Welcome back to our brand new guided interactive series – How to Flourish! If you’re joining us for the first time, make sure to go back and check out the previous week’s article so you don’t miss a thing. This week we’re talking about Presence and Resilience, and how you can increase your capacity for both.

How to use this guide:

Try out the exercises and take time to reflect afterward. You can just allow your thoughts to flow in a “brain dump” style journaling session, or using voice notes. Feel free to keep these to reflect later or even delete them once the thoughts are out of your head! You can also work through these questions with a friend or partner. 

It may be helpful to do this work in short sessions daily or a few times per week. Get comfortable, make a cup of tea or coffee. Put on a soothing playlist or enjoy some quiet time. 

You can also feel grounded by doing some deep breathing before you get started! An easy exercise to begin with is inhaling for 4 and exhaling for 6, pretending like you are blowing out through a straw. This will help you activate your parasympathetic nervous system, aka the “rest, digest, recover” part.

Living in the Present Moment

There’s a saying that if you’re feeling depressed, you’re living in the past. If you’re feeling anxious, you’re living in the future. And that if you’re at peace, you’re living in the present. Get curious and see if this feels applicable to you! Whether or not you like the quote, it’s a great reminder to check in with yourself and see where your mind is when you have these feelings.

Busy, But for What?

Many people are so busy all the time, but just completing tasks, checking boxes, and moving so quickly to the next thing that they barely acknowledge all that they’ve done. Others get regularly lost in thought remembering or ruminating over past events and let those memories and feelings determine much of their day to day actions.

Something that most people have in common is that they don’t slow down and just experience the present moment, let alone go deeper into “the inner work.”. Most people don’t even slow down enough to take just two deep breaths, let alone take time for themselves. What about you?

Use Mindfulness to Slow Down

A great way to slow down and experience the present moment is mindfulness. You can start by incorporating this into your day in activities you already do. For example, how about taking a mindfulness walk? Try this without any music, podcasts, phone calls, or other distractions. Just walk at a comfortable pace and notice what’s around you. Or try mindfully eating a meal. Just you and your food, and if you’re with another person, them. No phones, no books, no tv.

Other Ways to Get Present

Other ways to get into the present moment include breathing exercises, journaling, or gentle movement. You can do something as simple as taking ten slow, deep breaths and see how you feel after. Try journaling, just letting your thoughts freely flow with now agenda. Or do some gentle stretching, legs up a wall, or just lay down on a yoga mat or your bed or couch. If quiet time scares you because of what thoughts or feelings come up, that’s okay. Starting small, even thirty seconds to a minute, can help you access feelings of peace and calm.

Increasing Your Capacity and Resilience

You can increase your capacity and resilience through regulating your emotions and nervous system, managing stress and developing positive coping mechanisms, and developing an abundance mindset. As we have already discussed, your thoughts and mindset impact your wellbeing greatly. In addition, regulating your emotions and nervous system can help even more.

Emotional Regulation 101

There are lots of simple ways to begin regulating your emotions.

1 – Your Emotional Home

Assess your “emotional home” or your top 5 most commonly felt emotions. Make a list. Think about what this is like currently and if there’s any changes you’d like to make. Get curious about your emotions. Which ones feel accessible? And which ones don’t?

2 – Body Scan

Do a body scan and notice if you tend to associate emotions with certain areas. Start at your toes and move all the way up to your head, just noticing and observing. Make this a regular practice.

3 – Do You React or Respond?

Reflect on what extent your emotions are involved in your decision making. Aim to be present and pause so that you can be aware is a great first step. Just a simple pause can help you shift from reacting to what happens to feeling in control and choosing your response.

4 – Feel Your Feelings

Also, allowing yourself to feel, even when it’s not comfortable. Normalize and equalize your emotions, trusting that they will move through when you don’t block or avoid them. Remember, they are like clouds in the sky – they come and go, and they are not who you are.

Nervous System Regulation Basics

Regulating your nervous system is also so important.

1 – Body Scanning – Yes Again!

Get started by doing a body scan. See where you might be holding tension. Notice what sensations you feel in different areas of your body. When you feel yourself get stressed out or shutting down, what’s going on in your body? Again, get curious and see what patterns you notice.

2 – Decrease Overstimulation

In modern life, most of us are regularly overstimulated and our attention is constantly divided. How about you? How can you decrease stimulation in general, especially from devices? Examples include changing settings to decrease notifications, disabling vibrations and alarms, or changing the timing that these are activated. What about screen time, doom scrolling, blue and white light exposure? How about your intake of caffeine and alcohol? And what about time for rest and good sleep?

3 – Manage Stress and Create a Toolkit

Managing stress, choosing positive coping mechanisms, and incorporating self care without guilt is critical for developing resilience. First, start by noticing what makes you stressed and what makes you calm. Then get aware of how you personally deal with stress. What are your go-to coping mechanisms? Are they healthy? If not, can you replace them, one by one, with healthier ones? Even doing “micro” practices of just a few minutes at a time can help. Create a toolkit of simple practices you enjoy that make you feel calm and come back to these daily.

And that’s part 7! We hope you enjoy taking time for your own self discovery as well as the homework assignments and the resources.

Next Steps

Feel free to reach out to us via email, instagram (or comment below!) with any insights, questions, or breakthroughs! We would love to hear what you love and what you’d like to see more of.

Come back next week for Part 8, the final part of our interactive Flourishing series! Next week we’re talking about Infusing Joy into your life.

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Want to go deeper? As we always say, it may be called “the inner work,”  but that doesn’t mean you’re meant to do it alone. We would be honored to be your guides! Book a free session with either of us here. It may be the most valuable thing you do to move forward in your personal development journey!