"Resilience is the ability of an individual or group to bounce back in the face of adversity to continue projecting into the future." (Pérez, P., Merino, M., 2008)

On this page, you will find episodes of Podcasts, TED Talks, Podcasts, and Wellbeing Gym Activities.

This kit is a simple and replicable guide that will allow you as an employee, mentor, or tutor, in particular, to implement key activities that support the well-being of our students.

The effective use of these monthly kits will not only allow students to have access to relevant information but will also contribute to the well-being of our employees.

During the month of March, we will be working on resilience, in the context of anxiety due to academic evaluations, the beginning of the semester, or in general in our daily lives, and how we can develop it to be able to face adversities and difficulties in our daily lives in a better way.

In this section, you will find resources with question guides and activities that you can do with your mentees to work on during this month. If you would like to refer them to this site, please share with them the mirror page, tqueremos.tec.mx/en/values/resilience as these guides are just for you.

We hope it helps and thank you for your work!

Podcast

Stepping Off the Path of Anxiety

Objective: To give an overview of what anxiety is and what can be done to deal with it in our daily lives.

Duration: 30 minutes

After listening to The Happines Lab podcast episode, reflect:

When have you felt anxious or anxious?
What kinds of situations do you think trigger feelings of anxiety?
What thoughts and physical sensations do you experience when you are anxious?
How do you think these thoughts and sensations affect the people around you when you are anxious?
Have you found tools to help you manage anxiety? Which ones?
After listening to the podcast, are there any of the tools offered by Dr. Andrea Wachter that might be helpful to you? Which ones? Why?
From the tips discussed in the podcast, how do you think you can be supportive to someone you notice has anxiety?
How do you remember what to do when you are going through an anxiety episode?
1. Make a toolkit of your favorite tools, and practice them until they become natural. Put that list where it's accessible, set notifications or even wear jewelry to remind you that you have those tools.

TED Talk

Sweet are the fruits of adversity (This TED Talk is in spanish)

Objective: To reflect on difficult moments in our lives and identify when we have been able to move forward by redefining those moments.

Duration: 18 minutes

After listening to Karla Souza's TED Talk, reflect:

The talk starts with Souza telling a story about her father, about how he faced a traumatic situation face to face: Have you practiced doing this in your life? If so, have you noticed a difference between facing the situation head-on and running away or ignoring the problem?
At one point during his studies, Souza lost his speech for 3 months and had to look within himself for the strength to carry on: At what moments in your life have you had to look for inner strength to carry on? What has kept you standing in difficult moments?
Souza mentions during his speech the following: "The muscle has to tear in order to grow; although I understand the science behind it, so why do I still curse the moments when adversity knocks on my door?" Does this phrase resonate with you? What do you think when you hear this phrase?
What do you think are the factors that make us more resilient people?
What advice would you give to your closest friends to develop or grow resilience in them?

Wellbeing Gym Activities

What would my safe place look like?

Objective: Reflect on a place where the student feels safe and capture it in a drawing or structure based on a predetermined template, in order to identify and build elements of this safe place to recognize them on a daily basis.

Description: The student should imagine a safe place that is relaxing and calming for them. A place they can go to when they feel overwhelmed. The instruction to be given to the student may be, "Visualize a safe and peaceful place. This can be a real or imaginary place. Draw, paint, construct, or describe a picture of this place."

Other questions or prompts to support visualizing the place include the following:

Think of all the places you have known that have made you feel safe. Imagine the things in your life that generate a feeling of calmness or safety for you. You can add these things to your safe place
Use your five senses, take note of what you can see, hear, smell, feel and taste in your safe place. Describe these feelings, what were they like, what sensations do they generate in you?
Is there a person, animal, color missing in your safe place?
Do you need any boundaries or protection to feel safe in this place?

Imagine looking around you, from top to bottom and left to right. What do you see in your safe place? You can also provide the student with a picture of a place (a template) to add elements to this place. For example, you can provide an image of:

A beach
A forest
A desert
A field

Note: Sample images can be found at the end of this activity. It is recommended to have more than one option for each environment so that the student can decide which one he/she identifies with most: night, sunset, morning, etc.

Closing: The objective of this activity is for the student to identify the elements that make up his/her safe place (tangible or intangible) and the feelings they generate, in order to be able to create his/her own space that gives him/her an internal sensation of peace, security and relaxation, regardless of the circumstances that surround him/her. Finally, the student should be able to identify these elements in their daily environment.

Support images

Me Productive? Check!

Objective: To improve the student's organizational and productivity skills in the work or academic area.

Description: The student should implement the following exercises in his/her daily life for 1 week with the goal of becoming more productive and organized:

Plan the day's activities in advance → scientist Gloria Mark, from the University of California, mentions that it takes people approximately 26 minutes to recover from a distraction, being prepared decreases that gap.
Take breaks → setting time in the calendar to rest either between meetings or classes increases productivity and creativity. If possible, take 10 -20 min. nap after lunch.
Communication → if available, phone or go directly to your colleagues will avoid possible misunderstandings that could occur via email as well as wasted time.
Checklists → for repetitive or highly detailed tasks, that way, you decrease the number of errors.
Space→ keep both the physical and virtual environment arranged or accommodated according to your needs (Lavenda, 2021).

Afterwards, you should reflect on what you learned from executing those activities with the following questions:

How did I feel when putting the above exercises into practice?
My productivity: did it decrease, stay the same or increase?
My organization: did it decrease, stay the same or increase?
Would I repeat it? What would I add?

Closing: Learning to manage our time and being organized allows individuals to perform their tasks more efficiently. Therefore, being organized increases productivity by saving time, reducing stress, being more creative, having less clutter, locating things more easily, and optimally meeting deadlines (Sexton, 2016).

Suggestions

We want to hear from you! Share with us your opinions, suggestions and comments about these resources, or if you would like to propose any of them.