Aspire Magazine: Inspiration for a Woman's Soul.(TM) Apr/May 2018 Aspire Magazine Full Issue | Page 65

“Resilience is knowing that you are the only
one that has the power and the responsibility
to pick yourself up.”
– MARY HOLLOWAY
I love the idea of strengthening the muscles
around our backbones since this is more
empowering than judging ourselves as weak
or strong, and reminds us that cultivating
resilience is a practice. Recognizing that we
can nurture resilience within ourselves and
intentionally improve our ability to bounce
back from disappointments, losses, and
failure is empowering and nurturing. There
are many choices that can nurture our
resilience including being grateful for what
is good in our lives, developing our capacity
to acknowledge and affirm the pain we are
feeling, and allowing ourselves time to grieve.
Martin Seligman, a prominent psychologist
and author wrote that “We plant the seeds
of resilience in the ways we process
negative events.” He defined three ways
we often undermine our ability to overcome
difficult situations, which he calls the 3 P’s:
personalization, pervasiveness, and
permanence. I find the 3 P’s a wonderful
framework to understand what is stopping
us from being resilient, as well as a guide to
transform our limiting perceptions.
Often when something traumatic happens,
we may personalize it believing that we are
at fault. We may blame ourselves and feel
like there is something wrong with us, which
drains our confidence and undermines our
ability to respond. We may also believe that
this bad experience will affect all other areas
of our lives and see the problem as pervasive.
We may become overwhelmed seeing the
problem growing in our perception and may
feel more victimized as a result.
The final “P” or permanence reinforces
personalization and pervasiveness as it
reinforces a belief that the impact of this
experience will last forever. Believing that
a traumatic experience is our fault, affects
every aspect of our lives, and will impact
us forever makes it virtually impossible to
overcome the difficult experience. But if
we can challenge these beliefs with the
following 5 steps, we can cultivate resilience
to overcome any hardship.
5 Steps to
CULTIVATE
RESILIENCE
1. Embrace Self-Compassion
A powerful self-nurturing tool that I encourage
everyone to cultivate for resilence and for
transforming one’s habit of self-neglect is
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