Okay. Hello everyone and thank you for
taking the time to attend our webinar
today on managing emotions, self-care, and resilience. My name is Erin Brough with
the Yale Center for Emotional
Intelligence and I will be your
moderator today. I will be here on
standby to help you with any technical
issues you might run into as we move
through our presentation today.I just
want to remind you to feel free to use
the question-and-answer function in the
Zoom webinar, and then you can also use
the chat function as well. And we'll have
some parts of our presentation where
we'll ask you to participate. Today I
have the pleasure of introducing Dr.
Robin Stern and Nikki Elbertson. Robin,
would you go ahead and introduce
yourself?
Thank You Erin. So welcome everyone for
taking the time to come together at a
very challenging time to hear about how
nurturing and resilience and taking care
of yourself can  make this a more
helpful and easy experience for you, easy
as can possibly be, and hopefully
meaningful. I'm a psychoanalyst by
training and I'm the associate director
of the Yale Center for Emotional
Intelligence. I had the experience of
being in New York City on September 11th
and then 10 years later had the
privilege to work with the young
journalist Courtney Martin. She and I
interviewed the survivors of 9/11, both
people who had themselves been in the
towers and people who had lost loved
ones, and we heard their stories then, I
was awed by by the power of the
human spirit to restore itself, and
I'm just as awed right now as I see the
throngs of people helping others and
people feeling buoyed by the the love,
care of their humanity around them. And
therein lies the miracle. They did it
then and we're doing it now. And in fact,
people show resilience all the
time in response to personal challenges,
not just national challenges. They
weather the storm, they emerge from the
storm and they rebuild their lives,
although changed for sure. So I've
drawn from this experience and from my
experience living through this time now,
as well as just experiences of friends
and family and my colleagues, to put
together some insights that I'll share
with you during this webinar, and I
certainly hope they'll be helpful. And
first I'll turn it over to Nikki. Hi everyone, my name is Nikki Elbertson. As I
said in the soundcheck I'm the director
of content and communications at the
Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. I
work with Robin. I've actually been there
for almost 18 years as a trainer a coach
and a developer of content and for RULER,
which is our school-based program that
many of you know about and use in your
schools. In my time outside of my work at
the Center for Emotional
Intelligence I am a group fitness
instructor and I have certifications in
personal training and a graduate degree
in nutrition. So I've kind of pulled
together a lot of that information in my
background for some of the content that
I'm going to cover today. So this is a
quote I stumbled upon a few months ago
when I was about to deliver a big speech,
and it just really spoke to me. And you
can read it for yourself silently and
I'll also read it out loud here:
"Self-care means giving the world the
best of you instead of what's left of
you." And I think personally, as someone
who works full-time and has a son and a
stepson and who just in general feels
like I already take time out for myself
to teach my classes, for instance, I think
it feels like it's a little selfish
sometimes to take a bath
or to do something special for myself,
and I think it's really important to
remind ourselves that self-care is
actually not selfish at all.
So what is self-care? It's not selfish.
It's about taking good care of ourselves.
And we take good care of ourselves for
us, but we take good care of ourselves to
stay strong for those around us, and it's
more important than ever in these times.
It's also a pathway to resilience.
Robin's going to spend some time talking
about resilience in a deeper way later,
but I want to define it briefly for you.
Resilience is just really the capacity
to recover from and adapt to challenging
situations. Over a thousand people
registered for today's webinar, so if you
think about a thousand people we
probably all have very very different
situations. I know I spend my days at
home with my husband, son, sister, her dog,
her cat, my cats in the background, and
I'm in front of my computer a lot, but I
know there are people on this webinar
who are out in the field. My brother
works at a grocery store, he's there. So
there are people who are outside of
their homes more than others. But
wherever we are, we all are in a new
challenging situation, and the good news
about resilience is it isn't something
that we have or we don't have. It's
something that we can develop, and it's
something that we can really build
during challenging times. And there are
many pathways to resilience. As I
mentioned, based on my background I'm
going to talk a little bit about
resilience through what we can do for our body.
