I journal, but not usually about this topic. Reflection helps to slow down and clearly work through mental processes.

In the end, forcing my mind to reach a signal in the noise is what will make me more resilient. I remind myself that not everything demands an immediate response. To adapt, I breathe and make a plan for the what-ifs. To grow, the reflection process helps to identify what is not helpful. Hanging onto those things hinders my ability to do much of anything.

There's a mantra I like in times of stress: Let go, or be dragged.

I attended The Mindful High Performer with Chelsea Pottenger | Tech Edition presentation today and learned a couple of new tools that I hadn't heard of before:

6 Week Sprint
This leverages anticipatory joy essentially by giving yourself (and your family) a break to look toward. My spouse often tells me they need "something to look forward to" in order to feel less stressed as the weeks pass. This is the perfect strategy we can both benefit from.

Non Sleep Deep Rest (NSDR)
I shouldn't say I have never heard about this, since I have used forms of it, like Headspace. However, knowing the name revealed variation in methods (hopefully the link helps).

The tool I think most would find useful to help break negative thought patterns is asking yourself if what you're thinking about is harmful for you or helpful for you. Usually, this is in the context of world events or news that we hear, things outside our locus of control, but things we still tend to worry about. Once you can itemize what is actually in your control, you can react (or not) accordingly. It cuts a lot of uncertainty away, at least it did for me.

I took PTO last Friday with my spouse so we could travel to Port Townsend, WA for an author event with Terry Tempest Williams. The event was arranged by a local bookstore, and sold out quickly.

A local Unitarian Universalist congregation allowed the use of their space to bring together easily over 100 members of the community. The space outside was well-curated with plants and landscaping--cozy enough that at few deer moved in and grazed on some leaves, not a care in the world that humans were so close to them. Inside was a very tall vaulted ceiling, with a large circle window up high that let a lot of evening light in to bounce off the natural wood of the floor and the walls.

Terry Tempest Williams spoke about her new book The Glorians, and her painful experience of being let go from her teaching position at the University of Utah. Essentially, she had participated in a disruption of an auction of public land for oil and gas leases by bidding on those leases--the goal being to keep those pieces of land away from oil and gas production. After she did this, the University let her go. She talked about how much this allowed her to re-evaluate and adapt.

Her approach to resilience is more psychological. If I had to summarize: Being resilient to this degree means we have to love and care for ourselves, our community, and our surroundings enough to seek the out the changes we want to make to reach a resiliency that will help us meet future challenges as a community.

There's a shop in Port Townsend, WA called Imprint Bookshop. They hosted a community event for Terry Tempest Williams, where she talked about her new book The Glorians. One of the bookshop owners introduced the guests, and we learned about their store in the process.

We stopped by the shop and found most of the books on display were actually catered to ecological resilience and our place within it. Sure, maybe we spent "too much", but it we came out of the shop wanting to go back for more and do what we can to keep local stores like it stay alive.

They also had many free resources on how members of the community can keep each other safe in times of crisis, with an emphasis on everyone being welcome in their store.

Port Townsend is not a large place, and even with visiting only a couple of days, we could tell they are well ingrained into their community.

From APA.org, resilience is:

The process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility and adjustment to external and internal demands. A number of factors contribute to how well people adapt to adversities, predominant among them (a) the ways in which individuals view and engage with the world, (b) the availability and quality of social resources, and (c) specific coping strategies.