What is Upstream Resiliency?

What is Upstream Resiliency?

The short answer to this questions is upstream resiliency is a long term approach to help people build awareness of their plan to deal with stress and challenge in their life.  Of course, there is a lot that goes into actually explaining upstream resiliency. Think of upstream resiliency as the ability for an individual to get as far left of boom as they can.  What this does, is allows individuals to be ready for when the boom (or a crisis) happens in their life. 

 Thus, you can think of upstream resiliency as a way of depositing investments into your wellness account.  Whether the deposits are for you as an individual or for your team of people, the important part is understanding that you have control over what your upstream resiliency plan looks like. 

 Readiness Group likes to look at upstream resilience from a multi-factor perspective which includes four pillars:  8 dimensions of wellness, understanding the science of trauma, purposeful peer support, and through 12 positive psychology strategies.  We are going to briefly run through each of these here, but future blogs will explore each of the tenets in more depth.

8 Dimensions of Wellness

The 8 dimensions of wellness is a theory that allows individuals to look at 8 different aspects of their life one at a time.  The 8 dimensions include:  occupational, physical, spiritual, emotional, financial, social, intellectual, and environmental. 

Through each of these areas, individuals or departments can self-assess and understand where they may need to spend some extra time focusing so they can get more equality in their overall wellness.  By understanding how to maintain each dimension of wellness, and individual or department can learn to have a higher quality of life and cohesion. 

Understanding the Science of Trauma

 We at Readiness Group totally acknowledge and understand that we are a bit nerdy about brain science.  We don’t let that deter us from sharing the information about how trauma (and we are including both chronic and critical stress in that definition) impacts your brain and your overall physical well-being.

 Understanding that the chronic stress in your life can have a huge impact on your physical and mental health can be huge.  If you want to learn more about the science of trauma, we can definitely help with that.  Contact us now and we can tell you more about how we do that.  Additionally, we recommend some books about this very topic:

• The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk
• Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation by Dr. Dan Siegel
• Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers: The Acclaimed Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Disease, and Coping by Robert Sapolsky

 Purposeful Peering

 Many of you have heard of peer support or have even been through a peer process.  How we teach and talk about peer support is a little bit different.  We talk about the intentional process of purposeful peering.  This process should occur regularly, and not just after a big event.  This is a process that occurs for most people daily with “their people”.  Who are your people?

We encourage individuals to have multiple people in their life that they turn to talk to when they needed.  What this means is that you have the ability to pick up the phone and process the daily stressors as easily as you have the ability to have a more formal peer support take place after a big event. 

 Our program teach and incorporates a solution focused element into peer processing.  Again, if you want to know more we will be touching on this in future blogs so subscribe today!

12 Strategies in Positive Psychology

 Positive Psychology was founded by Dr. Martin Seligman and includes some amazing concepts that help to promote upstream resiliency.  Here are the 12 strategies of positive psychology, we tend to look at:  toolkit concept, counting blessings, accomplishing goals, ABC, check your playbook, balance your thinking, strengths, mindfulness, spiritual resilience, physical resilience, building relationships, and good listening. 

 Some of these align nicely and overlap with the 8 dimensions of wellness.  When it comes to understanding some of these tenets we recommend the following books:

Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being by Martin E.P. Seligman

Think Like a Monk: Train Your Mind for Peace and Purpose Every Day by Jay Shetty

Authentic Happiness by Dr. Martin E.P. Seligman

 Dr. Seligmen also has numerous questionnaires that are free of charge.  You can take these and get some insight into the various dimensions of positive psychology by clicking here --> https://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/

While this is a brief overview of what we mean when we are talking about authentic happiness, it can be used as a jumping off point.  What area will focus on to kick start your long term plan for depositing wellness into your life?