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Academic resilience - bounceback ability.pptx
- 1. Bounce Back Building your resilience What is resilience?
- 2. • Understand the purpose and content of the session • Discuss what resilience is and the types of resilience • Explore the resilience reservoir and how you can use it • Understand how the mind works in relation to resilience • Develop your own action plan to develop your own personal resilience toolkit Session 1 - Objectives
- 3. PURPOSE OF THE PROGRAMME • PROVIDE ADVICE, TIPS AND TECHNIQUES FOR DEVELOPING RESILIENCE • SOLVE PROBLEMS EFFECTIVELY • DEVELOP A REALISTIC VIEW OF YOURSELF AND OTHERS • ADAPT TO CHANGE • TAKE OWNERSHIP AND ACTION WHEN FACED WITH DIFFICULTIES • ASSIST WITH YOUR EMPLOYABILITY SKILLS.
- 4. GROUND RULES • WE WELCOME DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES • WE ARE SUPPORTIVE AND FRIENDLY • WE LET EVERYONE HAVE A VOICE • WE USE THE EXPERTISE IN THE ROOM • WE SHARE A BIT OF OURSELVES • WE ACT WITH INTEGRITY • WE ARE PRESENT ANY OTHERS?
- 5. What is resilience? The ability to: • Bounce back from adversity • Work through challenges • Overcome obstacles “ Fall down 7 times……………… get up 8” Resilient people tend to: - Be more open to new ideas - Assume the best rather than the worst of people - Find opportunity and risk fascinating - Embrace positive change - Energised in a crisis rather than overrun - Attract other people to collaborate with them AA (Clark J, Nicols, J&L, Wired Working: Thriving in a connected world, 2002)
- 6. Resilience is multidimensional: • Educational • Emotional • Behavioural • Cultural (Luthar et al, 2000) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1UCI2ZHE qw
- 7. CULTURAL DIFFERENCES CULTURE - THE IDEAS, CUSTOMS, AND SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR OF A PARTICULAR PEOPLE OR SOCIETY
- 9. HOW THE MIND AFFECTS RESILIENCE
- 10. It’s going to be awful I really don’t want to do this Can they see me shaking? What if I have a panic attack? What if my mind goes blank and I can’t speak? I’m useless at presentations
- 11. THESE THOUGHTS CAN AFFECT HOW YOU FEEL: • VERY ANXIOUS • TENSE AND HOW YOU MIGHT BEHAVE: • CAN’T CONCENTRATE, GET DISTRACTED AND DON’T PREPARE ADEQUATELY FOR IT • ON THE DAY TELL YOURSELF THAT YOU ARE ‘ILL’ AND CAN’T ATTEND
- 12. THE POWER OF BELIEFS
- 13. It’s normal to feel anxious I will prepare well and practise My friends will be friendly faces in the audience Nerves are good – they get your adrenaline going The more I practise, the better I’ll be I’m getting better at presentations Reframing thoughts
- 14. MINDFULNESS CAN HELP BY: • SOOTHING THE FEAR RESPONSE - ACTIVATES THE PNS (PARASYMPATHETIC NERVOUS SYSTEM) CALMING BODY (REDUCING HEART AND BREATHING RATES) AND MIND • DEVELOPING META-AWARENESS (AN OBSERVER STANCE TO OUR THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS MINDFULNESS EXERCISE: FOCUSING ATTENTION HTTPS://DRIVE.GOOGLE.COM/FILE/D/0B2EVRMEZ PG8BVU13ZULKRWVRQ00/VIEW
- 15. MINDFULNESS AND RESILIENCE A RECENT STUDY HIGHLIGHTING THE LINK BETWEEN MINDFULNESS AND RESILIENCE FOUND: “MINDFUL PEOPLE…CAN BETTER COPE WITH DIFFICULT THOUGHTS AND EMOTIONS WITHOUT BECOMING OVERWHELMED OR SHUTTING DOWN (EMOTIONALLY).” PAUSING AND OBSERVING THE MIND MAY HELP US RESIST GETTING STUCK IN OUR STORY AND EMPOWER US TO MOVE FORWARD. (HAUCK, 2016) THERE ARE SOME GOOD IDEAS HERE: HTTPS://PSYCHCENTRAL.COM/BLOG/1-MINUTE-MINDFULNESS-EXERCISES/
