A current project as part of my wider Nemetona work is facilitating a group of women looking at ways to widen their emotional resilience - particularly in the current chaotic environmental and political times in which we live.
Something that I learned very early on in my facilitation career (useful in life generally too, I think) was to never ask participants to do an activity I had not done myself. So, as my plan was to encourage an 'audit' of how they experienced their current state of 'tools in the emotional resilience toolbox' to be - with a view to setting goals and intentions for gaining new ones, should they wish to - I recently completed an audit for myself.
I use a two part structure for this: the first to include the emotional resilience skills we might call inherent... ie, those we believe ourselves to hold already - whether via nature or nurture, genetic predisposition, or simply learning from the accumulation of life experiences. As Friedrich Nietzsche said way back in 1888, "Out of life's school of war - what doesn't kill me, makes me stronger". Telling others what doesn't kill them makes them stronger has become a bit of cliche, and can appear to be dismissive of truly challenging situations, but some recent psychological research has proved that many people do indeed feel "stronger", "inspired" or more "spiritual" after experiencing traumatic events.
The second part of the audit is to consider what proven 'tips, tricks and handy hints' exist for gaining more emotional resilience. These might be activities I have never even thought about trying; or I might be aware of but not tried for various reasons; or I've tried and found helpful but use infrequently. The idea being that we need to increase, both quantitively and qualitatively, those activities we find helpful, and to experiment with those we've yet to try.
One of my personal favourites is to ensure that I feel resourced as much as I can be, as often as I can be, and one way to do that for me is via reading... I taught myself to read (apparently) before I went to school and have always read voraciously. Studying for a degree in English Literature helps you learn to read quickly too! I read books and journals relevant to my areas of interest, and nowadays of course enjoy the resources of the Internet too. I subscribe to many blogs, newsletters etc and Positive News is one of them. This week, there's a brilliant article about Abundance and they are asking for readers' experience of how abundance comes into their lives. I found this wonderful to muse on this morning during my abundance of proper coffee and toast (proper marmalade too - no orange-flavoured goo for me, thank you very much), and decided to write a short response. This is it:
We hear constantly about losses in the natural world, especially reduction in or total extinction of species. I do not want to minimise this real and dangerous situation - I have a lived experience of being a child, in the 1950's, out on my own, always wandering lanes, woodlands, and river banks and now, wandering those places again, weeping for the differences I see.
AND YET... I experience abundance most easily and most often in my life when I connect to the natural world, depleted as it may be. In the wilder places we do have left, and in places protected by appropriate agencies, there is a richness of habitats and species to wonder at and to enjoy, as well as plenty of clean fresh air to breathe. And even in the busiest, most overcrowded, most polluted places, nature survives, or attempts to. A bee collects nectar from a dandelion growing through a crack in the pavement. Peregrines nest and successfully breed in tall city structures. Across the globe, myriad insects, birds and many mammals survive - even thrive - on human detritus. The other-than-human has an abundant capacity for endurance, whatever we humans do to endanger that. Such 'endurance abundance' enables me to survive - even thrive - also.
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| An Abundance of Sweet Honesty: zoom in - each black dot is the seed of a new plant |
I hope you can enjoy reflecting on your own experiences of Abundance. I really think it deserves a capital letter.
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| A favourite kind of Abundance |
