BONUS: Creative Resilience in Stressful Times

How can we best manage our outlook and prepare for a positive future during times of global change and pandemic?  Tap into your innate creative resilience. What is resilience: the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness. Post Traumatic Growth: When you bounce back even stronger after trauma, physical illness, etc.   The post-traumatic growth inventory To evaluate whether and to what extent someone has achieved growth after a trauma, psychologists look for positive responses in five areas. 1: Appreciation of life 2: Relationships with others 3: New possibilities in life 4: Personal strength 5: Spiritual change Creativity:  Creative Resilient people face stressful times with staunchness, making meaning of hardship and looking for lessons and improvise solutions from thin air.    Creative resilience is your most important resource during times of crisis, change & transition. Transition, which is what we’re all going through right now, is the psychological process people must go through to come to terms with new situations. We live in a world of constant change. Nature is an example of constant birth, growth, death, and renewal. Understanding the cycles of creation will help us thrive in change, rather than fear it. While transitions can be painful, they are a source of creativity, growth and transformation. I don’t believe we can experience a transformation without undergoing a psychological transition, and if we can cultivate resilience, we can proceed  with a sense of adventure on what Joseph Campbell described as a Hero’s Journey (illustrated at the top of the page). “A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself,” according to Campbell’s definition. “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.” We are all on a hero’s journey through life, and if we want to find the boon, or the gift that lies buried in the abyss, we must be willing to embrace great difficulties that are a prerequisite to transformation. CREATIVITY: the use of the imagination or original ideas, the ability to come up with solutions, the use of tools to create something new, or fix something old, even making it better.   In Victor Frankel’s book Man’s Search for Meaning, his memoir about surviving the holocaust; Frankl said we can discover meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by creating a work or doing a deed to help others;(2) by experiencing something or encountering someone; and (3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering.   How creativity helps us in times of stress: Express yourself creatively (for many of us, creative expression is like oxygen for our souls) When my coaching clients tell me about times of transition, I ask what they could do to nurture themselves to reduce stress. Creativity is always at the top of the list, along with getting enough sleep, exercise, proper nutrition and being with friends or family. Creative expression has the power to heal emotions, and nurture the soul. When we enter the flow states of complete absorption in a creative process, we open our awareness to new perceptions, and new perspectives. Creativity is something you can control. When you take time out of time to create, you shift your field of attention into something generative and life affirming. FINALLY, IMPROVISING:  Improve, in any form, is creativity where we are fully present and stay flexible. Resilient people are masters of innovation and resourcefulness. They have the capacity to improvise and to create bricolage: creative problem-solving using a variety of materials that happen to be available. The Apollo 13 mission (launched April 13, 1970) is a dramatic example of improvisation: When the spacecraft was well on its way to the Moon, an oxygen tank exploded, scrubbing the lunar landing and putting the crew in jeopardy. Working with Mission Control in Houston, the crew used their lunar module as a “lifeboat.” Using spare parts and spacecraft canisters, the astronauts improvised a method to reduce the carbon dioxide concentration in the spacecraft. How might you improvise at home or at work? What resources do you have available to you, to utilize in new ways? DISCOVER YOUR VALUES HOMEWORK: http://alexandrajamieson.com/values EXPRESSIVE WRITING PRACTICE:  Imagine it’s 5 years from now and you feel really good in your life. Your work, your relationships, your health are all in a solid, satisfying place. You look back on this workshop, this moment, as a turning point in your attitude, creativity, and self-compassion. What happened for this current time of crisis to be a catalyst in you creating a beautiful life? What story do you tell people 5 years from now about what you did and who you became during this time of turmoil? Tell the story now - write for 5-10 minutes.