Permission to Love with Jerry Henderson
"Your relationship with yourself determines every other relationship in your life."
When we create a healthy relationship with ourselves, everything in our lives begins to transform.
Join us each week as we discuss topics such as overcoming shame, letting go of limiting beliefs, dealing with imposter syndrome, finding healthy motivators for achievement, transforming trauma, and learning how to practice self-love and self-acceptance.
The Permission to Love Podcast is dedicated to helping people have healthier relationships with themselves and find the permission to fully love and accept themselves.
About Jerry,
“When I realized I was the source of my own suffering, I realized I could also be the source of my own healing.”
Jerry is a Master Certified Transformational Mindset Coach, author, speaker, and host of The Permission to Love Podcast.
He works with high-achievers to help them create a happier, healthier, and more sustainable life grounded in self-acceptance and self-compassion.
Jerry has helped thousands of people have a healthier relationship with themselves and uncover the limiting beliefs keeping them from the life they so deeply desire and deserve.
He uses a combination of transformational mindset coaching, positive psychology, trauma-informed approaches, IFS, and NLP to remove limiting beliefs and connect with their authentic selves.
Jerry has an undergraduate degree in Political Science, an MBA in global business from the Thunderbird School of Global Management, and is currently completing his Master's degree in Psychology at Harvard University.
Before becoming a Transformational Coach, Jerry spent most of his career in Philanthropy, raising over $1 billion USD for not-for-profits. He is a survivor of childhood trauma and now helps individuals learn how to create the lives they want from a place of healthy motivators and remaining mentally, emotionally, physically, relationally, and spiritually healthy.
New episodes of The Permission to Love Podcast come out every Monday.
To learn more about Jerry, find additional resources, or submit a topic or question, check out: www.jerryhenderson.org
You can also connect with Jerry on Instagram: @jerryahenderson
Permission to Love with Jerry Henderson
A Blueprint for Building a Resilience Toolkit | Resilient by Design
In this episode of the Resilient by Design series, we dive into practical, research-backed strategies to help you proactively build resilience.
Learn how to create a toolkit that strengthens your ability to bounce back from life's challenges and thrive in the face of adversity.
We explore the importance of social support, emotional regulation, cognitive tools, problem-solving, spirituality, and self-care.
Packed with actionable steps and transformative insights, this episode is your guide to a stronger, more resilient you.
Key Takeaways:
- Social and Relational Support: The single most critical factor for long-term resilience and well-being, supported by research from the Harvard Study of Adult Development.
- Emotional Skills: Tools like mindfulness, gratitude, and savoring positive memories can help regulate emotions and access positive states.
- Cognitive Skills: Reframing stress, cultivating self-efficacy, and shifting to a growth mindset are essential for mental resilience.
- Problem-Solving: Developing small, actionable steps and embracing failure as a learning opportunity builds confidence and resilience.
- Spirituality: Connecting with something greater provides meaning, emotional comfort, and a sense of community.
- Self-Care: Practicing self-compassion, proper nutrition, exercise, and restorative sleep replenishes your energy and mental resources.
Action Step:
Pick one area of your resilience toolkit to start building this week. Take one small step today toward a more resilient you.
Learn More:
Visit jerryhenderson.org to learn more about Jerry's one-on-one coaching program and set up a free consultation.
