Hello everyone, I hope all is well with you. I’m back today after a week of work and writing. I was also able to sneak in some gal pal time and hang with one of my closest friends. She is a sweetie.
She’s also an artist. She is incredibly talented and supportive of all other artists whether they write, paint, or sculpt. I’ve found this type of support in the writing community as well. Creatives need to hang with other creatives. That’s all there is to it. We immediately understand the passion and drive to create and perfect.
My friend is teaching me how to paint, and I must say I’m learning in spite of myself. LOL! This winter while I’m hibernating, I’m also going to be writing and painting. I’m looking forward to winter. (A little bit 😉 I’m not a big fan of the cold anymore.)
But enough about that. Today, I want to talk about building your resilience muscle. All creatives need to build resilience in the face of rejection and criticism. We need to teach our children how to be resilient, too. But first, let’s define it.
Resilience is the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties.
According to Dr. Ginsburg a child psychologist there are seven C’s to resilience. They are listed below:
- Competence
- Confidence
- Connection
- Character
- Contribution
- Coping
- Control
We need to teach our children self-care skills such as cooking, doing laundry, and cleaning. They need to be able to take care of themselves and their environment. Not only do they need to learn self-care skills, but skills that will help them to be independent and earn a living. By doing this they will develop confidence in themselves.
We also need to teach them that it’s okay to ask for help and to help others. That’s where the connection part of all of this comes in. It’s important to make connections with other people within our community. To know we can reach out if we’re in need. I feel a lack of connection or disconnection is the root cause of our school shootings and mass shootings, but that’s another blog post for another time.
Character is another component. We need to be strong role models for our kids, and it must be genuine. Kids can tell when someone’s being inconsistent. Our words and our actions have to match.
Another component of resilience is contribution. It’s important for our kids to contribute to the household. This is where you can teach them cleaning skills. My boys contribute by vacuuming and dusting once a week. They also have learned to cook, and they clean up after themselves when they do cook. On a side note, it’s important that we as parents don’t criticize or find fault with their efforts. Remember they’re learning. They’re not going to do it perfectly the first few times, but with practice they’ll get better.
Learning to cope with life’s ups and downs is another building block of resilience. We need to teach our kids good coping skills for when they’re in adverse situations. They need to learn how to assert themselves and speak their truth. They also need to learn how to cope with stress. We can model this behavior ourselves by dealing with our own stress in healthy ways.
The very last factor in building resilience is control. As long as we know how to control our emotions, we’ll build our resilience. This is hard to achieve, but it’s not impossible. I don’t mean we have to not feel our emotions or try to stuff them down deep. I mean we feel our emotions, but don’t act on them. For example, let’s say your boss says something that makes you angry, but expressing that anger will hurt your career, so you choose to stay silent. That’s the kind of control that if mastered can help you build your resilience muscle.
Each of these components are a building block for resilience. We all need to be resilient in our daily lives. How do you build your resilience? Leave a comment! I’d love to hear from you!
