In the past several weeks, we’ve explored what resilience is and how we can create resilience in our lives and organizations through positive, stable adult relationships and a greater connection to faith and cultural traditions.
Today, we’re going to dive even deeper and explore how to build resilience through mastery of a life skill.
How mastery of a life skill helps us cultivate resilience
Whether your life skill is communication, carpentry, or commercial waste management, mastering your chosen skill will promote resilience.
Why? Because the process of mastering a skill requires you to grow. When you master a life skill, you:
· face and overcome challenges that stand in your way
· problem-solve to discover what works best for you
· repeatedly fail without giving up
· develop self-confidence and self-trust
To put it plainly, mastering a life skill requires resilience, and when you cultivate resilience through your chosen skill, you’re better able to use that resilience in other areas of your life.
It turns out, that we can not simultaneously find ourselves in both survival brain and executive functioning at the same time. When we practice mastery, we rewire our brain to leave survival and go into executive functioning.
The relationship between resilience and mastering a life skill
The relationship between the mastery of a life skill and resilience is a close one. Both are processes of growth and development that have no finite completion—after all, the journey of a true master rarely ends.
Your chosen skill can be anything. It may serve the work you do in your professional life, or it may exist primarily in your personal endeavors.
Whatever it is, there is no “better” or “worse” skill to master. The art of mastering your chosen skill is what builds resilience.
Mastery of life skills builds confidence. With each small action and incremental success, we teach ourselves that we are capable, we are strong, and we are skilled. As you progress, your self-confidence and self-trust grow.
Then, when times are tough, that confidence and self-trust you built as you continued to master your life skill come forward, and you are enabled to be resilient.
Mastery of a life skill implies failure and success. When you master a life skill, it becomes obvious that failure isn’t something to be afraid of. Every failure is an opportunity to succeed by choosing not to give up—and this mentality toward failure is necessary for resilience.
You must overcome to master a skill. If you’re truly a master at something, then you certainly overcame challenges with quick thinking, problem solving, logic, and creativity. And you know what they say, practice makes perfect. Mastering a skill gives you opportunities to be resilient and overcome challenges.
Do you want to cultivate greater resilience through trauma-informed leadership?
It’s important to remember that resilience—like mastering a life skill—is a process that takes time. You won’t see results overnight, whether you’re working to improve your resilience or the resilience in your organization.
However, you can guarantee greater resilience if you’re dedicated to walking the right path. If you want to explore how to improve your organization through trauma-informed leadership, you can learn more about how to promote resilience with our Trauma Informed Masterclass.