00:00 - Introduction
01:54 - Series Recap and Today's Focus
04:07 - What is Resilience
06:10 - Overcoming a Deficit in Resilience
09:23 - Introducing the Resilience Toolkit
10:38 - Tool 1: Social and Relational Support
13:19 - Tool 2: Emotional Skills
14:20 - Tool 3: Cognitive Skills
16:20 - Tool 4: Problem-Solving Skills
20:36 - Tool 5: Spirituality and Connection
21:54 - Tool 6: Self-Care
I am grateful you are here,
Jerry
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Website:
www.jerryhenderson.org
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That's probably a top five. Best piece of information that I've ever gotten in my life is to understand I'm not a victim of where I came from, but that I can use tools, that I can have agency over those things, that I'm not stuck and trapped in my current level of happiness, my current level of well-being, my current level of resilience. Okay, we can grow. Hello everybody, and welcome to this episode of the Permission to Love podcast. I'm your host, jerry Henderson, and I am so, so happy that you're here today listening to this episode. It means a lot to me. It means a lot to me that you're part of a community that's learning how to have a healthier relationship with ourselves, how to love ourselves, accept ourselves, show self-compassion and then have healthy relationships in our life. As we learn to build a life that we're worthy of, instead of just surviving, we're moving towards thriving. So thank you, thank you for being here. How many of you know, I live here in Colorado and man has it been cold lately, and I don't know if it's just because I've been away for a while and I'm just now getting my blood to thicken back up, but goodness, it's been cold. And if you're listening to this podcast here in the US. You know what I'm talking about. We've had some pretty unusual cold weather throughout the US, and it's even snowed in Florida, and so it's a little bit of a strange time Now. As many of you know my wife she's from Brazil, and so being here in Colorado right now has been especially challenging and especially cold for her or, as she would say, muy frio, very cold and so we've been in the process of getting her all those layers right, her smart wool base layers and those big heavy coats and gloves and all the things that she needs so that she's staying nice and warm. And so if you're listening to this and you're in one of those places where it's kind of unusually cold for you, I want to encourage you to stay safe and stay warm Now.
Jerry Henderson:Today we're continuing our series on Resilient by Design, and this is the final episode in that series. Today we're going to be pulling everything together by talking about building your resilience toolkit the practical, actionable steps that you can take on a daily, weekly, monthly basis to help you thrive, to help you build that resilience, so you can navigate through all of the things that life has a tendency to throw at us. Now, before we dive into the details about how to build that resilience toolkit. I just want to take a moment do a quick recap. So far, we've talked about what is resilience. We're going to unpack that just a little bit more here in a second.
Jerry Henderson:We've also talked about the impact that trauma can have on resilience. We talked about how some of those early painful experiences that we've had in our life can shape our capacity for resilience. But we also talked about how it doesn't have to define us, though, right, just because we had those experiences either in childhood or later in life that may have robbed us from some of our capacity for resilience. It does not have to define us and we can still build resilience. We also had an episode on emotional resilience. How do we develop the skills to regulate and cope with our emotions effectively? We also talked about how can we access or create positive emotions, right, and how can we emotionally regulate with tools like mindfulness, gratitude and savoring positive memories. And then last week we talked about developing our mental resilience through things like reframing our challenges, cultivating self-efficacy or the belief that we can handle the problems that we face, and then also building a stronger mindset, moving from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset, and so we've covered a lot and it's been a real joy to go through this process with you. And then today we're going to talk about how we can pull all of that and some other things together so that you have a resilience toolkit, so that you can proactively strengthen your resilience and increase your overall well-being. Sound fair, perfect, let's get into it. So let's just take a moment and review what is resilience. Get into it. So let's just take a moment and review what is resilience.
Jerry Henderson:Resilience is about our overall well-being and our ability to bounce back from adversity. Think of it like this when we experience adversity, whether it's big or it's small, we often feel a dip in our overall well-being. It takes us down. Somebody says something that offends us and we can spend days ruminating on that and trying to figure out what they meant. Or, if we have greater levels of resilience, we can experience those negative words, have it, maybe, throw us off for a minute or two, but then we can go on about our day. We don't have to stay down in that slump.
Jerry Henderson:So resilience really is about how long do we stay in that dip and how effectively we rise back up out of that dip. So, if you think about it like this you have a set point of well-being or happiness right now and somebody comes along and says something, or you have an event in your life that dips you down. It impacts you mentally, emotionally or maybe even physically, so that event has taken you down below your normal state of overall well-being. And resilience is about how long do you stay in that dip, how long does it take you to recover. You see, if we stay in that dip for too long, we can wind up with a new set point of overall well-being. We can get into things like depression, anxiety that stays with us for the long term, versus being able to have the tools, the skills that we need to allow us to come back up out of that dip and then shorten the amount of time that we stay in that dip. And then, when we come out of that dip, are we coming out stronger? Because resilience can be about not just bringing you back to your previous set point, but increasing your set point of overall well-being and happiness, because you're showing yourself that you can handle adversity. You're getting stronger, you're working that muscle and as you're working that muscle of resilience, your overall well-being is getting higher and higher.
