Think Like A Kid

Key Points:

• When we are rising from adversity and setting up to soar through challenges, we need to reclaim our innate sense of creativity and experimentation that we had as children.
• Embracing our creativity is part of the tapestry of wellness and can be an excellent form of self-care.
• We think faster than we feel, mindfulness allows us to slow down long enough for our feelings to catch up with our minds.

As things begin to open up and we emerge from the grip of the pandemic, we need to give ourselves permission to feel good again. For many of us, this involves reconnecting to what brings us joy. It involves (re)learning how to foster feelings of ease and a sense of hope even as things are still a bit wobbly or uncertain. This is our invitation to get curious and reconnect with our natural creativity to imbue our lives with ease, joy and maybe even a few moments of merriment.?

Better days are coming.?

This is part three of my article series adapted from my newest white paper, discussing the next phase in my resiliency trajectory model. It’s called?RISING.?I will share with you my evidence-based principles and practical tools that will empower you to move from?grasping?to?stretching. To transform yourself from a state of?coping?to the state of?growing.

THINK LIKE A KID

Remember recess?! The sound of the bell and the exhilarating feeling of bolting out of those doors into the fresh air where your whole focus was to grab the ball, get into the game, jump, run, chase, or just put as much space between yourself and all that sitting? As kids, we naturally embodied and intuitively understood the power of play & the importance of unbounded exploration.?

When we are looking to feel good again, we need to reclaim the kid inside of us who knows how to play. When we are rising from adversity and setting up to soar through challenges, we need to reclaim our innate sense of creativity and experimentation that we had as children.?

In what has famously become known as the Marshmallow Tower Experiment, a team of children face off against a team of professional engineers with the goal of building the tallest tower using toothpicks and marshmallows. And you know what? Team Kids won every single time! How can that be, you ask? Well, whereas the professionally trained grown-up engineers think they ‘know’ the best way a tower should be constructed, they spend the entire time working with only that one idea in mind. The kids, on the other hand, use a trial-and-error approach, trying and failing and trying again until they arrive at the best possible solution to the problem. Their willingness to experiment and think creatively is the secret to their success. Their curiosity and ability to seek and explore allows them to win.?

Creativity is the power to think outside of the box. It is rooted in a deep trust and a natural ability to hope forward, learning about what is possible, and following our joy or curiosity to innovative solutions. Embracing our creativity is part of the tapestry of wellness and can be an excellent form of self-care. Prioritizing various forms of self-expression is a powerful way to cultivate more joy in our lives as it allows us to identify, process, and release our emotions. Bonus: it is FUN!?

REIGNITING YOUR SPARK

Follow Your Bliss:?

What did you love to do as a child? Think back and see if you can list 5-10 things that lift you up when you were younger. Was it singing at the top of your lungs? Making up a new recipe from scratch? Writing stories? Dressing up as a superhero and going on adventures? Write these inspirations down. Post them somewhere you will see them.?

Get Messy:?

Do you have a cache of art supplies hidden somewhere? What if you gave yourself permission to finger paint an abstract art piece? Or used some oil pastels to create an impressionistic self-portrait.?

Envision It:?

Try your hand at a good ol' fashioned vision board. You can do the cut and paste option, or you can use free online software such as Canva to create a collage of what brings you joy. Just the act of playing around with colours and photos, fonts and placements will get your creative juices flowing.?

?Dance Like Nobody’s Watching:?

What do you have to lose? Go ahead. Put on a thumping tune and move your body with abandon. Throw some thumbs and jazz hands in there. Get down. It feels silly and weird and awesome!

MINDSET AND MINDFULNESS

Embracing a growth mindset means that we are hoping forward as we rise through challenge, whatever that challenge might be. We see the possibilities even as we deal with the obstacles. When we are living aligned with our values and prioritizing our psychological safety through self-care, we have access to our creativity. This creativity gives us an edge in problem solving and pathways into feeling joy.?

Having a productive mindset has sometimes (often) been associated with the kind of drive to achieve at all costs. But we already know where that leads, and it's nowhere that feels good. We want to be productive and accomplish our goals with a sense of ease and sufficiency. Embodying these values doesn't mean we aren't hungry for our goals; it means we are committed to moving towards them with calm and poise, grace and mercy. It means we prioritize pleasure and fun along the way, refusing the emotional dysregulation, overdrive, and sense of scarcity that leads to burnout. Gratitude and affirmations can assist with this mindset shift. We can still hustle, but we remind ourselves of what truly matters while embodying a pace that is sustainable.?

Noticing how we feel while we move through our day is the practice of mindfulness. Mindfulness is an astoundingly effective and evidence-based tool for supporting ourselves as we rise. Since we think faster than we feel, mindfulness allows us to slow down long enough for our feelings to catch up with our minds. Thoughts can come and go at lightning speed, but feelings tend to linger. They are body-based physiological phenomena. Mindfulness is creating the spaciousness for our feelings to be noticed and released.?

We can increase our mindfulness simply by setting the intention to do so. When we set our intention to pay attention, we naturally increase the likelihood that we will. We are cued up to notice what is top of mind. The rising phase of resiliency is all about moving towards a life in which we embody greater alignment with our values. Like the water flowing in a riverbed, we can direct our intention to move in the direction we want to be. What do you want to embody? Where do you want to be? Here are a few examples to get you started:?

We can choose to create time in our lives right now for creative self-expression and to mindfully tend to our emotional wellbeing. The smaller… the simpler... the better…

We can choose to make meaning of all we have been through by getting curious about what we may have discovered about ourselves and our community through the ordeal.?

I invite you to embrace the seeming dichotomy that we wouldn’t have calm if we didn’t have chaos.??We wouldn’t know love without loss. We wouldn’t know ease without tension. We wouldn’t know peace without worry.??

‘Flow’ is the place of peace within the tension of opposite forces.?

And it is the momentum that moves us onward.?

Better days are ahead.?

Take good care my friends,

Dr. Robyne

Interested in this topic? Please join me next week as I discuss article four of resiliency rising, following your passion.?