3 Exercises That Teach Kids How To Be Resilient
Life can provide challenges for children as well as adults. Children need to learn resiliency, or how to bounce back from adversity. We can learn this skill through martial arts for kids or adults, but there are also some basic writing exercises that can help build resiliency in the face of adversity. Take a look below.
Doors Close And Doors Open
This exercise is designed to teach young people that an end can lead to a new beginning. It’s a helpful way to learn how to shift perspective to see what potential the future can hold.
Here’s how this exercise works. Think about times in your life when you were rejected, you missed out on something important, or when significant plans didn’t go your way. Then, think about what happened next. What opportunities did you have later? What would you have missed out on if that door didn’t close? Spend a few minutes writing your answers down.
Last, reflect on your experiences. Is there anything you could have done differently? Were you able to recognize it and act when the new door opened? Spend a few minutes thinking about how things unfolded and what you learned from the experience.
Using Values To Build Resilience
Understanding your personal values offers a great decision-making framework and can help people remain resilient in stress. You can begin this exercise by writing down and describing a challenging life event. Then you think about why perseverance was worth it. Think about the values that capture why you wanted to persevere in that situation. You don’t need a huge list, just write down what makes sense to you personally.
The last step is to create a visual representation of your values by drawing a picture, using photographs, or whatever visual imagery you would like. This serves as a reminder to stay in touch with your values in the future.
The Four S’s
This exercise is designed to help you draw from what helped you get through previous hard times. The idea is to think of a time when you overcame a challenge or setback. It could be an argument with a friend or a challenge faced within the family. Next, you’ll want to identify all the supportive people who played a role in helping you. Write down who you spoke with.
After that, identify the strategies you used to help yourself cope with negative thoughts or feelings. This could be meditation, journaling, or martial arts, as examples. Think about the wisdom and insight (otherwise known as sagacity) that helped you through the process. This could come in the form of a book you read, lyrics, poetry, or any other form that you found the content in. Last, identify the solution-seeking behaviors that helped you solve your problem.
These are your Four S’s. Understanding them can help you to implement a similar approach next time you are facing a difficulty.
Problems Offer An Opportunity
Sometimes, life doesn’t go exactly as we hoped. We might not get what we wanted. Instead of focusing on the negative, or getting frustrated, we can recognize an opportunity to improve or learn. Life can teach us how to be resilient when we have the tools we need to bounce back. Watch this video for another fast strategy for becoming more resilient.
Improve Your Resilience Through The Martial Arts
If you’re feeling overwhelmed, sitting down and completing any of the above exercises can help you regain perspective and give you the resiliency you need. Martial arts classes also foster resilience for kids. The lessons and the skills learned within the dojang can help children get through difficult times in other areas of their lives.
Contact us to sign your children up for martial arts today!