Jerry Henderson:Now here's something I just want to take a moment and point out, because in this podcast, we do talk a lot about trauma and the impact that it's had on us, and so if you are a person who didn't grow up with the protective factors, right, there's some protective factors that research shows that if we have them in our life, they can help protect our levels of resilience and our overall well-being. Some of those are a stable home environment, a positive adult figure in our life, etc. So there's some of those protective factors and if you didn't have those, I just want to point out again that that does not mean that you cannot intentionally build resilience now. Yes, do some of us feel like we're starting at a deficit? Yes, we do, and the truth is we might be, but that doesn't change the fact that we can build resilience, and resilience is something you build.
Jerry Henderson:You know, one of the things that was always a challenge for me is I thought I should just be happy or I should just be resilient, and because I struggled with being happy or I struggled with being resilient, it felt like there was something wrong with me and it didn't seem fair that you had to like work at being happy or work at being resilient, but the truth is, everybody's got to work at those things and, yes, do some people just, biologically and environmentally, have a higher set point of resilience? Yes, 100%. But that, once again, does not mean that there's something wrong with you and it doesn't mean that you can't build resilience. That's probably a top five. Best piece of information that I've ever gotten in my life is to understand I'm not a victim of where I came from, but that I can use tools, that I can have agency over those things, that I'm not stuck and trapped in my current level of happiness, my current level of well-being, my current level of resilience. Okay, we can grow and, yes, it takes effort. But, like I tell many people that I'm coaching, you know what? Six months from now, a year from now, you're going to be here and you can either be here with a 10, 20, 30, 40% improvement or you can be stuck at the same set point that you are right now. And if a person will begin to understand that they have the agency, they have self-efficacy, the ability to face their problems and they have the tools and the resources inside of them and they can see that and then they're willing to do the work over the period of time that it's going to take, not trying to rush it, except the fact that growth is 3%, 5%, 10%, getting better and better along the way, and we look back six months, 12 months, from the day that we started and we notice growth. That's better than tapping out because you feel like after a month it hasn't worked or you should be further along than you are right now. No, this is a process. It takes time, but you're worth that process and you are worth the time that it's going to take to build the resilience that you need to create and sustain the life that you want.
Jerry Henderson:Okay, so let's jump into building this resilience toolkit Now. I want you to think of this resilience toolkit as a collection of practices and habits that you can proactively engage in that are going to strengthen your ability to thrive. It's like I said earlier it's a muscle. You strengthen it over time. You're building a baseline, you're increasing that baseline, you're stacking up the wins so that, when challenges come, you've already laid a really good foundation and you know how to thrive. You know how to bounce back from the challenges that you face. So I want you to think about this toolkit not as just something that you pull out when crisis shows up or when things are tough. No, this toolkit is about building and strengthening your foundation so that when the challenges do come, when the storms come, when the frustrating relationships or life, life's right, and it just shows up and does what it does. You've already strengthened yourself. You've done the things that research shows very clearly are going to help increase your baseline or your set point of your overall resilience, and so those things aren't going to have as big of an impact on you and you're going to have the ability to get out of that dip a lot faster and with a greater overall sense of well-being.
Jerry Henderson:Okay, so here's the things that research is very clear about can help you build your overall resilience. And then I want to encourage you to put into your resilience toolkit number one social and relational support. The Harvard study of adult development it's the longest running study on happiness. It shows that strong relationships are the most I want to say that again the most critical factor in resilience and long-term well-being. There's also research from the how of Happiness that shows how important relationships are for our overall happiness and well-being, and that research also highlights the importance of both active support, somebody actually engaging with you and helping you, but also perceived support having the belief or the perception that you have people in your life that you can call on, that can help you when you need them to, is a big factor in our overall resilience, because we know in the back of our mind that we have people that can show up for us if we need them to. Now the research also shows that it doesn't have to be a whole group of people that you believe are going to be able to show up for you or a whole group of people that you have to be connected with to get the benefits of social and relational support.
