Cultivating Resilience

During Swamini Supriyananda’s recent visit to London, she led an engaging workshop for our CHYKS, delving into the essence of resilience—its significance, its impact on our lives, and why it is imperative to cultivate it.

Srishti Dhanuka, our local CHYK shares her insights and reflections from the workshop.

The Cultivating Resilience workshop by Swaminiji provided invaluable insights into navigating life’s challenges with strength.

One key takeaway was the importance of dealing with a challenge instead of ignoring it, because it will keep coming back in different forms until we do. In our discussion group, we explored the thought that if we don’t have resilience, challenges reappear stronger. Swaminiji gave the analogy of a novel series: if in this life we are currently living is one book in a series that follows our spiritual journey, the challenges we face are plot twists that we must emerge from as a character. There are many obstacles, and not all are likely to be resolved in this lifetime but when we ignore them, we not only make for a boring set of chapters, but also simply kick the can down the road for them to appear in another form later in the book or series. It is our own breakthroughs we are delaying when we run.

The benefits of resilience are likely self-evident. Having control of your mind rather than being slave to its whims not only helps you get immediate work done, but it also allows you to progress both internally and externally in the long term by supporting you through disruption and the achievement of ambitious goals. If we look at our challenges simply as a way to help us grow, we are able cultivate a strong mind. Just as you, perhaps, lift weights to strengthen your body, so that it can do more, your mind also needs training so that it can do more. That ‘training’ is called being resilient.

The last, but potentially most crucial reason we must be resilient is merely because we have no other choice. Resilience is how we progress through things we don’t want to do and yet do it anyway. So all that’s left to do is practice it and remind ourselves that if we have the ability to create problems, have the ability to solve them too.

Find out more about our classes and workshops for youth here.