Next slide please. Thanks. So the body and
the mind are not two completely separate
things and we'll speak a little bit
about the body and we'll speak later
about the mind, but I just want to
recognize here that they're absolutely
intertwined, so things that we do for our
body
can help us mentally and they're not
completely separate. So one thing we can
do for both that really originates in
our body is breathe, and breathing is
something that we can do anytime,
anyplace. The important part about
breathing intentionally, and in order to
breathe for self-care, is to breathe
deeply and slowly. I mentioned I've been
at the Center for Emotional Intelligence
for almost 20 years now, and I used to
kind of giggle and roll my eyes when we
would talk about breathing, and I said "I
don't need that strategy, I'm not someone
who meditates or does yoga or anything."
So it kind of felt hokey to me to
breathe until there were some times in
my life where I really needed it and I
kind of just did it, and I was like "Well
I'll try this thing, this breathing thing,"
and I got so much out of it.I tend to be
an anxious person and I tend to tense up
a lot, and it's really amazing what
breathing can do. I wanted to put some of
the science of breathing here. If you
attended one of Marc Brackett's
presentations there's a little bit of
overlap here because he and I feel very
strongly about some of these same things,
but I think it's a little bit of a
different angle on some of the coming
slides. But basically when we breathe
intentionally, when we breathe deeply and
slowly it brings more oxygen in and it
really changes the chemistry of our
brain. So there are effects of stress and
excitement that happened to our bodies
and our brains that we can shut down
when we take that slow deep breath, and
we can activate our brain in a way where
we can think more clearly, make better
decisions, problem-solve, and just feel
calmer overall. So I thought because I am
the one who always thought it was such a
hokey thing, I thought I would lead just
a few deep intentional breaths, because
even though I want to roll my eyes I
think it's what many of us just need
right now, and I've been trying to integrate more of it in my daily
life. So if you could, you know, just get
sort of tall in your chair- I grew just a
couple of inches, maybe roll your
shoulders back, you could close your eyes
or look down, whatever's comfortable for
you. And just try inhaling to the
count of three. So we'll go three, two, one in...and three,
two, one out. I'll do two more of those: three, two, one, in...
and three, two one out.
One more...
...and I feel so much more relaxed already.
It's really, it's one of those things, as
I said I dismissed it for so long and I
find so much power in it now. So what
else can we do besides taking those
breaths? We can get enough sleep, and I
mentioned that, you know, some of these
strategies are more important now than
ever before. Sleep is harder I think now especially.
I mentioned I have more people more
animals in my house and some of us have
animals around all the time who wake us
up, and then we have more anxiety, we have
more things spinning through our minds
at night, we care about loved ones that
might be sick or have a higher risk for
being sick. We might be thinking about
the safety of going to the grocery
store. There are a million things running
through our heads at night, so I want to
just emphasize something we already know,
that getting enough sleep is absolutely
essential for our functioning, for our
mental health, and our physical health
health. It helps us to think clearer, make
better decisions ,manage our emotions
better, and just in general gives us more
energy and a stronger immune system, also very important in these times. So if
we're striving for that sort of 7 to 9 hours as a sweet spot, if you know
that you're going to be up in the middle
of the night with your dog or your child
or you're going to be up in the night
because your mind spins and you're
up for an hour or two, the recommendation
and is to just go to bed a little bit
earlier so that altogether you get 7
to 9 hours of sleep, when you subtract
that that time that you don't get. And
there's a lot of research to show that
having some kind of pre-bedtime ritual
to calm yourself, blue light from our
computer screens our phones keeps us
awake, so turning that off about an hour
before, trying not to drink alcohol up to
three hours before you go to bed, can
help us stay asleep. And just having some kind of habit that you do to calm
yourself before bed so that you can fall
asleep more quickly.
