How to thrive in uncertain times.
Normal life has shifted in small ways and in big, gigantic, this-is-actually-a-pandemic ways. As I write this article at least 64,742 people in the US (238,483 people worldwide) have died from Covid-19 and 26 million people are now unemployed.
While collectively we are all learning how to navigate this new world, undoubtable you are having to learn new skills to effectively handle your own set of stressors. Here are the best, research based tips for increasing your stress resiliency and learning how to thrive in uncertain times.
Photo Credit: Slade Kemmet Media
1. Start a mindfulness practice.
A big portion of fear in life comes from uncertainty about the future or ruminating about past life decisions. Starting a mindfulness practice can help you notice when you’ve run off with a negative fantasy about the future or are stuck re-living past events. This can help you live more fully in the present, which is often a lot less anxiety inducing.
Learning how to notice what you’re feeling can also help you to identify what emotions are welling up inside of you. Research shows that by being able to label complex or separate, interwoven emotions you can lower your physiological reaction.
By learning how to relate to your emotions as you would shifting clouds on the horizon, you can also learn how to depart from identifying yourself as those emotions. This helps you ride the highs and lows of life with more ease, and helps you understand that you are not anger, fear, sadness, guilt, despair, joy, or happiness, but rather a vessel that experiences these emotions.
When you detach yourself to a particular emotion or state — especially if it’s a negative view — it can allow you to see your situation within a broader context and thereby widen your choices in how to respond. A mindfulness practice helps you to keep perspective.
Types of Mindfulness Practices.
Mindfulness practices are essentially strength training for your brain. Helping to pave new paths of thinking, living and being — especially in the most chaotic moments of live. Similar to strengthening your physical muscles a mindfulness practice takes time. Most people start to notice the results in their personal lives within three weeks of daily practice. Others may notice the impact immediately.
Gratitude practice
A great introduction to a mindfulness practice is a daily gratitude practice. It helps you overcome the trained negatively bias we’ve all inherited and start to notice all the good things that are happening in your life.
Start by writing down eight things you’re grateful for every morning. Use the formula, I am grateful for _____, because ______. Being more specific and changing-up your responses daily can help you to switch-off your auto-pilot responses so you can get the most benefit. It is especially helpful to write down your gratitudes in order to engage other areas of your brain. Helping your new habit stick, faster.
Mantra Meditation.
A mantra meditation is the repeating of a certain phrase or set of phrases — either in your head or audibly — and being fully engaged as you express them. An especially helpful mantra meditation during uncertain times is a LovingKindness meditation. This meditation practice helps us to cultivate compassion, first for ourselves and then others. Compassion helps us feel more connected to others and can make difficult times feel more bearable.
Breathing Meditation
The concept of a breathing meditation is as simple as is sounds, but like most meditations it’s much harder to master — and that’s okay. It’s the nature of the mind to wander, and you’re practicing in order to improve your mindful muscle.
In this mindfulness practice, your focus of concentration is on the sensation of your breath in your body. Not the idea of breathing, but the focusing on wherever you feel your breath the most in your body. The apex of the practice is when you notice you haven’t been paying attention and you bring your attention back to the breath. Many meditation novices notice that their focus starts to wander within just one or two seconds. That’s okay! Remember you’re building your mental focus and it’s all part of the practice.
Moving Meditation
Moving meditations can come in multiple forms. Common examples include a walking or running meditation or a yoga practice. In these mindfulness practices your focus is on the sensations of the body as it moves through space. This practice can be especially helpful for those who may find sitting still to be difficult or are just looking to incorporate more movement into their practice.
Body Scan.
Body scans guide you through a series of intentional focus on certain parts of the body. Often they are accompanied by the gentle release of tension by flexing and then relaxing different sets of muscles.
The practice of Yoga Nidra can be an especially helpful if you have trouble letting go of tension before falling asleep.
Forest bathing.
The goal of forest bathing is to become completely immersed in the experience of being in nature surrounded by a canopy of trees. There is no running in forest bathing. Instead you’re asked to take slow meditative steps as you focus on the specific sensations you’re experiencing. Again, it’s the nature of the mind to wander. Noticing when you’ve wandered off to fantasy land instead of being present in your experience is part of the practice.
An added benefit of forest bathing is the chemical release of phytoncide from trees that has been shown to provide a significant increase in boosting your immune system by increasing the number of white blood cells.
