The five pillars of resilience
How to develop a resilient mindset
My five pillars for resilience
1. Self-awareness
Self-awareness is having a clear understanding of your personality, beliefs, thoughts and emotions. From a resilience perspective, when you know yourself well it’s easy to know what you need. When you’re self-aware, you’re able to understand other people better. You’ll also start to understand why you respond in certain ways in any given situation.
Working on your self-awareness sounds navel-gazing, but when done properly it can (and should!) take you outside of yourself. For me, working on my self-awareness right now means confronting my privilege and doing the work to be anti-racist. I’m currently working through Layla Saad’s Me and White Supremacy, a guidebook for combatting racism. This kind of work helps you own responsibility for the ways in which we uphold white supremacy and in turn (unconsciously) harm black, indigenous and people of colour.
Do you know what the hardest part about self-awareness is? Actually learning about yourself. You’d think that just because you live in your own body, you must implicitly know yourself. That definitely wasn’t the case for me; I’ve spent a lot of money on therapy trying to figure myself out and I’m far from done learning.
Of course, building self-awareness doesn’t just happen on the therapist’s couch. There are lots of ways to do it.
Observe yourself. So this is where it sounds navel-gazing, but the best way to learn about yourself is to actually observe yourself. You can take this quite literally and keep a diary of how you react to different scenarios throughout your day, or you could spend time meditating to notice what sorts of thoughts and feelings come up for you.
Quizzes. I don’t mean the Buzzfeed ones about which Friends character you are, I mean learning about different personality types to understand yourself better. Frameworks like Gretchen Rubin’s Four Tendencies are great for this kind of work because it doesn’t box you into a narrow category but rather teaches you about a core aspect of your personality.
Educate yourself. We don’t build our belief systems in a vacuum. Raise your self-awareness by learning about your family history, as well as that of your society and culture. If you’re white like me, that education must extend to anti-racism work. Here are some places to start.
Ask for feedback. Have you noticed how it’s easier to read someone else than it is yourself? If you’re committed to building your self-awareness, ask for feedback as much as possible. Don’t stop at asking a client why they rejected your pitch, also ask friends for (constructive!) feedback, too.
2. Wellbeing
If you’ve been around here long enough, you’ve likely heard me talking about putting your own oxygen mask on first before helping others.
I think about this saying a lot because it’s a great reminder that we can’t be of service to others if we don't take care of ourselves first. We also can’t be of service to ourselves if we aren’t looking after our needs properly.
Sleep. One of the greatest gifts freelancing has given me is sleep. I no longer use an alarm to wake up in the morning and instead sleep as much as my body tells me I need to. If that sounds too scary, can you at least set your alarm 30 minutes or an hour later? And if you need a reason to nap in the afternoon, consider that sleeping isn’t just vital for our physical and mental health, it’s also a radical act of resistance.
Eat. What does it actually mean to eat well? It’s taken me a long time to realise that one of the best ways to honour my body is by feeding it nourishing food. Wholesome food means different things to each of us, as what works for me might not work for you. All I know is that when I eat real foods and leave enough room in my diet for Friday night pizzas, my mind and body just work better.
Move. Working out in quarantine has been a challenge, to say the least. But finding time to go for a walk, a 10-minute stretch or half an hour to take the dog on a run has made a huge difference to my mental reserves.
Mindfulness. When you’re mindful, you observe your thoughts and feelings without judgment. Mindfulness helps you stay in the present moment. Apps like Headspace and Calm will help you practice mindfulness or you can do one-on-one sessions with a qualified practitioner like the brilliant Holiday Phillips.
Boundaries. The way I think about my boundaries is like having a force-shield around myself. I can let things through that protective layer but I’ll only do so with intention. Maintaining your boundaries is the best way to look after your energy, wellbeing and emotional state.
3. Coping skills
While wellbeing is something you can take care of on a daily basis, your coping skills are the tools you can pick up as and you need them.
Here are some of my favourite coping skills:
Breathing exercises. Most of us aren’t breathing properly! Here are some good breathing techniques to learn and practice.
Journaling. Never underestimate the power of the pen. I get so much relief from writing out all the junk that’s in my head in a journal. If you prefer structure, you might find something like Morning Pages helpful or journaling prompts.
HALT. Whenever I’m feeling stressed or down, I think HALT which reminds me to stop and ask myself why I’m feeling that way because chances are that I’m either hungry, angry, lonely or tired.
Feelings wheel. Often when we feel overwhelmed we don’t even know how to describe how we’re feeling. I find looking at a feelings wheel can really help pinpoint the emotion I’m struggling to articulate.
Gratitude practice. I start each day with a simple gratitude practise by writing down a couple of things that I’m grateful for in my diary.
Worry tree. Left unchecked, worry can very easily spiral out of control. The worry tree is a great exercise to do when you’re feeling consumed by worry and need to let it go.
Inner compassion. I talked about the importance of inner compassion in the first post in the Bounce Back, where you’ll also find a simple exercise for cultivating it.
4. Support
A cornerstone of my resilience is my support network. It goes without saying that supportive relationships help us feel healthier and happier. And it really does take a village. While you might turn to friends and family to talk about personal issues, you may find that a freelance friend is better placed to help with a work problem.
At this moment when a lot of people are still living in some state of isolation, digital communities are providing that much-needed connection. There’s always the TPF Slack group for subscribers to connect with one another, as well as other groups too:
Leapers: A Slack community of support for the self-employed.
Society of Freelance Journalists: A Slack support group for freelance journalists.
FU PAY ME: A Facebook group for womxn and non-binary people of colour to talk about money and getting paid
5. Purpose
Contrary to what a coffee cup slogan might have led you to believe, leading a fulfilling life isn’t about “doing what you love,” but rather it’s about finding meaning in your life.
You can find purpose in your family (both born and chosen), faith, community groups, volunteer work or political movements. This is less about work/life balance in the sense of having hobbies outside of work and more about knowing at your core what you stand for and how you reflect that through all that you do.
When it comes to finding purpose in work, it can be easy to feel that what you do is trivial. I’ve been feeling that acutely throughout the pandemic as someone who’s not a frontline worker. But you don’t have to save lives to do meaningful work. This is why it’s important to look beyond the day-to-day demands of your job and connect to something bigger.
The most fulfilling aspect I find of the work that I do is connecting to the wider freelance community and feeling like I’m part of a bigger movement challenging the very nature of modern work.
What can you do that connects you more deeply with your purpose? Can you volunteer your skills or time to help underrepresented people access your industry? Can you donate money to a cause? Can you join an anti-racism grass-roots organisation in your local area? Can you join (or start) a community for an underserved issue?
A life lived with purpose is a resilient one.