Quotes of the Week

Hope these quotes bring your inspiration this week! Hope this week brings you moments of creativity, growth, reflection, and hope!

Journal Prompt: New Year Reflections

The beginning of a new year is a great time to reflect! It’s an opportunity to reflect on the year that has past and to make plans for the new year to come. During this journal prompt we will do both of these things! This is going to be a great year!!

Journal Prompt

First we will reflect on our experiences in 2022. Reflection is a time to remember, ponder, and evaluate our experiences. Not all the things that we experienced over the last year were easy or enjoyable. There may have been more lessons or hard times over the last year then moments of laughter and joy. The purpose of this prompt isn’t to judge your experiences, but to simply reflect on how these experiences can help us create the best year in 2023. Consider these questions to help reflect on 2022:

  • What brought you the most joy in 2022?
  • What are three lessons from 2022 that you want to bring into the new year?
  • What goals did you work on during 2022?
  • Think back to how 2022 started for you and where you were in life…where are you in life now in comparison?

Now that we have reflected on 2022, let’s look ahead to our plans, goals, and hopes for 2023.

  • What are your top 3 goals that you want to work on in 2023?
  • What habits are you hoping to break or begin in 2023?
  • What 2 things are you looking forward to most this year?
  • Where do you want to be in life a year from now? What action steps can you take this year to accomplish this?

I hope you enjoyed this time of reflection! This is going to be a great year! We got this!

Daily Resilience: Tool of Attention

One of my favorite things that I learned from becoming a Social Resilience Model trainer is the power of attention. This may sound like such a simple concept, but we can build resilience, decrease stress, build new habits, and retrain our brain simply by paying attention. This fills me with so much hope!! We don’t have to be stuck in a habit or way of life. We can retrain our brain!

Attention & The Brain

Our brain builds neuropathways to support the hobbies, habits, and lifestyles we give our attention to. This is why when we first start a new habit or activity it feels hard at first and it requires a lot of thought. But eventually as we keep doing it, it comes more naturally and we don’t have to think about it as much as we first did. This is because our brain has built a neuropathway in order for us to do the activity more efficiently.

Consider a time when you started something new. How did it feel at first? Was it challenging? After a month or two had it become easier? Does it now require as much thought as it did at first?

The Tool of Attention For Resilience

Attention is a key concept in the Social Resilience Model. Using attention to increase our resilience is a great way to increase our overall wellbeing. Here are some ways to use attention to help build resilience:

  • Attention to Tracking Your Stress. A big part of building resilience is tracking how your body experiences stress and calm. When we pay attention to how stress impacts us, it can become easier to notice and do activities that increases calm within ourselves.
  • Attention to Grounding. This is putting your attention to a solid surface around you. This is a great way to increase feelings of calmness within ourselves. When we experience calm instead of stress our body functions at it’s best. We think more clearly and thrive when we are not overwhelmed by stress.
  • Attention to Good Resources. This means putting our attention on the good things in our lives. The things that bring us joy and fills us with peace. This could mean thinking about your favorite pet, hobby, place, season, item, or memory. When we put our attention on these good things we can increase our calm and resilience.

Choose a way this week that you can practice using one of these tools of attention!