What Techniques Help Clients Build Resilience in Wellness Coaching?
In the journey of personal growth and overcoming adversity, we've gathered wisdom from seasoned wellness coaches and CEOs to share their most effective techniques. From embracing body-based emotion processing to focusing on post-traumatic stress growth, explore the six transformative strategies these professionals recommend for building resilience.
- Embrace Body-Based Emotion Processing
- Practice Mindfulness Meditation
- Cultivate Esteem, Flexibility, and Support
- Utilize Yoga for Resilience
- Implement SMART Goals and Continuous Tracking
- Focus on Post-Traumatic Stress Growth
Embrace Body-Based Emotion Processing
Embodiment from yoga therapy goes beyond supporting people on the journey of learning how to feel their emotions. It is an approach that invites them to experience emotions in a body-based way. One of the downfalls of focusing on emotions is that we can get trapped in a state of overanalyzing, explaining, or hypothesizing why we feel a certain way, or trying to decide what that means for us. When we can enter our feelings from a body-based perspective instead, we allow the body to process and integrate a feeling without having to spin it into a whole story. This means that our emotions, bodily sensations, and feelings can start to become guides, sources of information, and accessories to our stories, rather than the drivers. When our feelings become information, it gives a greater sense of self-understanding so that we can make more aligned decisions and choices for ourselves, and therefore increase self-trust, resilience, and knowing what's actually right for us in the face of life's challenges.
Practice Mindfulness Meditation
To help my clients build resilience and cope with life's challenges, I often suggest mindfulness meditation. This practice focuses on the present moment by acknowledging and accepting our thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations without judgment. By doing so, my clients learn to observe their experiences rather than blindly react or be overwhelmed by them, which helps reduce their stress and anxiety. Over time, this technique improves their ability to respond to challenges with a calmer, more grounded, and resilient mindset.
Cultivate Esteem, Flexibility, and Support
Resiliency can be a difficult attribute to cultivate. Four things that will help you increase your resilience level are esteem, flexibility, acceptance, and support. These four things vastly improve your sense of resilience. Find people who will truly support you in your wellness journey and be a support for them in return! Show yourself unconditional positive regard, forgiveness, and care. It makes a huge difference!
Utilize Yoga for Resilience
As a wellness coach, I've seen the power of yoga in helping clients build resilience and cope with life's challenges. While it might sound cliché, its impact goes beyond just physical fitness. Yoga can offer valuable support during difficult periods, providing a space for self-reflection, stress reduction, and building both physical and mental strength. It's not a magical cure-all, but a powerful tool that can be used alongside other strategies to help clients navigate life's challenges with greater ease. The beauty of yoga lies in its gradual and transformative effect. Even dedicating just 10 minutes a day to your mat can make a world of difference. Personally, I've found yoga to be an invaluable tool in my own journey with anxiety and depression.
Implement SMART Goals and Continuous Tracking
As a rehabilitation specialist in a wellness and health optimization setup, one effective technique I've employed to help clients build resilience and cope with life's challenges is through the implementation of SMART goals and continuous tracking.
In life, where entropy introduces the notion of unpredictability, Murphy's Law becomes a guiding principle, emphasizing the need for strategic planning and adaptability to foster a sense of control and achievement in the pursuit of optimal health. In crafting a client's health goals, we start by setting a long-term objective through interactive sessions, breaking it down into smaller tasks. This approach guides our journey from daily tasks to weekly milestones and monthly achievements, ensuring a clear and achievable path to wellness.
1) Setting SMART Goals:
-Specific: Identify areas for improvement collaboratively, such as managing chronic pain or enhancing emotional well-being.
-Measurable: Establish quantifiable parameters, like pain-free days or increased range of motion, to track progress.
-Achievable: Set realistic, attainable goals aligned with the client's current health and overall optimization needs.
-Relevant: Ensure goals are pertinent to the client's health, considering their circumstances, preferences, and long-term objectives.
-Time-bound: Define timeframes for achieving goals, instilling urgency and breaking down larger objectives into manageable tasks.
2) Tracking Progress:
-Regular Assessments: Conduct assessments, including physical evaluations or blood work, to measure progress.
-Adjusting Goals: Periodically reassess and adjust goals based on evolving health status, preferences, or unforeseen challenges.
-Celebrate Milestones: Acknowledge and celebrate achievements to reinforce positive behaviors and motivate continued efforts.
-Provide Feedback: Offer constructive feedback based on assessments to encourage client engagement in their rehabilitation journey.
-Encourage Self-Monitoring: Empower clients to independently monitor progress using journals, health apps, or wearable devices between sessions.
By integrating SMART goals and continuous tracking into rehabilitation and wellness plans, clients in a health optimization setting can not only build resilience but also actively participate in and take ownership of their well-being journey. This approach promotes a sense of achievement, fosters motivation, and contributes to overall health and life satisfaction.
Focus on Post-Traumatic Stress Growth
When an individual is struggling, it may help them to focus on the idea of "post-traumatic stress growth." This idea isn't meant to diminish the realities of PTSD, but it gives people another possible outcome of their negative experiences. Life's challenges and trials, if managed correctly, can lead to growth and progress. Empowering individuals to look for the learning opportunities often helps them navigate difficult times with a higher level of success.