But I think it's important to remind
ourselves that food is fuel. Food is
fuel for our bodies and food is fuel for
our minds, and just like we wouldn't put
anything other than good quality
gasoline in our cars, we really should
think about putting the best quality
food in our bodies so that we can think
clearly and so that we can be at our
best physically. Interestingly there's a
whole lot of research that shows that
what we eat affects our mood, it affects
our emotions, and then the reverse is
true as well. So mood can affect what we
eat and again. If you're feeling anxious,
you're feeling stressed, you're more
likely to reach for the ice cream and
the pizza than the celery, but when you
eat a lot of heavy foods then you get
tired or eventually you may crash. So
recommendations just based on research
here to eat whole foods, eat a blend of
nutrients, so protein, healthy fats,
avocados, nuts, olive oil, and then whole
carbs. So an interesting fact that we
talk about at our Center is that glucose
is really the only source of fuel that
our brains have unless we're in
starvation mode or in ketosis, then ketones can also provide our brain with
fuel. But in general we need carbs to
think clearly, so it's important- I know
people are on super super low carb
diets- if your body's used to that, fine if
you're operating off of the ketones, but
otherwise we need some whole sources of
carbohydrates in our diet to function
well, both physically and mentally. One of
the things that I really push whenever
I'm working with anybody who's
interested in healthy eating is to have
comfort foods in moderation. I think it's
okay, especially if you feel like you
have control over it, because some people
feel like if they have one cookie
they'll have the whole box, but within
reason, you know, kind of think about what
foods provide you with comfort and
squeeze those in. That's healthy eating. Healthy eating is something that doesn't
stress you out and you don't have to
monitor 24/7, but with that make sure
that you're moderating sugar, alcohol, etc.,
and just like with anything else just
accept the fact that you're gonna make
mistakes.
One meal, one day, one week one COVID
experience, whatever it is, and then get
back on track as soon as you can. And
just a recommendation for doing this,
just having healthy food ready and
accessible and having the junk food out of
sight, so you might think of it but it's
not always there when you walk into the
kitchen the first thing you see. So having you know vegetables chopped up or
frozen fruits defrosted, etc.
So moving our bodies is also important. I
mentioned I'm a fitness instructor and I
think more than anything this is the
thing that really helps me manage my
stress. Over this past weekend I
was so so stressed out just trying to
manage everything, there's so much pet
hair in my house right now between
the dog and the three cats, and no matter
how much I vacuum it's everywhere, it's
like I breathe and I have some on my lip or in my nose, and between the the
animal hair and everybody being in the
house all the time, it was raining all
weekend. I was so so so stressed out, and
my husband said "Go work out" and he's
like "We'll stay in here," and it's just
what I needed. I just, there are
virtual classes online, I did a
kickboxing class online, and for me that
was what I needed from my own mental and emotional health health, but also so that
I could interact as a saner person with
my husband and son and sister afterward.
So it's really important for our mental
health, for our sanity, but it also gives
us energy, strengthens our body, and I'm
sure many of you have heard these things
before, but it's a nice reminder that it
strengthens our immune system, helps us
sleep better, so the two work together,
physical activity and sleeping.
And there's some interesting research that
shows that we're setting an example for
our children. So if you're a parent and
they see that you're active or if you
bring them along with you, they tend to
pick up those habits and carry those
habits of physical activity through
their lives. It helps us to live longer and
helps to give more life to our days, and
then we mentioned some of us aren't
eating as well as usual, so maybe burning
more calories can kind of temper the
effect of some of our poor choices in
these times, and again I think it's
different for everyone. Some people love
to put music on and dance around or put
music on and clean their house at a
higher speed. Some people like to take
walks. I like to do my classes online. It
looks a little bit different for
everyone, and I think the key is really
finding something that works for you.
