I went to the AC conference on "Resilience" with a couple of colleagues last week - we were particularly interested as we've delivered a few resilience workshops together during the last couple of years. We heard some great individual presentations but nobody set out an over-riding framework for resilience work. So, as we couldn't present our own framework at the conference, let me present it here!
We took our framework from some research on corporate resilience which identified the three pillars of resilience as:
(a) facing reality
(b) connecting with core purpose
(c) freeing up intentional thinking
We realised these applied equally to individuals, and tied together many of the areas of work which seem to improve resilience.
Facing reality can lead you into two well established areas of work. One would be about seeing reality more clearly by becoming more aware of the distorting filters through which you habitually see the world and yourself within it. The other would be about staying in the reality of the present, rather than constantly focusing on an imagined future. This might involve work on mindfulness practices.
Connecting with core purpose can lead you into work on values and life scripts. Speakers at the conference discussed the powerful impact of work such as writing your own eulogy or engaging in random acts of kindness.
And freeing up intentional thinking is, to me, all about managing the limbic brain's response to threat. The threat response literally reduces the functioning of the Pre Frontal Cortex - the mental sketchpad on which we do creative thinking (ie conscious thinking as opposed to automatic or habitual / routine thinking). Under threat we work on autopilot. A focus on reducing the threat response again takes you into many areas of work (physical, social and psychological) that were talked about at the conference.
Having a resilience framework doesn't necessarily change the work you might do with a client, but I find it helpful in giving it direction.
