Lecture Lesson and Assignment for the Week of May 2nd, 2016

[Sunny Irene Roth]

Hi Ladies,

This month, our lessons will revolve around the theme of emotional resilience. I believe it is the one thing that separates successful writers from unsuccessful writers. So, this month, you will have a chance to build your emotional resilience muscles!

So, without further ado, here are some of the preliminary concepts and things for you to think about.

Building Emotional Resilience

We all possess some degree of mental strength and resilience. The more emotionally sturdy a writer is, the more successful she will be. And the good news? It is possible to improve our mental resilience, one small step at a time!

Developing mental strength is about improving your ability to regulate your emotions, manage your thoughts and behave in a positive manner, despite your circumstances. This is so important for writers because of how sensitive we often are.

Just as there are those among us who are predisposed to develop physical strength more easily than others, mental strength seems to come more naturally to some people too.

There are several factors at play to determine the ease with which you will develop mental strength:

Genetics

Genes play a role in whether or not you may be more prone to mental health issues, such as mood disorders.

Personality

Some writers have personality traits that help them think more realistically and behave more positively by nature.

Experiences

Your life experiences influence how you think about yourself, other people, and the world in general.

However, despite these factors that are beyond our control, we can increase our mental strength by devoting time and energy on self-improvement. The more mental resilience we develop, the more emotionally resilient we will become.

The Basics of Mental Strength

To understand mental strength, you have to learn how your thoughts, behaviours, and feelings are all intertwined, often working together to create a downward or upward spiral.

Therefore, developing mental strength requires a three-pronged approach. You have to manage your thoughts, behaviours, and emotions in order to become more resilient.

Here are some more specifics on how to develop your mental strength.

1. Identify irrational thoughts and replace them with more realistic ones.
2. Strive to behave in a positive manner, despite the circumstances.
3. Strive to control your negative thoughts and feelings so that they don’t control you.

Psychologists believe that we should think positively as much as possible. However, optimism alone isn’t enough to help you reach your full potential. You must also choose behaviours based on balanced emotions and rational thinking.

How to Balance Emotions and Rational Thinking

We can make our best decisions in most aspects of our life when we balance our emotions with rational thinking. Stop and think for a minute about how you behave when you’re really angry. It’s likely that you’ve said and done some things that you regretted later.

However, making choices based on rational thinking alone also doesn’t make for good decisions either. We are human beings and not robots. Therefore, our hearts and our heads need to work together to in order for writers to become more emotionally resilient.

Each of us has some difficulty controlling our thoughts, emotions and behaviors from time to time. However, the more often we take steps to control them, the more emotionally resilient we will become.

The Benefits of Mental Strength

It’s often easy to feel emotionally resilient when life is going well. However, we all go through periods of time when our life is not going well. There is sickness, death, and many injustices that we face, regardless of how hard we try to avoid them. Life happens and this is part of the human condition.

The good news is that when you are emotionally strong, you are much more able to deal with life’s challenges.

The benefits of increasing your mental strength are as follows:

1. You will experience increased resilience to stress. Mental strength is helpful in everyday life, not just in the midst of a crisis. You become better equipped to handle problems more efficiently and effectively, and it can reduce your overall stress levels.
2. You will experience improved life satisfaction. As your mental strength increases, your confidence will also increase. You will behave according to your values, which will give you peace of mind because you will be able to recognize what’s really important in your life.
3. You will experience enhanced performance. Whether your goals are to be a better writer or to increase your productivity, increasing your mental strength will help you reach your full potential.

To improve your mental strength, you have to actually try and improve every day by developing new ways of dealing with difficulties and avoiding emotional outbursts as often as possible.

However, please remember to be patient through this process. It can take a long time to develop increased mental resilience. The more patient you are, the stronger you will feel, and the more you will achieve. So, slow and consistent will win the race for you.

Assignment for this week:

1. How emotionally resilient do you believe you are?
2. What are ways that you work to build emotional resilience?
3. Can you say no to your family and other obligations to write?
4. Can you create a consistent time and place to write?
5. What are some of your biggest struggles to exercise emotional resilience now?
6. What areas of emotional resilience would you like to improve on?

Submit your answers by Sunday of next week?

Have a GREAT week all!

Irene

 

[AnneP]

I'm trying to catch up with my assignments. Here are the answers to this week's questions:

1. I’ve improved my emotional resiliency over the past ten years with the help of a great therapist. Since moving away from her, I’ve discovered that the skills she taught me help me most of the time. However, there are times when my depression hits unexpectedly and takes hold before I recognize the warning signs.
2. I use music and peaceful walks through our woods to help me through the darker times.
3. I can sometimes say no to my family and put off other commitments, but there are those times when I choose to let others take the reins.
4. I’m working on creating consistency for my writing time. I can usually stick with it for a few days, maybe a week, and then I let things slide into that time frame. I’m working with my planner to help me build consistency.
5. Currently, we’re building a house. Some days I get frustrated that more is not being done. We’ve been living in our camper for nine months and it’s beginning to wear thin.
6. For me, areas of improvement would include writing consistency and reading time each day.

 

[miesje1984]

1) I am emotionally strong! Well, usually! LOL
2)Personal Development daily! No matter what. No excuses. I do PD via podcasts, Youtube, books, periscope, etc
3)Yes, usually. But most of my obligations are work related -- can't skip work to write :/
4)This is where I a struggling! Where/when I write is always changing, but I am getting it in.
5)Others dumping their negativity on me. -- I am not your emotional trash can.
6)Not letting others push my buttons with their venting.

 

[greta-g]

1. How emotionally resilient do you believe you are?
I am very emotionally resilient. I've always been stronger emotionally, but the lifestyle we have chosen (with frequent deployments, etc.) I have become even more so.
2. What are ways that you work to build emotional resilience?
Oh, I guess I answered this above. It's not something I actively work to build, because it is such a part of my every day life.
3. Can you say no to your family and other obligations to write?
It's hard for me to say no to my family simply because they have no other family to go to. We do have friends that help out, but it's not the same. However, I do try to tell my kids my schedule each day so they have some idea of what time I have available versus don't.
4. Can you create a consistent time and place to write?
I've been working on it over the last several weeks and I believe I can and I have.
5. What are some of your biggest struggles to exercise emotional resilience now?
The only struggle I have is to make sure I am true to myself while taking care of my family.
6. What areas of emotional resilience would you like to improve on?
Just make sure I keep trying to keep my writing time sacred.