And the final thing I want to say about
all of this is the research really
supports that we need to have a plan. So
I said a lot of different things. Research
also shows we don't want to tackle
it all at once, so I wouldn't say you
should leave this webinar and decide on
a whole new healthy eating plan and
exercise every day and getting 9 hours
of sleep a night, no. So break it down and
first just kind of think about what are
your barriers? I mentioned some of the
people in my house, the animals- I used to
work out in the evening. I teach classes
in the evening pre-COVID, and I really
don't like working out in the morning,
but now I found that, you know what
that's the only time when everybody else
is asleep, the animals are out of the way,
no one's bothering me. And so I've been
trying to get something in in the
morning So thinking about what your
barriers are and then what your
opportunities are, even though I don't
like working out in the morning I
actually am a morning person, so I'm way
more motivated in the morning to
exercise. And we all sort of vary
in our times of day when we're the most
motivated, so kind of thinking about
yourself, the things in your environment
that might prevent you from these
healthy behaviors, and then what you can
do to change some of those things. And
just also, I mean ask yourself what's
most important? I was talking to my
sister who's now living with me and you
know she was saying, you know what if at
the end of this I gained 10 pounds, I'm
ok with that.
You know, so I mean maybe it's not the
most important thing to get your usual
level of physical activity, or maybe
you're going to sacrifice a little bit
of sleep, but definitely keep in mind
what is important for you to change for
your sanity, for your physical health, and
set small goals and then celebrate when
you achieve them. So this is an
opportunity. I've talked quite a bit, so
just put some things in the chat box
here, just something that you think would
be interesting to share, maybe something
I didn't mention and it might help
someone else. Or something that you
thought of that you could try to build
resilience in your body, to help with
your physical health and mental health
through sleep, physical activity,
meditation. Getting better, exactly.
Somebody said that they call their cat
hair "glitter" okay oh I love that, I
don't know if I think of- I also hate
glitter so. Hmm yeah, be creative. I actually I didn't mention
that one but I love to make jewelry
and so that's the other one of the other
things I've been doing in the evenings
is beading and my husband plays piano,
he's a music teacher and so he's crazy
trying to get all of his music
technology classes online, and he teaches
a few other music-related music theory,
but in the evenings he plays piano and
guitar and we sing together. Lots of
water, great point. I didn't mention that
when I mentioned food that definitely
can help with eating less food and
keeping hydrated and thinking more
clearly. And Nikki maybe you can share
the link to your singing to people. Oh no
thanks.
Processing right now, mindfulness, taking walks, fantastic.
Okay, okay so now thank you Nikki for
that wonderful unpacking of the
resilient body, and now we'll turn our
attention to the resilient mind. So the
resilient mind tells us to let go, and
again to remind you as Nikki said before,
resilience is that miraculous process by
which people whose lives have been
shattered in an instant, can pick up the
pieces and rebuild and go bring them
back together not in the same way, but in
a new way, in a refreshed way, and letting
go of expectations that things are going to get better
immediately,  letting go of expectations
of getting together with people on a
timeline that you wish you could set, and
letting go of the you that you were
before this happened, and being open to
embracing a new self. Maybe you see
yourself as somebody who is very structured and can't possibly function without that.
Well, be open to embracing a new self,
maybe anchoring some parts of your day
but not needing, telling yourself a  story that you're not now a person who
needs to have exactly the same structure.
Elizabeth Lesser, author of the book
"Broken Open" writes, "Taking responsibility
and giving up control are two sides of
the healing coin." Very wise, gotta give up the control that
you can have exactly the same you as  you
were before this happened, or exactly the
week you planned on. And the other thing,
importantly to let go of, is the idea
that this kind of crisis could never
happen. We were talking earlier today
about how many of us saw the movie
"Contagion" a few years ago and we said, that's
Hollywood we said, right? Well when I- I live in New York City and I was walking
down the street the other day, and I felt
like I saw it in a movie, and in fact I
did see it in that movie, and now we are
living that movie just so tragically. So
accepting that this crisis we thought could
never happen and would only stay in
Hollywood is actually happening, it's
very real and we need to nurture our
resilience so that we can move through
it. Next slide please.
