Summaries of the presentations and my personal reflections on how to successfully bounce back from setbacks.

Notes by Sang H. Kim, Ph.D.

I blog about them as a series. Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.

Above I summarized the four factors of resilience from the previous blog. Here I would like to elaborate on them from different angles because having this knowledge is valuable for creating a big picture. It’s always good to have some larger framework of mind that we can revisit for reference whenever we get stalled and come out with perspective, wisdom and strength. The following may serve this purpose.

Your Will Matters

Resilience is like riding on the waves. With skillful maneuvering, you stay afloat. You trust your body and the force of the water. As you feel the water, you hook your hands and kick your feet and you force yourself to move up and forward. What propels you is your body, but what really makes the move possible is the spark of your will.

Your will naturally forges all that you have to prevent sinking and keep floating. The fear you sense in troubles or perceived troubles in fact feeds your will. Often the greater the fear is the more empowered you are. The deeper you fall, the more will to live surges. So leaving yourself alone as you are can be a good way to maximize the potentials with which you are equipped.

Ironically, the more you try to control things, the less efficient you become and the more frustrated you may become.

Trust your innate ability to adapt and relax. Let your natural will take over and carry you on. Beyond your conscious control, there is deep courage sprouting.

Courage: Sensing the Force Within

To get out of trouble or to get things done, you need to take action. There are two types of action: reaction and response. Reaction is a passive and nonstrategic way of arbitrary action whereas response is a thoughtful or properly spontaneous action that meets the demand of a situation. Response is a strategic maneuver without hesitation, and thus manifests as a form of courage.

Courage rises from the bottom of the heart. Residing much deeper than the usual mundane self, courage enables new forces to emerge, turns hindrance into opportunities and transforms helpless conditions into comforting hope.

Whatever you do with your heart carries much more weight. And the heart is the ultimate source of resilience. Action with courage from the heart speaks volumes.

The Body’s Nurturing Nature

Our body in nature enables, finding the paths to sustain as best as it can. Nothing less, nothing more. Short term abnormalities, given the chance, in patience, return to normality. A good example is a cut in the finger. If you prevent infection, it heals. Provided the right nutrition, healing is expedited.

Contrarily the mind works in both ways: nurturing or damaging. The less policing the mind does, the better it works. The more it involves itself in every stage of the body’s nurturing and healing work, the more it harms or slowers the process. Exercise, meditation, vacation, or day-dreaming can be more helpful than critical self-monitoring. Retreating the mind to the back seat is a good way to promote resilience.

So in down time, I try to let my mind rest, and the body thrives.

To be continued…

Resilience Building for Performance is a science-based experiential training strategy for stress resilience. It consists of a 60-minute presentation and 20-minute hands-on MBX-12 practice modified for agents working in the field and office. This and following blogs are the partial summary of my recent presentations for Leadership Training Programs for law-enforcement and security agencies and educational institutes in the US, UK, Ireland, and Korea.