Soon or later, we all go through challenging situations or we need to change direction in our lives or reevaluate previous decisions. Just when we think, “I have it all figured out” — BAM! something happens and we have to expand our worldview and shift gears.
Changes and setbacks are inevitable. Whether in our professional or personal lives, big or small, expected or unexpected, our stress levels increase, difficult emotions arise, and our relationships are affected.
However, every obstacle is a learning opportunity and we can always expand our toolbox to leverage the experience in our favor and navigate through these roadblocks with more ease. We all have an incredible capacity of learning and adaptation and some skills that helps increase emotional and social abilities can be invaluable.
Great part of our emotions, stress responses, and reactions comes from our brain responding daily situations as if they were life threatening, training oneself to remain calm and present in the moment and being able to evaluated the situation with broader perspective can improve a lot the responses in the situation. Often, it can be done by simply taking deep breaths and/or removing oneself temporarily from a situation to get perspective.
There are many more tools that can be helpful, and I really like how Dovetail Learning put together with simplicity the 12 tools bellow. These tools have been taught in school programs to help children to improve their social-emotional skills. The results have been amazing and definitely the idea can be transferable for us adults to utilize in our daily stress and challenges.
- Breathing Tool – Taking a breath to calming oneself and check in.
- Quiet/ Safe Place Tool – Have a physical or an imaginary safe and suiting place to go, utilize it as a space to calm oneself and feel safe.
- Listening Tool – Really listen to the other, being present and really trying to understand his or her perspective.
- Empathy Tool – Caring for others, and also caring for self. Connect and communicate with others with the intention of being helpful. But also, take into consideration personal values and limitations.
- Personal Space Tool – Acknowledge that, at times, you need your personal space and recognize that others need that to. And be able to communicate it in a nice way can be gold.
- Using Our Words Tool (Communication) – Being able to communicate your needs with clarity, directness, and respect.
- Garbage Can Tool – being able to let go of small things and grouch.
- Taking The Time Tool – Taking the time away from the problem or situation.
- Please and Thank You Tool – Being courteous and kind. Everyone appreciate it.
- Apology and Forgiveness Tool – Acknowledging mistakes and forgiving other’s mistakes.
- Patience Tool – I like the affirmation they use “I am strong enough to wait”. I think it sums up well.
- Courage Tool – “I have the courage to do the ‘right’ thing” also explains it well.
These are simple tools that we can practice in daily basis and it can help make the stressful days more manageable. And beyond that, if we explore the depth of it, we can reconnect more deeply with others and ourselves.
More about the beautiful and useful ToolBox project, here.