The resilient mind helps us find
strength and growth in the trauma in
negotiating the everyday of it. So how do
we build strength through traumas? So
psychoanalysts say that  any trauma, national or personal, during any
trauma part of you changes, will never be
the same. And we're hearing now that many
people are grieving for those parts of
us that don't have expression this
spring, for parts of our lives that may
be open, may have been open
and now are closed. Businesses that
may be closed, or a tragedy that befell
our family that is a result of the virus,
and grieving helps you to look at your
life in a different way, and bring it
forward and learn from it and just
allows you to have that range of
feelings, that even in your giving
yourself space to have the feeling,  you
are building, you are nurturing your
resilience. And we ask, is post-traumatic strength or growth
the result of biology, is that our
personality, is that our spirit, is it
love, is it skill, what we hear from
research is that social support, finding
a network of people who care about you
and exchanging with that network and
letting them know that you care about
them as well, is key to healing during
this time. Cognitive reframing, telling
yourself a different story about what's
going on in the moment, "Okay, so it's not
a disaster that I can't see my cousins
this weekend, and I'll really look
forward to seeing them down the road."
A very close friend of mine wrote and said,
"You know we just cancelled our Passover
seder," another a friend of mine wrote "We
just cancelled Easter."  How do you cancel
Easter, how do you cancel Passover without it feeling like a huge loss? And then each
one of them wrote in the different time,
"Well you know what we're just going to
look forward to having the most amazing
celebration the next time our family
gets together." So that kind of telling
yourself a new story especially in the
context of social support where other people are
feeling that, very healing. Next slide please. The resilient mind
knows that love is healing, and what I
mean by love here is both
romantic love and the love of friends
and family. And while trauma and
this kind of period where there may be a
lot of loss and grief leaves you
completely fragmented, it also opens your
heart to the healing power that
relationships can offer, that the power
of love can offer you. And love and
relationships are motivating, they keep
us socially connected. I'm connecting to
people from high school, I haven't spoken
to them  in years.
Virtually I'm connecting to cousins who I
never have time to talk to, but I'm
thinking about them and that feeling of
wanting to to reach out and tell them I
love them and I care about them is
keeping me more connected to them than I
have before. Love is generative, it brings
us together in community,
just like now. And love is forgiving, it
allows me to accept that even though I'm
recently married, I was not planning to
spend every single day for the next
unlimited amount of time with my husband,
we tend to live very independent lives
and come together on weekends and see
each other a little bit during the week,
but I'm accepting that it's not going to
be perfect and it hasn't been perfect
and that's okay.
We're living in forced closeness, all of
us. The resilient mind allows us to
really take in that this is a new normal. The past decade has been a new normal, if
not the past two decades actually where
the extraordinary has become ordinary.
Extraordinary events like 9/11, like
Hurricane Sandy, like Katrina, like the
devastating murders at Sandy Hook and
now like the COVID virus, and it
unfortunately is more ordinary than we'd
like it to be. And on the flip side of
that, the ordinary day-to-day
connectedness freedom is now
extraordinary. The touch of your hand,
again the touch of your hand to someone
else or with somebody else, somebody
touching your cheek, somebody putting
their arms around you, somebody
just rubbing your shoulder when you say hey, how you doing. Isn't the
mundane  really beautiful, and isn't
this a time to appreciate that the
ordinary is extraordinary.
The resilient mind tells us that healing
is something that we do in our own way.
We've been hearing more and more from
people that they're grieving, that
they're grieving the loss of their
graduation or they're  grieving the loss of a
vacation, they're grieving the loss of a
friend or their job or of economic
stability. And grief is not a linear
process, grief is more like a roller
coaster and every roller coaster ride is
unique. It''s healing, it's not about
bouncing back because you're not going
back to someone you are becoming, and
there is no right or wrong way to
express feelings of anxiety, to grieve.
