective Questions When faced with a challenge or setback, be intentional about conducting a debrief to extract the lessons. Ask yourself:
This practice primes your brain to think in terms of growth rather than defeat and to see challenges as stepping stones rather than roadblocks. With those roadblocks out of the way, you’re able to move to the next step of the recovery cycle. And thanks to neuroplasticity, doing this type of debrief trains your brain to look for learning opportunities in future challenges, which strengthens your resilience more and more over time. 3. Accelerate Integration: Make Time for Unstructured Creative ExpressionIntegration is the phase of recovery when you process the lessons from a misalignment and embed them in your daily life, becoming more resilient. Integration is about expanding your understanding of the what, how and why of your triggers and using that awareness to avoid being triggered in the future. This requires not just collecting, but connecting, the dots, synthesizing what you observe and what you extract into an actionable insight that can help you grow. This type of higher-order thinking can be cultivated through unstructured creative expression. How it works: When you give your mind the time and space to wander, you create opportunities for higher-order thinking. Your brain shifts into a more relaxed, reflective state that encourages deeper self-awareness, facilitates problem-solving and invites intuition. This allows deeper insights to surface. You’re able to connect your triggers & behaviors to what you’ve experienced and observed, making it easier to see how to apply those lessons to not just realign in the moment, but to become who you want to be. What to do: Schedule Creative Breaks Set aside dedicated time each week (or, even better, each day) for unstructured creative expression. This can be as simple as doodling, journaling freely, or taking a walk without a set agenda. Allow your mind to wander during these brain breaks. When you feel your brain drifting back into productive or worry mode, remind yourself that you have time to figure that out later. This is your time to be free. You’ll be surprised how often insights about your triggers or areas for growth naturally emerge when you’re not actively trying to solve a problem. Over time, this regular practice will accelerate your ability to integrate new lessons, strengthening your resilience and making future recovery cycles smoother and quicker. Remember, personal growth isn’t about avoiding missteps. It’s about how quickly you can recognize, accept, and learn from them. Revving up your resilience with these strategies helps you move through that recovery cycle more quickly and intentionally so you can live in alignment with the you that you want to be. Interested in incorporating more resilience-building strategies? Check out this February 2024 issue of Time by Design. Know someone who might want to build their resilience too? Please feel free to forward this email. Got a different strategy to strengthen your resilience? Share it with me by replying here! Want to build your own resilience toolkit? xx Nicole |
Time by Design
Straightforward strategies to pursue your purpose, accelerate your growth, show up as your whole self, increase higher order thinking and align your time with your values. What to try. Why it Works. For When it Matters.
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