Building resilience with self-compassion and self-care

By Lisa Seppala, MBA, BComm, PHS (Adv Cert), ACC

Living a balanced life has eluded me for much of my career. I now realize that the balance I used to shrug aside is essential for my vitality, productivity, and health, both physically and mentally. I’ve also learned that a healthy dose of self-compassion and self-care is just as important as daily exercise and healthy eating.

Recently I experienced an event that turned my world upside down for a few weeks. Given its timing, it significantly impacted my ability to progress on schedule toward my many goals. My former self would have continued with the previous plan, disregarding any personal impact. Instead, I recognized I needed to take time and give myself space to ‘be’ and adjust my schedule and priorities accordingly. This time was crucial for me, and it allowed me to reflect on how I could re-group and re-prioritize so I could still achieve my goals for the coming months.

Ultimately, I came up with a realistic plan to get myself back on track and still enable me to realize my goals for the year. Although the course of action I’m taking is different from what I had planned at the beginning of the year, my efforts are more focused and efficient because I took the time to re-prioritize, adjust timelines and schedules, commit to only the must-dos, and ensure I was maintaining balance in my life.

I’m in a much better place and have further built my resilience and inner strength. Getting to this place required that I slow down and reconsider how I needed to move forward. I want to say I ‘slowed down to speed up’, but in reality, I slowed down to live and work smarter and maintain balance in my life.

Like the airplane cabin crew’s pre-flight talk, ‘it’s important to put your oxygen mask on first before helping others’. For those of us leading and serving others, we too need to care for ourselves first if we are to deliver for others and our organizations. And we need to care for ourselves to build resilience to deal with the unexpected.