- Hey everybody, happy Monday.
Now, today we're going to talk about resiliency
and how we can build up our own.
Because I don't know about you, but it seems like everyone
is talking about it and how important it is.
But no one is talking about what it really is
or how we can cultivate it.
But before we jump into that, are you new to my channel?
Welcome!
Make sure you are subscribed and have
your notifications turned on so that when I release a video,
you don't miss out.
Okay, let's get into resiliency.
Now, resiliency is defined as the capacity
to recover quickly from difficulties or toughness.
But when it comes to our psychological health,
it's a bit more than that.
It's about our ability to manage any crisis or upset
and get back to baseline quickly, meaning that life's ups
and downs don't throw us off for that long.
We have tools and resources and we can bounce back quickly.
And no, stuffing things down
and pretending they didn't happen
does not count as resiliency, just FYI.
I've often, in the past, used the poker chip analogy
to describe resilience.
If you don't know what I'm talking about,
I've shared in other videos how we wake up
with a certain number of poker chips.
It's just a nice visual.
And stressful or difficult things
cost us some of those chips.
Others prefer to use the spoons analogy, but either way,
we're talking about good old fashioned resilience.
And I know you're wondering how do we know what
our resilience is or how good or bad we're doing with it.
And the way to find that out is to notice
or even to think back to the last crisis
that we had in our life.
Think about how long it took for you to get back
to feeling like yourself.
Was it a quick turn around, like lickety-split,
or did we struggle for weeks, months or maybe even years?
If we bounce back easily, we have more resilience,
and if we struggle more to move past it, we have less.
But no matter how much resilience we have,
we can all benefit from more of it.
And that's why, today,
I'm sharing 10 ways that we can all build resiliency.
Number one, journal.
I know some of you won't like this one
or you don't even know how to get started in journaling.
If you don't know, I do have my journal club
via YouTube memberships.
It's $5 a month and I share a journal prompt or a thought
to get you going in your journal every Tuesday and Friday.
So that could really help.
What journaling really does is it builds resilience
because it helps us process all we may be feeling
and going through, getting all of our thoughts,
upsets, worries or whatever out
and onto paper or a Google Doc, whatever.
It can help us see situations more clearly and possibly
feel less weighed down by them,
and that, in turn, will help us move past
any crisis more quickly and get back to our pre-crisis self.
My second tip, build a support system.
This could be online through my Facebook group
or 7 Cups, BetterHealth, Talkspace,
or even our community as a whole or truly,
wherever you find support online.
But, this should also be in person, whether that's friends,
family, co-workers, your therapist, psychiatrists.
If you have trouble meeting people and making friends,
don't worry, I've got ya.
I have some videos about that.
Just search Kati Morton making friends
and it'll pop right up.
And there's this quote that I love that really,
I don't know, I just feel like it totally expresses
why support systems are helpful and so vital to our life.
The quote is, "A joy shared is a joy doubled.
"A sorrow shared is a sorrow halved."
Having people we can talk things out with
can really help us work through it and get back
to being ourselves more quickly.
My third tip is to take care of your basic needs.
In DBT, I reference this all the time.
We call this HALT, and that stands for hungry,
angry, lonely and tired.
If we don't take care of those basic needs,
we aren't as resilient.
Just think about it,
there's a reason people call it being hangry.
We get angry and are more easily upset when we're hungry
and the same can be said if we're overly tired.
So if you need to take a break, take it.
If you're hungry, grab a snack or a meal.
And if you're sick, please see a doctor
and take some time off.
Taking care of yourself is really
the foundation of resilience.
Making that a priority will pay dividends
for how well you manage anything life throws at you.
My fourth tip is to notice your self-talk.
I know I talk about this all the time,
but if we fee confident and good about ourselves,
we can take on more.
So notice, notice if you're talking shit to yourself
or if you're being kind and compassionate.
If it's hard to be kind, maybe think of what
your best friend or mom would say to you
and write those nice things down.
You could even improve your self-talk
by ending each day by writing down three to five things
that you like about yourself.
I know, it can be really, really hard,
but nothing worth having is easy, so stick with it.
And I swear, you will feel the difference.
Also, if it's too hard to come up with the good things
to say about yourself, it's okay to use bridge statements.
For example, if saying that I look great and I
am important is just too much for me,
which I think it is for a lot of us,
right, instead of trying to say that, I could say,
you know, it is possible that I'm not
as bad as I think I am.
Start there.
That will help bridge the gap between
the nasty self-talk and the nice self-talk.
Number five, live with purpose.
Now, I know that sounds like a big item and something
that you can't just do in one day, and while that is true,
it's also a lot simpler than you think.
It could be helping raise awareness for a cause
or issue that's important to you.
Joining a sports team; yes, they have them for all ages.