- 18. TOOLS FOR YOUR TOOLBOX • HOW TO FILL YOUR RESERVOIR BACK UP… WHAT TO AVOID • ABC MODEL AND REFRAMING UNHELPFUL THOUGHTS • USING POWER POSES • MINDFULNESS PRACTICE – FOCUSING ATTENTION
- 19. Identify 3 actions for this week: • Write them down • Complete an i-resilience questionnaire https://www.robertsoncooper.com/iresili ence/ Any Questions? Time to reflect…
- 20. FURTHER SUPPORT • STUDENT WELLBEING TEAM – 0113 812 8507 • STUDENTWELLBEING@LEEDSBECKETT.AC.UK • EMPLOYABILITY – 0113 812 5995 • STUDENT MONEY & ADVICE – 0113 812 5593 • DISABILITY ADVICE – 0113 812 5831 • SKILLS FOR LEARNING TO ARRANGE YOUR FIRST APPOINTMENT WITH US, PLEASE COMPLETE OUR ONLINE REGISTRATION FORM VIA MYHUB – IT JUST TAKES A FEW MINUTES.
Editor's Notes
- Prior to session students can complete an i-resilience report – link to be sent by academic in advance with a request for the student to complete and bring printed report. Blank examples of report to be provided for those who forget. OR ask to complete after the session http://www.robertsoncooper.com/iresilience/ The student will need to first register to access the report. This should take about 20 minutes to complete. Once completed they will be able to download their report and access the i-resilience portal which provides supporting information and resources to help develop their personal resilience. The report is completely confidential. Would it beneficial to set up a discussion board on the VLE? Should the students be asked or should we decide? What social media groups do they have already, are they happy to use that to support each other?
- Read out objectives We will be introducing you to a range of ideas and techniques to build your resilience, from a variety of perspectives e.g.. Positive Psychology, Neuroscience, Mindfulness, Cognitive Behaviour Therapy. From this content you will identify some to add to your own personal resilience toolkit.
- (2 mins) Often university is the first time we face challenges without our normal support network. The reality is we all face challenges that life brings and depending on how well we are equipped to face those challenges is dependent on our mental wealth. Like other skills they need investment in. We go through life learning new techniques such as walking, talking and riding a bike. Unfortunately though as we adapt to new challenges one of the most important techniques is overlooked and that is how to look after our own well being. One of the best ways of improving our mental wealth is by improving emotional resilience skills. This session (and others) will provide advice, tips and techniques to help you during your study and beyond into your career. It will look at how you solve problems and help you reflect on problems you have encountered, it will also with the help of your learning partner help you develop a realistic view of yourself and others. It will help you adapt to change whether this be in your placement or study, and will enable you to create action plans that you can develop with. Finally it will help with employability skills as employers are looking for resilient students. EXPLAIN HERE IF THERE WILL BE MORE OF THE SESSIONS DELIVERED – WHAT, WHEN AND HOW!