Some people cry, some people are anxious
and they deal with it in other ways, some
people are not expressive to other
people but they are hearing it inside of
themselves, and there's also no right
amount of time nor is there a time limit
on how long you should be grieving or
sad or anxious, or how long you should be
joyful that you have a.. this time off
from work. Some people are feeling guilty
that they're actually not in their
office. I shouldn't even say time off
from work because many of us are working
even longer hours, but many people are
feeling guilty, "Wow I'm lucky and
such a terrible thing caused it." There is
no right, and there's no right amount of
time.
And normally in our day-to-day routine,
we don't stop to prioritize, we do what
the next thing is that's in front of us,
and at a time where the end of the
workday or the beginning of the school
day or family dinner governs our limits,
we we know what to do. But at a time
where uncertainty governs our limits, we
don't know how to negotiate that. We're
just learning now, we're learning as
Nikki said that scheduling and planning
is helpful to help us move through these
uncertain times,  but we're not used to it
and more uncomfortable and we don't know
how to manage being uncomfortable. So intention and purpose become even
more important as we set up our daily
lives, and related to that, next slide
please, is the power of pausing. So it's as if
the universe said, "It's time for the
world to pause,"  and for each one of us
individually who have moved with more,
better, faster, more, better, faster, more
better, faster, we are now on pause, and
our basic needs take priority. Do we have
enough toilet paper?How many articles
did you read about that, right? Do we have
enough food to stay healthy, and as Nikki
said to keep ourselves healthy,
nutritious food? Do we have the safety of
shelter so that we're not sick, are we
able to to keep ourselves healthy? Are we
able to not go to work and expose
ourselves to risk? And do we have love? And our emotional needs also need
attention, it needs to belong, it needs to
feel a sense of attachment in a healthy
way, and care and love and compassion
and making meaning of all of this, and
this experience is part of the resilient
mindset as well. So how can you make your life after this event even more
meaningful based on anything that you
may take away from you, learning from
this from this time. One of the things
that we noticed after 9/11 is that
people were asking themselves the
questions that they could have asked on
September 10th, but didn't. And most of us
don't ask ourselves the questions often
enough, like am i living the life I want,
am I surrounded by the people I want to
be surrounded by, am I giving the world
the way I want to be giving, am I using
my energy wisely.
Important questions. We invite you to ask
them to yourselves, and the way you tell
the story of what's happened to you will
reflect your resilience and and promote
your healing. Do you see it as a time
where you were victimized or do you see
this story of what is happening at a
time where maybe- it is of course sad
and it is of course tragic , and we have
been out of control,
we didn't, nobody asked for this; at the
same time, it is also an opportunity to
look at the balance in your life, to look
at the joy you do get, the gratitude, the
things that you can appreciate in your
life in a different way.
So now it's your turn. How can you apply
any of these concepts on nurturing
resilience to to help nurture resilience
in your mind?Letting go, finding the
growth and strength that emerges from
trauma, loving more in order to heal,
surrounding yourself with social support,
accepting a new normal, accepting that
the extraordinary is sadly ordinary and
ordinary can become extraordinary,
acknowledging the time is altered and
taking a pause and making new meaning
out of what's happened.
We'd love to hear from you. People are journaling people are
remembering to offer grace, accepting the
new normal,
letting go of expectations, accepting the
new normal, strength and discipline,
gratitude, self-forgiveness, so important
to have compassion for yourself,
accepting when you make mistakes,
forgiving unkind words. Thank you for
your input about that. So we thought we'd
share with you a piece from The New York
Times on how we got by, New Yorkers'
advice for getting through a tough time.
I'll just read the highlighted sections
so somebody suggests, so one New Yorker
said, "Somebody once suggested that when
you're stuck in a situation that you
can't do anything about, the best thing
to do is to immerse yourself and study"
many people are studying, are you one of
them? Someone else said "When I was on a
run I thought I was doing the right
thing to think this is temporary, I don't
need to enjoy this, but now I see that
you have to enjoy these times, that we
have to treat this time as an
opportunity." And the last one to share,
"The thing I learned in the in the Corps
is that the is the absolute necessity of
the person to your right and to your
left in the Marines" oh, sorry, "In the Marines we're taught to look out for
each other to make sure we survive. In
times of great stress Christ reshuffles
the deck that we call society so there's
an opportunity net out for meaningful
social progression and change" that's my
fave.
