Building on the success of last January’s Wellbeing and Mindfulness themed training, we kicked off the year with a stimulating workshop on Resilience, led by former Sound and Music head of programmes and now certified Professional and Personal development Coach, Richard Whitelaw.
In his words:
Resilience is something that everybody has. It is what allows us to get through, and move on from, stressful situations, learn from failures and frustrations and be kind to ourselves when things have been tough. It is supported through relationships with trusted others and a benevolent attitude of self-acceptance. It helps us to develop the agency to tackle problems and make informed decisions. In Western Culture, the human capacity for resilience has been considered an important part of personal development since at least the time of the Ancient Greeks.
The team participated in a series of practical exercises which explored how they responded to challenges in their professional lives as well as sharing successful strategies with one another. In one exercise, by creating a human scale between 1 and 10, they could position themselves according to how strongly or poorly they rated themselves in response to questions such as the ability to problem solve systematically or move on from perceived failure. Individuals were then invited to share how and why they had rated themselves in this way.
Exploring such exercises required the team to be fairly open and share personal experiences, but it also cultivated trust and understanding. The team quickly realised that by the very nature of their work as teachers they demonstrated high levels of compassion, something which could equally be applied to one another as much as their teaching environments. Similarly, directing compassion inwards also emerged as an important tool for developing self -acceptance and turning the volume down on the inner critic which lives in most of us.
Accessing a community or a support network was a recurring theme which surfaced throughout the afternoon. Whether it be in asking for help, sharing difficulties or looking to others who model effective coping strategies, reaching out to those surrounding networks is vital for managing stressful scenarios and combating feelings of isolation. This gave a powerful frame for the day’s training session and the wider role our termly sessions play in building this essential community.
However, there was also plenty of room for humour. This was identified as a particularly successful re-frame for difficult situations, as did applying curiosity when confronted with challenges that provoke uncomfortable reactions. Most memorably in these discussions, one of the team recounted the moment where in an accident, his foot had been shattered by a large falling object. His coping mechanism of choice? To simply ask himself; ‘what would a Samurai do?’. With equal amounts of horror and laughter, we all agreed that this was perhaps one of the most intriguing and entertaining examples of resilience!