Jim Kwik outlines seven ways to build emotional resilience: self-compassion, daily mindfulness, a strong social network, training optimism as a skill, breathing techniques like 4-7-8, sleep and nutrition, and clear boundaries. He frames resilience not as avoiding difficulty but as how you respond to it.
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How can we have more emotional resilience? I already practice gratitude, journaling, and exercise. Are there other things that I can add?
All right. Well, first of all, that's a great foundation. Gratitude, journaling, and exercise are all very powerful for physical and mental emotional resilience. I would say in no particular order, Number one, for greater emotional resilience, and I've read a lot of papers on this, cultivate self-compassion. So I'll start there. Emotional resilience is not about avoiding challenges, but how you treat yourself often during tough times. So it's not just about avoiding challenges because they're always going to be there. What I'm interested in is how do you treat yourself when you're going through tough times. So self-compassion involves recognizing that struggles are a sign of life, problems shared by— it really is shared by all human experience. And responding to yourself with kindness is so much more powerful than criticism. The research done on self-compassion says that, let's say you missed a workout and you're being hard on yourself, you think you're going to more likely follow through. But the opposite is true, is when you're kind to yourself, um, you see, you have empathy, saying you had a rough day, unexpected things came up, and you're human, you're more likely to follow through. So what's the action step? When you face a setback, which I imagine, you know, I'm facing a bunch right now, I know all of us are, ask yourself, what would I say to a close friend in this situation? Not advice, But what would you say in terms of, would you criticize them or would you be encouraging? Right. And if you're doing that with a friend, and often we treat other people better than we treat ourselves. All right. Emotional resilience number 2, mindfulness. I know that was mentioned. So mindfulness helps you stay present. And that reduces the impact of overthinking, rumination, going into the past, going into the future, worry, and it strengthens your ability to observe emotions when you have some kind of mindfulness practice without becoming those emotions or being at least overwhelmed by those emotions. So what would the practice be? Same as I've said before, 5, 10 minutes daily observing your breath, right? Or doing a body scan meditation. You know, you're lying down and you're just scanning from the— from your toes, you know, to your foot, your ankle, moving up the body, something that will allow you to just Um, in that kind of default space. Number 3, um, your social network. Very important. Surrounding yourself with empathetic, supportive people could greatly help you navigate life's ups and downs, right? And sharing your feelings with trusted friends, maybe you found a mentor, can provide new perspectives and and relief, right? And so we don't all have that person. I recommend being that person that you want— be the person that you wanted to have. But I would say schedule regular check-ins with the people who uplift and support you. And I'm hoping that one of these is one of those, one of the many things that you have, us getting together a couple of times a month to kind of just— you know, dial in to a different frequency, right? Um, number 4, we did a podcast on optimism. Strengthen your optimism. It is a muscle. Uh, it isn't about being blindly positive. It's choosing to focus on possibilities, solutions. It's about training your brain to find good even in challenging situations. So the action step for every problem that you face, write down one thing you learned from it and maybe, uh, one small action, you know, step towards a possible solution. Um, you know a lot of emotional regulation techniques, right? We've talked about 4-7-8 breathing technique, even with Dr. Bruce. Um, you inhale for 4, you hold for 7, You exhale for 8. It's a great way to phase into sleep. It's a great way of also emotionally regulating yourself because when your exhale is longer than your inhale, it helps you transfer into that parasympathetic rest and digest. So if you're going through an emotionally disturbing time, maybe you want to— by the habit, the mindfulness we talked about, or maybe some kind of breathing technique, tapping, we've discussed also as well in previous sessions, but have some kind of tool. Um, obviously take care of yourself, eat right, um, get good sleep. The last thing I'll say is for 2025, sometimes when we subtract, we actually multiply. Um, sometimes when we lose somebody or lose a situation, we, we multiply, right? Where it's not subtracting. So sometimes the loss Could be a gain. What could help you through that? My last suggestion would be setting boundaries. Resilience often involves protecting your energy, right? And when you say yes to somebody, you don't want to be saying no all the time to yourself. You know, saying no when necessary to someone else, it creates space for your well-being, and it helps you stay more in harmony. So the action step Identify one area in your life where you feel stretched. Set a boundary that protects your time, your energy, your focus. And I think that'd be a great starting point.
