Preparing for Setbacks

Hi, and welcome back to session nine in your guided journey to less stress. Great job coming back to keep working toward our goal to help you reduce stress in the moment and learn new coping strategies to help you manage your stress on your own. Let's get started. Today, we're talking about preparing for setbacks. Our program is not about anxiously preparing for the worst, but tough situations do pop up, and that's why we're here, to build a toolkit of coping strategies for both predictable and unpredictable situations. The ability to bounce back from setbacks is called resilience, and like any muscle, it can be strengthened with practice. Your resilience toolkit starts with knowing which triggers in your life could result in stress and having a handful of strategies at the ready. One of my favorites is called guided imagery, or visualization. It involves using your imagination to take you to a calm, peaceful place. Because of the way the mind and the body are connected, visualization can make you feel like you are experiencing something just by imagining it. A practice I consistently do to this day is visualizing a moment in my life when I was fully content, at peace, and happy. The visualization is usually a specific event or place from the past, and this helps to lift my spirits during those intense, stressful moments. Let's keep practicing so you can try it out for yourself....