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Session 1 of 6
Introducing Resiliency In College: Becoming Resilient
Getting Started
Today, we will introduce what resiliency is and why building resiliency is so important.
This course is a professional and personal jumpstart to support your college experience. I intentionally include options to dive deeper into each content area to better explore an area you want to learn more about or increase skills on.
While reviewing each online portion, including the videos presenting new information, you will be prompted to turn to your accompanying workbook to review and plan how resilience can support and be practiced in your day-to-day life. I hope that this course will help you through your college experience and that it will also support your career.
Download and Print the Session One pages of the Workbook.
Introduction to Resiliency
In today's lecture, we're diving into a brief overview of what resiliency is, the components of resiliency, and how to begin to connect each of these to grow your resilience.
Complete the Getting Started activity on pg. 6 of your Workbook.
Two ways to think about resilience:
- The ability to bounce back from negative emotional experiences and flexible adaptation to the changing demands of stressful experiences (Tugade & Fredrickson, 2004).
- The ability to expand your range of resiliency to grow your capacity while limiting the negative impact of stress. This is best understood as the ability to do more with less mental, physical, and emotional energy. This is when you primarily stay out of, or limit, a state of overwhelm, chronic doing, or chronic input in the form of work, relationships, and technology. Basically, never allowing yourself time to rest.
What areas of your schooling can you think of now where these abilities will be helpful?
Below are the 6 Pillars of Resilience, originally identified by Dr. Martin Seligman and his team. Our aim is to assist you in weaving these throughout your life in college and beyond.
After reading the PDF below, take a moment to think about how the 6 Pillars of Resilience might already be present within your life.
In the Workbook, complete the activities listing 5 words, 3 strategies, and labeling.
How Resilience Shows Up in Your Life
Take a few minutes to sit quietly and remember a recent (last 6 months) moment where you were amazed by resilience.
Take time with each of these categories separately. By practicing slowing down to notice the amazing, you'll increase your likelihood of looking for these moments more often.
- In yourself (at school)
- In a peer or mentor
- By a stranger
What do you remember of these times you've recognized resilience?
Things that Grow and Steal Your Resilience
A crucial step to building and expanding your resilience is understanding how certain behaviors or environmental factors grow and steal your resilience on campus. The lists below are meant as a few examples, but take a few moments now to review what grows and steals your resilience at school.
Things that grow your resilience (you want to spend more time on these):
- Taking care of your body
- Sleep
- Proper nutritional habits
- Exercise/movement
- Knowing when and how to shut off work
- Surrounding yourself with supportive peers and mentors
Things that steal your resilience (you want to limit these):
- Multitasking-creates too much activation in our brains
- Not taking sufficient breaks
- Not being able to say no when you should
In the Workbook, complete the activity listing times when you plan to practice.
Ability to be Present
A key component to improving your daily resiliency is increasing your ability to be present. When beginning each day’s lesson, start with one minute to look around the space you're in and settle into what you're doing. Visually notice what's around you. This contributes to a sense of safety which is at the core of being resilient. Notice details. Notice your breath.
- Resiliency requires you to be present.
- Utilize this experiential exercise to contribute to present-moment awareness.
a. Think about some times during the day when you are the most present and focused.
b. What makes those moments possible?
In the Workbook, list ways to practice being more present.
Benefits of being Resilient in College
- Helps you persevere through academic challenges
- Promotes better Time Management
- Prevents burnout/mental health
- Helps hold meaning to your work
- Transitions with you between school and personal life
- Eases uncertainty of future
Take a deeper dive
Dr. Sapolsky marvelously explains why animals in the wild don't suffer from the same chronic stress we humans struggle with. Dive in if you'd like to know the science behind all this from a human operation standpoint.