- 5 minutes - Explain given we are using an open and trusting model for the SESSION/S it is important that we all agree to some ground rules to respect and support each other. These will help us ensure the programme remains true to its underlying aims. We welcome different perspectives – the programme welcomes people from all backgrounds and points of view. There are no single right answers to some questions and constructive perspectives are welcome We are supportive and friendly – the general spirit of the programme is one where we treat other in a supportive and friendly way. We may not always agree with each other but we always treat each other with respect. We let everyone have a voice – we respect each other by giving everyone the chance to contribute, listening to each other and not dominating or disrupting the conversation. We encourage quieter members to join in. We use the expertise in the room – although the programme includes expert views and carefully designed materials, the real expertise is here in the room too. Our tutors role is to lead the session not act as the expert. We can all contribute to each other’s learning and what we get out depends on what we put in. We share a bit of ourselves – we are each willing to share some of our unique personal perspectives. This is not group therapy and no one should feel under pressure to say anything. But the best conversations tend to happen when we are willing to reveal a little about ourselves. We act with integrity – we respect other people’s confidentiality and trust others to do the same for us. We are willing to speak up if other members of the group are not keeping to the spirit of our course and not showing respect for the other participants. We are present – we avoid distraction from phones or other devices so we can give our whole self to the sessions. We try not to derail the conversation and respect each other by allowing sessions to start and end on time. Ask if any others are missing – if so add to the slide.
- (8 Mins) Ask the questions to the full group: What is resilience – in a few sentences describe what you think resilience is? Are you born resilient or do you develop it? Draw out – depending on who you speak to will return different answers. If you speak to someone in medicine they will say – it’s the ability for patients to recover from an injury or illness. If you speak to someone in the line of physics they would state it’s a process of reverting back to the original shape after being stretched. Did you know we can learn to be more resilient? (Reivich & Shatte, 2003. The Resilience Factor: Seven keys to finding your inner strength) The American Psychological Association (2014) defines resilience as ‘the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or even significant sources of stress’ We are talking from an emotional resilience perspective. Some research done by John Clarke and Dr John Nicholson stated after 30 years of research some people are simply less fazed by setbacks than others. They did identify that these people tend to; Be more open to new ideas Assume the best rather than the worst of people Find opportunity and risk fascinating Embrace positive change Energised in a crisis rather than overrun Attract other people to collaborate with them. Looking at these statements how would you rate yourself? Some people think of resilience like a piece of bamboo – rooted yet flexible.. Resilience refers to the individual’s capacity to withstand stress despite difficult circumstances avoiding stress and mental ill health. It refers to the process of adapting, learning and personally growing in the face of adversity. Resilience is linked to values, beliefs and strategies and most importantly a realistic mindset together which contribute to improved personal performance and preventing stress. Whilst some people seem to prove themselves to be more resilient it is a trait that all people have. It is a mindset that drives behaviours, thoughts and actions – it can be learned and improved by anyone. Page 6 RJ
- (5 mins) (plus video 3 min 42sec) Resilience has a multidimensional nature. Educational Emotional Behavioural Cultural (Luthar et al, 2000, cited in Shean, 2015) We can show competence in some domains and less in others eg. an individual who adapts well to stress in the workplace or in an academic setting, may fail to adapt well in their personal life or in their relationships (Southwick, cited in Southwick et al, 2014) Ask the question: What do you think educational, emotional, behavioural and cultural aspects of resilience are? Educational / Academic – eg. being able to respond to a new academic environment, responding to adapting writing style, meeting new peers, responding to deadlines. Emotional – eg. emotional regulation and withstanding the effects of stress Behavioural – eg. being able to respond to the pressures at work, or manage finances independently and manage fluctuations in financial circumstances Cultural - Cultural perspectives on resilience – For example in Afghanistan, resilience is about hanging on to a sense of hope that gives meaning and order to suffering in life and helps people articulate a coherent narrative. What matters is a sense of hope that life does indeed make sense, despite chaos, brutality, stress, worry or despair (Panter-Brick, cited in Southwick et al, 2014) Can the group share any other cultural examples? At university or before how have you demonstrated resilience so far? Reference: Southwick et al (2014) - Resilience definitions, theory, and challenges: interdisciplinary perspectives. European Journal of Psychotraumatology 2014, 5: 25338. p1-14 Then play the short video – Resilience cartoon 3 min 42 sec https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1UCI2ZHEqw Learning points: Building resilience involves: Embracing difficulties and learning from them Having a wide range of tools & skills to deal with challenges Flexibility of thinking Having vision and purpose Self-awareness, mindfulness Giving & receiving feedback These aspects and others will be explored in this programme
- Resilience will look different from different cultural backgrounds. The Oxford Dictionary definition of culture is ‘the ideas, customs, and social behaviour of a particular people or society. But most of our culture is hidden. Imagine culture as an iceberg and perhaps the most visible 10%. Ask students what visible signs of culture might be. Look for food, festivals, dress, flags, holidays, music, dance, sport, language, art, theatre, literature. Unseen culture could include notions of family, community, friendship, manners, concept of time, fairness, equality Deep culture might include attitudes towards age, death, work, marriage and approaches to raising children, education, religion. Some of our cultural differences might make us more resilient in some areas or view resilience in different ways. Spend some time discussing this with your learning partner. Start by identifying your cultural differences and how they might affect your resilience.
