Resilience
Resilience, heck I’m going to need some of this. Not just because I have decided to change my career in my forties but because I have found dog grooming is blooming hard work, both physically and mentally. So, what is it and how do we become better at it?
Advancing despite adversity sums this up brilliantly. Not catastrophizing and crumbling at the first bit of difficulty. I read an interesting article from Harvard University that stated, learning to cope with manageable threats is critical for the development of resilience. Ideally, resilience should be encouraged as early as possible and is why it’s becoming increasingly talked about and implemented into the education system.
Adversity generally means something that causes a stress response. These are daily occurrences for most people (#mumlife), so how we manage this is vital. Although it is key to build resilience in the young it is never too late to continue to develop this skill as we age. So how do we do this?
When things get tough, you have to have a positive mindset. We have probably all heard the term; glass half empty or glass half full. I am and have always been a glass half full kind of girl which helps immensely. I think I am quite tenacious when I need to get something done and refuse to give up, but I do have to be a bit careful of not ploughing on through and being a bit deluded at times.
Have a purpose. This can literally be anything, it does not need to be huge. Purpose in life predicts both health and longevity but can also make us stronger and better at dealing with stressful situations. A study by (Schaefer et.al, 2013) found that by having a purpose in life gives us a protection from negative events, creating resilience through enhanced automatic emotion regulation.
Gratitude, now this one I have found difficult. I will be honest that I get quite pissed off when I see all these influencers and millionaires banging on about keeping a gratitude journal. When in real life, at the end of a really shitty day it’s pretty difficult to find things that you are grateful for. This doesn’t mean there aren’t any of course but not sure this type of gratitude is for me. What I have realised though, is I am already doing this in another way. You will probably think I am mad, and I am not sure who exactly I am talking to when I say thank-you, but I do this quite a lot for just little everyday occurrences. Some wacky examples of this are traffic lights, you know the ones, pop up roadworks kind, when you really need to get somewhere, and they only let about two cars through. Well, when I make it through, I always say thanks! In the supermarket, when you are just starting to lose the will to live and you are in the perfect position when they open a new checkout. Only this morning, I had to go out for a really early dog walk over the Heath in the dark and when I got home, I noticed that one of my favourite earrings was open and half hanging out. So was thankful again as it would definitely had been lost forever. According to (Gloria and Steinhardt, 2016) gratitude enhances our emotional resilience and builds our inner strength to combat stress. Therefore, this is something I am going to continue working on.
There are many more ways to build resilience but for me I think I just have it and I know, and have already had to tap into this for the new job I am undertaking. Dog grooming is really hard and pretty risky as you are working with super sharp blades and a constantly moving target. I never want to hurt a dog and refuse to force them into holding still just so I can get the perfect round face but at the same time I really want to do a good job. Here lies my nemesis and will definitely be my next blog post; perfection! No matter what though it will always be humanity over vanity when it comes to dogs being groomed in my salon.