Jerry Henderson:Research is clear it only needs to be one person. So if you have one person in your life and this can be a therapist, this can be a coach, this can be a minister, this can be a friend, it can be your intimate partner. Whatever it is, it's important to have at least one person in your life that you believe will be there for you, that will support you. If you're struggling with this, I want to encourage you. A little tip for you. You can do a couple of things. One you can connect with a professional who can help you and provide that support for you, or you can also identify one person in your life that you trust and start deepening that connection, share with them openly, start spending more quality time together with them and begin to build a bond where you feel like that person is somebody that you could call on if you needed to. This is really important, guys. If you have one area that you could choose to increase your overall resilience, happiness and well-being, it's having social and relational support. So, if you don't have it, find the way to get it and, like I said, if you have to do it with a professional, do it with a professional and then, when you're working with that professional professional, do it with a professional and then, when you're working with that professional, set goals for how you can expand that social support in your life beyond just working with that professional.
Jerry Henderson:Okay, the second piece of your resilience toolkit is your emotional skills, your emotional resilience, and we talked about this in a previous episode, and this is really about learning to regulate your emotions rather than being controlled by them. According to research that we mentioned in previous episodes by Dr Barbara Fredrickson, being able to access positive emotions can broaden. Our ability to see opportunities can broaden our ability to take action, and then, when we do that, it's also going to begin to build our enduring personal resources, or that sense that we can go within and find the resources that we need to tackle these problems as we begin to shift from negative emotions to positive emotions. Now, just as a quick recap, some of the tools around emotional skills and emotional regulation are things like mindfulness, the ability to engage in things like deep breathing, gratitude practices and savoring positive memories All of those really important in our ability to develop emotional resilience.
Jerry Henderson:Another key component is cognitive skills, or ability to have mental resilience, and once again, we did an episode on that as a part of this series, and so, if you haven't listened to that one, take a moment after this and go back and listen to that, because I think it'll really help you. This is what I mentioned earlier about our ability to reframe challenges, the belief that we can handle challenges, and then strengthening our mindset. Now, once again, I just want to note that the research is clear, and Dr Kelly McGonigal did some research on this that demonstrated that viewing stress as manageable, that one thing of just being able to look at stress as something that's manageable will improve your overall resilience and well-being. And I find that fascinating the fact that I can reframe it and look at stress not as something that is bad, that's going to mess my life up, or that I shouldn't be feeling stressed and I should be able to figure out how to do it better than I am. Getting rid of all that story and just looking at stress for what?
Jerry Henderson:Stress is a part of life and it shows up. And if I look at it as something that's negative and I start to retreat from it and start to crumble under the pressure of it, I'm going to decrease my capacity to handle stress. It's like a downward spiral. Right when I see stress is unmanageable, I avoid it. Then I have less ability to deal with stress. So the next stressful thing that shows up, I can't deal with that and I just start to spiral downward. And instead of that, if we'll look at it and go, you know what Stress shows up? Yes, it feels stressful. Yes, it feels uncomfortable. I want to be able to acknowledge that, but it doesn't mean that it's bad. That doesn't mean that there's something wrong with me, that this is showing up in my life. Okay, you can then reframe it and start to take action towards it. Which then leads me to the fourth thing. That's a part of this toolkit, which is problem-solving skills. Here's the truth, guys Avoiding problems weakens our resilience over time.
Jerry Henderson:I just mentioned it, but I want to repeat it and I'll repeat it one more time when we avoid our problems, it actually weakens our ability to face problems. Throughout our life, the muscle of resilience begins to atrophy. We haven't been using that muscle and so when we need it, it's not there. And if that's where you're at right now, I want to say that's okay. Guess what? We're going to go to the resilience gym. We're going to start building the muscle by practicing the things that are in this toolkit, going back to some of the episodes we've already done on this and beginning to put some of those things in place. There's no other way around it. We can't build resilience without having adversity, and we can't have resilience without facing that adversity, finding ways to problem solve instead of avoiding it.