- (6 mins) Explain that we all have a resilience reservoir this like a reservoir fluctuates in size and shape, sometimes our reservoir can be depleted and short of positive techniques, tips and tools and sometimes can be in a more positive re-fuelled state. Ask a couple to be volunteers. For this you will need the soft balls and a container to put these in. Ask the two students to come down and share what things deplete – take away their resilience… continue until many of the balls have gone. Then ask them to fill these back up by considering what is the reverse. What positive things do they do in order to re-charge, re-fill… examples of reservoir reducers may be late nights, tiredness, diet, however positives may be time with friends, talking about things etc. Use a live feed here – twitter feed – pollev - etc to find out what the group think and they can text in their answers. For more info about nurturing and depleting activities see: https://www.getselfhelp.co.uk/docs/NourishingDepleting.pdf Page 7 RJ
- (1 min) Read out: Flexibility of thinking is an important part of being resilient. In this programme we’ll be exploring ways of increasing our flexibility of thinking Our thoughts affect our feelings which affect our behaviour Lets look at an example of a student having anxious thoughts about doing a presentation…
- 2 mins When planning a presentation, these thoughts might keep coming into your mind: “I really don’t want to do this” “It’s going to be awful” “The last time I did one I was really nervous and I was shaking” “What if my mind goes blank and I can’t speak?” “What if I get so anxious that I have a panic attack?” “I’m useless at presentations”
- 2 mins These thoughts can affect how the student feels: Very anxious Tense And how they might behave: Can’t concentrate, so get distracted and don’t prepare for it On the day tell themselves they are ‘ill’ and can’t attend One previous bad experience is still affecting how they are responding to the current situation. Giving in to these anxious thoughts and feelings can prevent the student learning from the previous experience and trying again Later in this session we will see how using mindfulness skills can help us learn how to take a step back from these anxious thoughts and begin to calm the body, which can then help calm the mind. In a future session we can return to exploring other ways to manage anxiety.
- 1 min A vital contributor to our resilience is how we choose to interpret events, which in turn affects our emotional responses and behaviour (Masten & Wright, 2010. Resilience over the Lifespan: Developmental perspectives on resilience, recovery and transformation. Handbook of Individual Resilience, 213-237 ABC model (Ellis, 1962. Reason & Emotion in Psychotherapy) How we interpret an event affects our feelings and behaviour. As we have seen in the presentation example… Some of our thoughts may be unhelpful, such as assuming the worst, jumping to conclusions and over-generalising. By becoming more aware of our thoughts and challenging the unhelpful ones, we can change how we feel and behave.
- 1 min Dwelling on anxious thoughts will make you feel worse and increase anxiety. Try to notice if you are doing this. Instead create for yourself a list of more encouraging thoughts. If a friend was telling you this, what would you say to encourage them? Read your list of reframed thoughts on a regular basis and before you go into the presentation - stick them on your wall, keep a copy in your wallet. It won’t take away the anxiety completely, but it may prevent it getting worse.