My husband actually is a former Marine
and we actually took a walk together,
it's the first walk he and I have taken
just the two of us since I can remember,
and we were talking about this webinar,
this was last night and he said and when
he was a Marine it was in the  late 90's,
that they always taught them about the
importance of the breath and you know
how important it is, but they never
explained the research or the science
behind it, and he thought it was really
interesting for me to share some of the
science behind breathing so I thought I would
share that connected to the last thing that
Robin shared. But we are from the
Center for Emotional Intelligence, as we
said at the beginning of the webinar,
so we just want to remind everyone about
some of our key concepts that we always
are talking about, but emotions have the
power to heal us. We're all experiencing
a range of emotions right now and we can
accept them and we can grow for them and
I think from them, and I think Robin
mentioned a lot of different ways we can
grow from our emotions. Emotional
intelligence itself really is about the
skills we use to kind of leverage the
power of emotions, specifically
recognizing them, but we can also tune in
to our emotional awareness too. So kind
of having that awareness in our in our
heads of how we're feeling and what we
can do with those feelings so that
they're serving us, rather than derailing
us. Like my emotions derailed me a
little bit before I did that online
kickboxing class on Sunday, but I kind of
channeled them into the kickboxing class.
I was punching and kicking very hard and
I felt a lot better emotionally after I
did that. So expressing your thoughts and
feelings and doing the things you need
and then expressing them with other
people, really important too.
So we do focus a lot on feeling better
as a society and I mentioned, you know, I was
really stressed and then I felt relieved
and I felt better after I punched in my
kitchen with my kickboxing video, so we
want to say a little bit about pleasant
emotions. There's positive self-talk that
we can use all the time. My favorite
self-talk that is not positive is, "Oh
you're such an idiot, you're such an
idiot" every time I make a mistake, such
an idiot, and so what can you say that's
different, and you know there's self-talk
that I say sometimes when I got the
message that my son's school is gonna be
closed for another month it's like, "How
am I gonna deal with this, how am I gonna
handle this?" and so just kind of
challenging your self-talk that you use
that might not be so positive and
supportive and saying something
different to yourself,
recognizing, "Oh that's really not useful
to call myself an idiot, that's not
really useful to have that sort of
worst-case-scenario mindset, and what can
I say to myself that nurtures a more
positive view, what's another story I can
tell myself focusing on hopes for the
future?" So we've had a lot more time as a
family to reflect and talk about the
future. My son actually turns 10 in May
so we're talking about that birthday
party, whenever it happens we are gonna
do some virtual things in the meantime,
but you know, thinking down the road I
think a lot of what's happening right
now will actually bring us closer and
help us to appreciate all of the social
connections that we have in this time of
social distancing, which is really just
physical distancing. It makes us realize
how important it is to have those
connections, touch and be close to people
and be in the same room with people, go
out to dinner with people, so we'll have
new hopes and expectations for the
future based on some of the things we've
lost in this moment. Gratitude. I always try to remind myself
of all of the things I'm grateful for,
and you know we're all in very different
situations. I mentioned I talked to my
brother, he's in Oregon and he works at a
grocery store and he has to go to work
every day. I have a very good friend
who's a bank teller and she has to go to
work every day, I have friends who are
doctors and nurses and I'm sitting here complaining behind my
computer eight, nine hours a day, but my
back hurts from sitting in front of my
computer but I have a job and I'm
getting paid, and we all have different
situations. No matter how bad it is for
any of us there's always something to be
grateful for, and again it takes a little
pushing sometimes to get our brains to
shift to that from the "Oh my god this is
so so hard" to, you know "Well I have this
thing or this thing to be appreciative
of and grateful for," and then just showing
your appreciation. I try to text my
brother, call my brother and say, "Hey, you
know by being in that grocery store that
makes you really nervous being there and
it's really frustrating for you right
now, you're helping a whole lot of people."
