Restoration & Resilience

Yesterday I had the honour of being invited to join Doug Peterson (@dougpete) and Stephen Hurley (@Stephen_Hurley) for their weekly podcast This Week In Ontario Edublog (#twioe) on VoicEdRadio (@voicEdRadio). It was great conversation and we talked about a wide range of topics from county fairs, self-regulation, educational leadership, and grades versus feedback. But just like a job interview, about an hour afterwards I thought of MUCH better answers to some of their questions. I messaged Doug and he said, Yeah that happens a lot.  Why don't you write a blog post with what you wished you said?

My biggest 'woulda, coulda, shoulda' moment was in regard to Stephen's comment about dealing with stress that he experienced as a result of dealing with technical issues at the Self-Regulation Summer Symposium. Now I was at the symposium and I would have never guessed that anything was going wrong; Stephen looked calm and in control at all times. But, apparently, behind the scenes there were multiple technical glitches.

Afterwards I thought, that was a perfect opportunity to talk about Restoration and Resilience.While we can reduce stressors as much as possible, there will still be some days or moments that are more stressful than we expected. Even at the Self-Reg Symposium there is going to be stress. We need to know what helps us to restore our energy after dealing with stress.  This can vary from person to person. At the summer symposium, they had a wide range of activities available for participants to use to restore energy after a busy day of learning

• knitting stations
• jigsaw puzzles
• make your own stress ball station
• colouring books
• bikes
• kayaks and canoes
• yoga
• zumba
• board games

Other people might have restored their energy by going for a walk or reading quietly in their room.

So if I had a 'do-over' I'd ask Stephen what strategies he used to restore his energy and get back to calm so that he was ready to tackle whatever stressors the next day at SRSS2018 might throw his way.

Two great examples of how what restores us varies from person to person:

Baths - There are lots of people who relax by having a bath. Since the time they were little, my girls love 'spa bath' - we'd float rose petals from the garden in the water, dim the lights, put on soft music  and they'd relax in the tub forever. In my self-reg course, lots of people said they relaxed by taking a bath. I don't find baths relaxing. I'm just bored.  And I sit in the tub and wonder how other people find this relaxing. And why doesn't this work for me?

Massage - I love massage and find it very relaxing.  Other people can't stand going for a massage - they hate the weird music, they don't like having to lay still, they don't want someone else touching them. Not only do they not find it relaxing, some actually find it stressful. There are the physical stressors of touch and sound and scent but it's also stressful because there's a social stressor because you're supposed to be enjoying this and relaxing and why aren't you? 

We each have to discover what helps us to restore our energy, knowing that works for someone else may not work for us. And what works one day for us may not work another day - that's why it's important to have a range of restoration strategies. What are your strategies?