- 1 min (plus 3 min video of a mindfulness exercise) Read out: Research has shown that mindfulness skills can help us focus our attention and manage our emotions. Our minds may often be busy with lots of thoughts (we have on average 60,000 thoughts a day). With mindfulness skills we can learn to focus our attention, developing a sort of ‘mental muscle of concentration’ to bring our attention back under our control. In this way, with practice, we get more control over what we focus our attention on. Mindfulness is about paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally (Jon Kabat-Zinn). It can be cultivated through formal exercises such as meditation and also informally, through training yourself to be more consciously aware of what you are doing when you are doing it – waking up from automatic pilot. You may be interested to hear that one study has found that meditating before a lecture leads to better grades… Ramsburg, J.T. & Youmans, R.J. Meditation in the Higher-Education Classroom: Meditation Training Improves Student Knowledge Retention during Lectures. Mindfulness, 2013; DOI: 10.1007/s12671-013-0199-5 Let’s try a mindfulness exercise now to focus our attention for a few minutes Click onto the video link for the short guided practice. Mindfulness Exercise – Focusing the mind and grounding exercise (3 mins) This exercise is useful to help focus the mind and ground yourself by bringing your attention to the present moment. It can be helpful if you are starting to feel anxious. This can be done sitting or standing. Read out slowly and with pauses at the end of each line: Find a comfortable upright posture, letting go of any tension in the shoulders, the jaw Then closing your eyes or lowering your gaze (to reduce distractions) Now, bring your attention to your physical body, sitting here on the chair Noticing where your body makes contact with the chair, and feeling that contact Feeling your feet on the floor, grounding you If this feels comfortable, bring your attention to your breathing for a few moments. If not, stay with your attention focused in the body, feet on the floor. If you are focusing on the breath, there is no need to change it in anyway, just observe your body breathing by itself Following the inbreath and the outbreath……. (pause) If your mind starts to wander and get distracted into thoughts, it’s no mistake, that’s just what minds do. When you notice this, just bring your attention back to your breathing, or the body, whichever is your chosen focus You may need to do this many times. Each time you do this, you are developing that mental muscle of concentration……(pause) And now, letting go of the focus on the breath and bring your attention back into your body, sitting here on the chair Having a sense of what’s around you, and opening your eyes And notice how you are feeling right now We’ll be learning more about mindfulness in future sessions…. To find out more about mindfulness see: https://www.getselfhelp.co.uk/mindfulness.htm http://mindfulnet.org/
- 1 min A recent study in the Journal of Personality and Individual Differences highlighting the link between mindfulness and resilience found: “Mindful people…can better cope with difficult thoughts and emotions without becoming overwhelmed or shutting down (emotionally).” Pausing and observing the mind may help us resist getting stuck in our story and empower us to move forward. (Hauck, 2016) References: Hauck, C (2016) How People Learn to Increase Their Resilience. Mindful. March 3, 2016. http://www.mindful.org/how-people-learn-to-increase-their-resilience/ Bajaj, B. & Pande, N. (2016) Mediating role of resilience in the impact of mindfulness on life satisfaction and affect as indices of subjective well-being. Personality & Individual Differences. Vol 93, April 2016, pp63-67 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886915005784 You may choose to do a short mindfulness practice here
- 3 mins Another simple way to calm yourself before an exam or when you feel particularly tense - Take 5 breathing technique
- (3 mins) READ OUT: Here’s another technique you might like to try which can help with calming the nerves before a presentation, exam or job interview…. Explain that body language plays a part in stress levels within the body. Ask the group what they believe to be a power pose and demonstrate. Explain closed positions during interviews often deter recruiters from taking that candidate. Play short video clip from Amy Cuddy (2mins 57)
- (1 mins) read out Page 8 RJ
- (5 mins) iResilience is a free report students could complete if they choose.
- (1 min) Read through support available – tools you can use to build your reservoir Take a look at the STUDENT WELLBEING webpage, it has a range of self help resources for many different issues