Jerry Henderson:Now, this isn't about tackling the problem overnight, figuring it out all at once, having the solution just come to you right. For many of us, if we don't know what to do, we think there's something wrong with us, that we don't know what to do. And here's something I just want to encourage you on Solving problems isn't like turning a light switch on in the room right when all of a sudden you flipped on the light and wow, everything's clear, I know what to do. Problem solved. No. Problem solving is about raising the dimmer switch. Little by little by little, we get a little bit more clarity. We can see the things that we need to do, and often the next step that we need to take in solving the problem presents itself after the first step and then that next step and then the step after that becomes more and more clear.
Jerry Henderson:So if you don't know what to do, that doesn't mean that you need to or have to avoid the problem. You don't have to get into analysis, paralysis. All you need to do is take one step, a small step. How do you do that? Well, you break those big challenges down into manageable steps and then you start small. You set achievable goals that you can then build momentum from, and then you celebrate the wins along the way to reinforce your progress and reinforce the reward system in your brain that says I wanna do more of this. I wanna continue to push towards solving my problems, not avoiding them.
Jerry Henderson:Okay, and problem-solving skills are something that you develop. They're something that you learn. It's a lot of what I do in coaching is becoming a partner in thinking with people on how can they cognitively reframe the situation, come up with solutions, look within to find that strength and then to develop very clear steps that they can start to take to solve the problem instead of continuing to kick the problem down the road. So I want to encourage you. If you currently feel like you don't have a lot of problem-solving skills, you can learn them, and the way that we learn them is by doing it, taking risks, taking one step at a time. And if you make the wrong decision and it was the wrong step that's okay, because at least you're moving forward.
Jerry Henderson:I often like to tell people you cannot steer a parked car. When the car is parked or when you're parked, you're going to stay stuck forever. But if you get the car or your life out of park into drive, you're going to start making movement forward and you can adjust. Maybe you went a little too far to the left or a little too far to the right. Maybe you took a step forward and you took two back. That's okay, because at least movement is happening and at least we can learn. That's the key about developing a problem-solving skill set is learning.
Jerry Henderson:We don't look at setbacks as failure. We look at them as opportunities to go hey, that didn't work, what else could work? And we get curious and we don't get into self-judgment, we don't beat ourselves up because we didn't figure it out on the first try. We go no, you know what Didn't figure that out. Let me see if I can try it this way. How did that feel? Felt good to me? Okay, I had some good results. Let me try more of that. And that's just how we do it, guys. There's like nothing sexy or magical about the process of change. It is experimentation, it's forward momentum, it's learning, it's partnership, it's all of those things together to figure out how change happens. All right, now let's move on to the next tool.
Jerry Henderson:That's part of this toolkit and it's spirituality, or the connection to something bigger. So, whether it's faith or practices of meditation or mindfulness, whatever it is for you to be able to connect with something that's bigger and greater than you, all the research shows that spirituality can be a big part of resilience. Why? Because it helps provide emotional comfort. It provides the ability to make meaning out of what's happening. It can provide a sense of awe and wonder which activates a part of our brain that reframes and reshapes the challenges that we're facing, and it can also provide a very meaningful community that's supportive and it can help us when we're struggling. I want to be clear this isn't a promo for any type of faith, any type of religion. This is just simply stating that the research shows that when we have connection to something bigger, grander in us, as a part of our life, that inspires a sense of awe, that connects us with people, that provides emotional comfort and that allows us to make meaning from the suffering or reframe it, it has a very positive influence and is a big protective factor in our overall well-being and our levels of resilience.
Jerry Henderson:All right, the last tool that we're going to talk about is self-care. And listen, if I didn't talk about self-care as a part of this toolkit, it probably wouldn't be a toolkit that we would be talking about on the Permission to Love podcast, because, as you know, so much of what we talk about on this podcast is about our ability to have a healthy relationship with ourselves, learning how to love ourselves, learning how to take care of ourselves, because our relationship with ourselves is the most important relationship in our life. Why? Because it determines every other relationship in our life. It determines how we see people, how we see life and, most importantly, how we see ourselves. And how we see ourselves is what we then begin to pursue, it's what we begin to tolerate, it's what we begin to manifest in our life. So self-care is absolutely essential for maintaining resilience.
