Resilience Toolkit

for life and being an artist - what's in yours?

Last week on the Rise & Repaint Art & Chill session, the idea of an artist’s “resilience toolkit” was brought up. I’ve been contemplating this and its usefulness in my life and practice.

I’m currently having 700 thoughts about the direction of this as I write - from how being poor requires you to learn interesting things, to how the idea of “balance” for women in our society is ridiculous, to how I believe that we need to make our own harmony out of the cacophony we live amongst… Clearly, resilience is important. It’s important to the sustainability of a thing, to the flow of a practice, and to our survival overall.

Many of the things I can already identify in my “resilience toolkit” are there because of all the therapy work I’ve done, and learning to resource effectively. Basically, coping mechanisms are subconscious developments for safety and survival, whereas, resourcing is a conscious selection of tools that are more emotionally intelligent and better for our overall well-being. They can become second nature, but it takes a lot of practice. I was thinking about this when I decided to write a list of my tools for resilience and put it somewhere I can see it all the time.

While reflecting and writing these tools down, I realized the place where I most forget to engage new tools is around admin tasks. It makes sense, I’m an artist who works through most of my process intuitively, and at no point do I ever want to do admin. So scheduling and boundaries are definitely part of this toolkit that I need to be reminded of to make my practice more harmonious.

A synchronicity also appeared in the form of a video workshop in my inbox - about the Japanese concept of Ikigai. I really enjoyed the authentic take on it, not the westernized apply-it-to-your-business meaning… and it struck me as being mostly the same as what I’m contemplating here with the idea of harmony in life and practice.

Having awareness of Ikigai is a type of happiness. Ikigai means “reason for being”, and I think this awareness is the harmony that informs the flow through all the individual elements. Getting into sources of Ikigai, many of the items written down in my resilience toolkit were there, and if I had to classify them, I’d say they are the things that keep me engaged in these parts of my life. These are the things that address the 7 needs of Ikigai - satisfaction, change and growth, hope, community and connection, freedom of choice, self-actualization, and meaning/value.

Here is what is in my “resilience tookit” so far:

• Using my Apollo Neuro

• Comfort and Nourishment - good food, beverages, and snacks

• Time in nature & photographing it

• Engaging in play

• Exploring places, ideas, objects, new media - creating opportunities for wonder and discovery

• Reading - for pleasure & for education

• Researching - learning, building and practicing curiosity

• Community and Connection - dates, friend time, attending exhibitions & events, online communities and video chats, talking with family, being part of art orgs, mentally engaging about ideas that affect us all

• Movement and Expression - music, dancing, yoga, singing, writing, making

• Solitude

• Rest

• Receiving care and affection

• Scheduling & setting boundaries

Implementing the use of this list, I’m going with Gretchen Rubin’s idea of treating yourself like a baby. If the vibes are off, I need to check in and see which of these things I’m neglecting. Am I fed? Am I rested? Have I had play time? Have I been mentally engaged or communed with others? Have I moved my body and expressed myself? Have I set the boundaries I need within my schedule to make time to do the admin tasks? … This list is a way to assess and adjust, make sure I’m aware, to make the choices for the things I truly need 🖤✨

Do you have a resilience toolkit for life or your art practice? What’s in it? Let me know!