Prioritise time for yourself. Time to maintain your sense of control on life and do the things that keep you resilient.
The following exercise is a quick and easy way to see what takes up your time and whether you have enough time and energy left for yourself to allow you to get through the tough times.
What’s filling your bucket?
Draw a bucket like the diagram.
Start drawing in the things that take your time up like family, work, sleep, exercise.
Do you have room at the top?
If you do there is room for when something happens for you to draw on your resilience, if you don’t this is when your resilience is low. You can go into overwhelm, extreme grief or panic.
Often outbursts occur because you have an overfilled bucket.
Look at what’s up for negotiation. Are you working every day, Monday to Friday long hours – could you work 4 days instead. Are you spending 4 hours a day driving your family around – could you reduce this time to 2 by asking for help?
Once you have time for yourself start doing things that will keep your bucket manageable. In other words, do things that build your resilience.
Develop your resilience by:
Relaxing without distractions
Meditating
Exercising
Journaling
Celebrating your achievements
Becoming more self aware
Communicate to your loved ones what is happening around you
Know what is in your control and what you can influence
Accept that change is part of life
Do calming activities
Know your values and what is important to you
See failure as feedback and learning opportunities
Learn to say No
Be assertive
Resilience is something that can be learned. It is an important skill to have so that you can adapt to what life throws at you, manage adversity, cope with trauma, limit stress and reduce fear.
When you have strong resilience skills you have a lighter life because you are not taken down with the heaviness of tragedy, you can manage stress and have lots left over in your bucket for yourself and others.
Take the weight of the world off your shoulders, be physically, psychologically, emotionally and spiritually aware of what is filling your bucket. Take steps to lighten your load.