So many of you or at least some of you
are from RULER schools. You may have seen
this Mood Meter. Just want to explain how
it works really quickly, you can find it
online for free if you Google it or if
you go to our RULER website,
ruler.approach.org.  It's basically just
recognizing that our emotions
are really composed of two different
variables, how pleasant we feel on the
x-axis- it's a little bit of math for
some of us who haven't seen a graph
in a while, this was a little bit of
learning for me when I took a look at it
for the first time, but how pleasant we
feel, kind of our mental evaluation of
things, so am I feeling good or am I
feeling bad? Am I feeling pleasant or
unpleasant? And then the energy's really,
I like to show it this way so the
pleasantness is up to kind of our mental
evaluation, and the energy is kind of how
much energy is coursing through your
body. Do you feel tense or do you feel
less tense, more open with your posture
etc., and when you cross these two
variables, how pleasant we feel and all
of that energy that's coursing through
our body, we get these four quadrants or
colors. And we're showing this now to
just say, you know, it's okay that all of
us are feeling a lot of different things
right now. Like I've been jumping back
and forth between I would say the
red and the green. I'm not someone who
lives in that calm and low energy place
very often, but I have to say I'll be
anxious for a lot of the day and then I
go on a walk with my family or we cook
dinner together for the first time again
in a really long time, and I get into
that green space. So just accepting our
emotions,  giving ourselves the permission
to experience the range of emotions is
really important in this time. And we could mention us in from
different angles throughout the webinars
today, but just finding things that work
for you. We're all a little different, we
saw a bunch of different strategies in
the chat box and we're all unique
individuals who have different needs, and
really just taking time to think about
what works for you, what emotions are you
experiencing?  We're all very different in
that way, and in terms of what emotions
we tend to experience some people tend
to be anxious, some people tend to be sad,
so thinking about what you're going
through and what strategies you're using
to manage those emotions and what you
can do differently.
So as we close for today, first thank you
again for showing up and for making this
a meaningful moment in your life, we
invite you to think about what would be
different in your life if you took more
time for self-care and for nurturing
your resilience. What would be different
in your life?
I'd have more energy.
Less anxiety, peace of mind, I would sleep better.
Many of you were saying balance,
better focus.
Many of you are saying that you'd be
happier and healthier
So given that,  do you think it would be a
good thing for you to have better self
care and and nurture your resilience? What's one thing you can commit to
trying that you learn today, or what's
one thing that you can commit to
thinking? A new a new pair of lenses that
you can put on,
that's different after this webinar.
And write it down if you can.
A lot of people are saying breathing,
gratitude, reframing, embracing what's
happening, giving up control.
So a lot of people are talking about the
resilience of the body and how you can
take care of that, and others are talking
about building resilience of your mind.
Letting go,
taking different perspectives,
feeling all your feelings,
reminding  myself I'm in the here-and-now,
sharing some of these resilience tips,
being present, loving, kindness, meditation,
for sure about that.
Appreciating little things daily.
So we're hearing that feelings matter,
that appreciation, gratitude matters, that
taking perspective matters, exercise and breathing. So I think that
you've got it all. Where the body and
mind find itself integrated and where
emotional intelligence and caring about
your emotional life and nurturing that
as well will make a difference. Thank
you very much for joining us. We hope
that it was a meaningful experience for
you. Yes, thank you so much Robin and
Nikki, fantastic content and I'm sure a
lot of us are feeling a lot better, ready
to take on the world. So everyone thank you for joining us
today, we really appreciate it. Please note that a recording of this
webinar will be sent to all of you,
anyone who had registered
within 48 hours of us concluding today,
and we will keep you updated on any of
our upcoming webinars. Please feel free
to visit rulerapproach.org and at the top
there you'll see a banner that will
direct you to a webpage that addresses
some of the resources we have for
schools and other communities during
this COVID-19 outbreak. Thank you so much for joining us.
Stay well, we'll see you again soon. Bye!
