A Resilient Person

They also identified interesting qualities of resilience, like how resilience shows up differently across different life domains. (We might have great resilience in our relationships, but poor resilience at work.) Resilience is impacted by health status (like mental illness), and is impacted by and impacts our natural stress response.

When we have high resilience, we have high levels of awareness (both of our strengths, weaknesses, and external environments), manage our emotions and mood adeptly, have a good understanding of our agency or ability to affect change, and have many past successes to build on. (Among many other things.)

We’ll dive deeper into building resilience in the coming days, but for today, let’s visit Dr. Henry Emmons Seven Roots of Resilience theory for boosting resilience. To improve our resilience, according to Emmons, we can begin by focusing on:

1. Balancing our brain chemistry.

2. Managing our energy.

3. Aligning with nature.

4. Calming our mind.

5. Skillfully facing emotions.

6. Cultivating a good heart.

7. Creating deep connections.

(This is part of his broader “whole person change process,” a lovely theory we’ll dig into in greater depth.)