Jerry Henderson:Now, what are some practical self-care things that you can do? Well, research from the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology shows that activities like exercise, proper nutrition and sleep help replenish your energy and your mental resources. You know, if those things are low, your overall resilience is low. If you're not feeling good physically, if you things are low, your overall resilience is low. If you're not feeling good physically, if you're not getting the right type of food, if you're not getting enough sleep, of course your resilience is going to be low. And those are very loving things toward yourself. And not only are they loving things toward yourself, they're also building your resilience, your ability to bounce back from the challenges that you face.
Jerry Henderson:Now, another big part of self-care is self-compassion and unconditional self-acceptance. Those things have been shown time and time again in research to build overall resilience. And, as you know, I love and often quote the work by Dr Kristen Neff and it's really clear the research that she's done shows that self-compassion will improve your emotional resilience and reduces fatigue and burnout and increases your overall well-being. I mean, think about it. It takes a lot of energy to be in there beating the heck out of yourself all the time, to be judging yourself and being harsh to yourself. All of that takes a lot of energy and no wonder we're tired, no wonder we're fatigued. When we're practicing those things, when we're highly critical, when we're highly judgmental of ourselves, that is absolutely reducing our resilience because it's sucking the life out of us, it's sucking our energy out of us. I mean, think about it.
Jerry Henderson:When you're in there doing that, do you come away feeling good, recharged with positive emotions? No, you come out of there feeling like Eeyore. If you're not familiar with Eeyore, winnie the Pooh character, and so you know, life is gloomy and doomy. When you're up there doing all that stuff to yourself, that's what you're producing and no wonder you don't have a lot of resilience. And I gotta tell you this is like one of the key places, one of the first starters for me in working with people is how is that relationship with yourself? How are you talking to yourself? How are you treating yourself? You're burned out. Absolutely you're burned out, and part of the reason you're burned out is because of everything that's going on up there. And if you can relax that, if you can begin to get at peace with yourself, your overall stress waterline is going to start to reduce. You're going to feel less like you're on red alert because you're no longer feeling like you're on red alert against yourself. And I'm just so adamant about this because it is a game changer for you when you show yourself that you're worthy of taking care of yourself, exercising, eating right and being kind to yourself through practices of self-compassion and self-acceptance. Those are absolutely revolutionary game changers in our life when we start to practice them.
Jerry Henderson:Now, if you need help on how to practice self-care, how to practice self-love lots of episodes in this podcast, I mean it's so much of the content that we do here. It's about how to do those things and I want to encourage you build in at least one self-care practice that you can do each week and then move it to each day. I mean it could be as simple as telling yourself that you love yourself. When you get out of bed and you're brushing your teeth, when you're looking in that mirror, tell yourself that I love you, even if you don't believe it. Even if you don't feel it, look at yourself in the eyes and tell yourself I love you. And commit to do that for 30 days and see what happens in your life. See what changes. You got nothing to lose, right? You might just feel better about yourself in 30 days. If you don't change something, you're probably going to feel the way that you do now in 30 days. And if you need a reminder, put a sticky note on the mirror. Write it on your mirror with lipstick or a whiteboard marker or whatever you have, and put the words I love you and say that to yourself. It will transform your life and it will absolutely build your resilience because all of a sudden, you're becoming your own best friend. You're becoming a protective factor in your life for resilience. It will absolutely change your life. Well, there you have it Research-backed, evidence-based tools that can help you build your resilience.
Jerry Henderson:Number one social and relational support. Number two emotional skills to build your emotional resilience. Number three cognitive skills to build your mental resilience. Number four building problem-solving skills. Number five spirituality, or that connection to something bigger than yourself. And then number six practices of self-care. Now, if you'd like additional support on developing your resilience toolkit, I want to encourage you to check out my one-on-one coaching program. You can see the show notes in this episode or, once again, you can go to my website at jerryhendersonorg. Set up a free consultation call. We'll spend time together and we'll see if working together is the right fit. Now, if you found this episode helpful, I want to encourage you share it with somebody that you know, because if it's making a difference in your life and it's helpful for you, it'll also be helpful for them. I just want to say thank you again for being here, and I want to remind you, as always, that you are worthy of your own love.