Lawn bowling is huge where I live and it's filled
with people in their 60s and older.
Or you could start or join a book club.
Whatever you get excited about or things
that you want to improve in your area,
make time to do that more.
Start something locally.
It gives you purpose and that,
in turn, helps you build resilience.
Number six, become friends with your feelings.
I know, I know, we all hate our feelings and want
to ignore them so they'll go away.
But we also know that that only causes us to explode
with emotion at really inopportune times.
Becoming friends with them is
the most helpful and beneficial.
Tracking them is a great place to start
because, if we've been stuffing them down,
we may not even know what it is we're feeling.
Google a feelings chart, print some out,
and start noticing three to five emotions
you experience each day.
And yes, they can be the same each and every day,
but please try to come up
with other emotion words to describe them.
For example, if you usually select sad,
maybe come up with an alternative like I felt down or upset.
Once you've identified them, you can use your journal,
back to tip number one,
to write out where that emotion came from,
why do you think you feel the way you feel,
and it can be so helpful and validating.
My next tip is to manage your impulses.
People who are resilient still have impulses.
They just also have a voice in their head that keeps
it in check and they know that the urge will pass.
And, if they give into it, it will only make things worse.
So get to know your own impulses.
They could be urges to sabotage your relationship
by starting a silly fight.
Maybe it's an impulse to self-harm or engage
in eating disorder behavior.
Perhaps it's to overspend and shop online
or abuse alcohol or other substances.
Whatever it is, pay attention to what you tend
to do and maybe regret later.
Once you know what they are, then you can use an impulse log
to fight against the urge.
They have these in the SAFE Alternatives app,
but an impulse log truly is just what is the impulse
or what is it that you're wanting to do,
what happened recently to lead to this impulse,
what is is that I'm trying to not feel or not deal with
and what can I do instead.
And that should really help you better manage
any unhealthy impulses and get ya back
to feeling like yourself more quickly.
My eighth tip is to learn to problem solve.
I know that sounds like a silly thing and everyone knows
how to problem solve, but that's not true.
So many of us have no clue how to problem solve.
We can just stop talking to someone completely
because they upset us, or give up on a goal because
one person told us that it was stupid.
Don't let that happen to you.
Overcoming obstacles is uncomfortable at times,
but completely worth it.
Something I do when I'm faced with a problem
is I write out what the problem is, how I feel about it,
and what the worst thing that could happen is.
Then, I consider what a neutral outcome of the problem is,
and lastly, what I hope happens, what's the ideal scenario.
Then, I take some time and I try to work backwards
from the outcome that I want.
What steps do I need to take to get there?
What things can I control?
What is out of my control that I need to let go of
verses trying to hold on to that makes things worse.
We do that, I do that, I know.
But I know all of these steps,
it can just seem really tedious,
but it can really help us from letting one issue
get under our skin and steal some of those poker chips
that we've been working so hard to collect.
My ninth tip, grow your list of healthy coping skills.
I talk about this all the time,
but coping skills are just things that we can do
instead of the unhealthy or bad thing that we
have that impulse to do.
We should be using these all the time.
I know I do.
I use different coping skills each and every day.
For example, today, I made time for yoga,
so I had my own alone time and I got to relax a bit.
When I woke up, I forced myself to come up with three things
that I was looking forward to.
I have a whole video about coping skills,
so just search Kati Morton coping skills and it
will pop up if you need some more ideas.
But try to come up with five and work your way
into have 10 that you can use regularly.
Make sure these really work for you,
because if we use coping skills each and every day,
and not just when we're in crisis,
we're sort of stock piling our poker chips
so that we're more resilient over all.
And my 10th and final tip, set goals.
I can't tell you how many of my patients
don't have any goals, no goals.
When I ask them, they aren't sure,
and they'll be like, "Oh, well, I mean, I'm in therapy,
"so in theory, I wanna get better."
Come on people, we can do better than that.
Let's start setting some goals.
I know we're more used to doing this when we're children
in school or if we work in an organization
where we have to build our way up,
but we should still have things that we want
to do in our personal life.
Maybe it's travel based, relationship based.
It could be work or a school goal, too.
Or even small things that we wanna do around our area
or improvements we wanna make on our home or apartment.
What are your goals for the next month?
How about six months?
Start thinking about this and know that there
is no judgment when it comes to your goals.
It could be that you wanna shower three times
this week because it's been really,
really hard for you lately.
Whatever it is, set it,
write it down and then work to make it happen.
I would also set smaller goals you
can accomplish today or this week,
and then start looking farther and farther out.
This will give you something to look forward to
and help build your confidence and your own abilities
and overall, build your resilience.
I hope you found that helpful and please,
if you have any other tips or ideas,
leave them in the comments down below because together,
we are working towards a healthy mind and a healthy body.
And I will see you next time, bye!
(lively music)