2. Practice Self-Care.
Practicing self-care is essential to increasing our stress resiliency and living a happy, healthy life. When we’re coping with high levels of stress, it’s even more important to ramp up our time spent on self-care.
Allow yourself time to process difficult emotions. Allow yourself time to be unproductive. Allow yourself time to do things that bring you joy. Go for walks and bike rides. Get lost in a favorite book, an art project, playing video games with friends. Listen to good music. Enjoy a slow morning. Get outside. Savor the time you’ve been given with your family, or the space you’ve been given to get to know yourself better. Fill your punchbowl by getting enough sleep, eating mindfully, moving your body, and spending time with friends and family who light you up.
3. Learn how to have more by desiring less.
First, let’s acknowledge that not being able to pay your mortgage/rent or or other bills is scary. However, much anxiety about the future can be released when you realize you actually need very little in life to be happy.
Thriving in life — and in uncertain times — has much more to do with learning how to be content (not complacent) with were we are and a greater appreciation of what we have and what is going well for us. Even in the best of times, people often struggle with in insatiable desire for more.
When you learn to shift your framework to focus on the consumption of moments and not stuff you allow for more space to be happy — even in difficult times. Read more here.
4. Create a Daily Stress Resiliency Plan.
Being intentional about how you implement new stress resiliency tools - think self-care and mindfulness practices— can be especially helpful in getting these new habits to stick.
The goal is to build upon your stress resiliency practices until you’re engaged in at least one hour of these stress-busting habits, everyday. Research indicates that this will not only improve your ability to carry stress differently, but can be helpful in reversing damage stress has already done to your physical body. If you have the time, and are under particularly high amounts of stress, work toward adding another hour.
Learning how to thrive in uncertain times is not supposed to become an overwhelming checklist of things to do. Instead, choose one healthy habit to implement over the next 30 days and allow yourself plenty of space to let life happen. After you’ve mastered one new habit, add another. By focusing on slow and steady growth you’re much more likely to be successful in getting the new habit to stick.
Start small. Plan to implement one new habit for 15 or more minutes, everyday.
Choose your new habit.
Choose ONE habit you want to add to your morning routine from the list below. Tomorrow we'll talk more about the best ways to implement new habits.
• Drink a glass of water as soon as you wake up.
• Make your bed.
• Eat a healthy breakfast.
• Exercise for 10 minutes.
• Meditate for 2 minutes.
• Start a daily gratitude practice.
3. Choose your cue.
Our daily routines are just a bunch of habits linked together. In fact, research shows that 40% of our days are essentially spent on autopilot, where we tap into a series of feedback loops we’ve collected over the course of our lifetime.
Habits consist of a cue/trigger, the action, and a reward.
Think about brushing your teeth. After breakfast you might have a film or slimy feeling on your teeth, that’s the trigger, so you brush you teeth (the action) and are rewarded with a minty-fresh tingling sensation, which makes your mouth feel clean and you feel good.
So, the best way to add or shift a habit is to incorporate it into a loop that already exists.
To put it more simply, add your new habit before or after something you already do everyday.
CUE IDEAS:
• Waking up.
• Taking a shower.
• Eating breakfast.
• Taking the dog for a walk.
• Drinking coffee.
• Brushing your teeth.
4. Choose your reward.
Give yourself a little, immediate reward after you complete your new habit. By sandwiching your new healthy habit in-between something you already do and something pleasurable, your brain will not only start to associate that habit with the fun reward and eventually start to crave it. Have some fun with your rewards and stay curious. If a reward doesn’t seem to be hitting the mark, feel free to change it up until you find something that does.
CUE HABIT REWARD
Alarm Drink water Coffee
Coffee Go for a 15 min walk Watch a funny Youtube Video
Shower Meditate Spend 5 min on Instagram
5. Practice for 30 days. then add another habit.
It takes at least 30 day to form a habit. If you’ve found you’ve been consistent with the addition of one new, health, stress resilient habit go ahead and add another. If you weren’t able to be consistent with your new habit, without judgement, notice what was getting in your way and make some adjustments to how, when, or what you’re doing.
6. Find an accountability coach.
If you’re interested in having some more accountability to your practice, hire me to act as your stress resiliency coach. Choose from one, hour long session for $150. Or six, one hour sessions for $750. Email me at brianna@seekunited.org to get started.