12 Habits that Build Resilience

In the book, Aguilar explains how developing each of these habits contributes to resilience. She
recommends focusing on a different habit each month, taking the whole month to learn about, reflect
on, and develop practices that strengthen that habit. Below each habit is the month Aguilar suggests
as an ideal time to focus on it: This is based on a typical American school calendar, where the school
year starts around August/September and ends around May/June. If your calendar is different, you
may want to make adjustments accordingly.
1. Know Yourself
Taking the time to reflect on and get clear about your values, your preferences, your skills and
aptitudes, and your sociopolitical identity can help you develop a strong sense of purpose. This makes
you more likely to respond to difficult situations in ways that are consistent with that purpose. “Being
really anchored in your purpose,” Aguilar explains, “being really clear about what you want to be doing
in life, helps you deal with challenges and setbacks.”
2. Understand Emotions
Emotions “can be tremendous resources and sources of energy,” Aguilar says. They key is figuring out
“how to have healthier relationships with them, how to understand them, name them, accept them,
and then work with them.” During this month, Aguilar has teachers examine the way emotions
influence our thinking (and vice-versa) and how to work with them, instead of against them.
She’s especially interested in how we deal with anger. “There have been times when I’ve acted from
anger, and it hasn’t been productive,” she says. “And there are other times when I figured out how to
use my anger as a fuel and as energy, how to act from a place of kindness and compassion, but not
suppress my anger.”
3. Tell Empowering Stories
“The space where we can have the greatest impact on our resilience is between a thing that happens
and how we interpret and make sense of that thing,” Aguilar says. That interpretation takes the form of
a story we tell ourselves.
“So for example, a student rolls her eyes at you. That’s the thing that happens,” she says. “How you
make sense of and interpret that event is precisely the point where either your resilience can be
drained or filled, because you could interpret her eye rolling as This student doesn’t respect me, or
you can interpret that event as, This is very typical behavior from 12-year-olds, and I’m going to move
on to the next part of the lesson. In that moment, if we can hone our ability to expand that space
between what happens and how we respond and how we interpret it, we have so much more power
then to cultivate our resilience.”
Elena Aguilar
4. Build Community
If we develop habits that nurture relationships with our colleagues, students, parents, and
administrators, we strengthen our resilience. “There’s actually medical research saying that isolation is
more dangerous to your physical health than smoking,” Aguilar says. “Teaching can be such a lonely
experience, and I think anything that we can do to begin cementing those connections will just help us
so much when things get rough.” The beginning of a school year is an ideal time to start, and by
putting relationship-building habits in place early, that community can be a source of strength all year
long.
5. Be Here Now
Suggested month: October
“Learning how to be in the present moment without judging it can help us to experience acceptance. It
helps us to have clear-headedness so that we can make choices in our responses.” Developing habits
of mindfulness, where we focus on what is happening right now without judgment, can help us to
circumvent a “triggered” reaction to daily challenges and instead respond calmly and thoughtfully.
Daily meditation or even brief moments of focusing on our breath can help us hit that “pause button”
and bring ourselves to that place of calm.
6. Take Care of Yourself
“It’s really hard to build community or to cultivate compassion or be a learner—some of the other
habits—when you’re just sick, when you’re worn out,” Aguilar says. So this month, she recommends
focusing on the habits of physical self-care, digging into the reasons why teachers so often fall short in
this area. “I think people know what to do,” she says. “We know we should be eating more leafy
greens and exercising more and so on, but why is it so hard?” Uncovering those reasons can help with
developing habits that work.
7. Focus on the Bright Spots
During this month, Aguilar guides teachers to practice giving more attention to what is working, rather
than what’s not. “Our brains have a negativity bias,” she explains, “so everything that is challenging,
that is potentially a threat, appears really vividly and clearly to us, because of the way our brains are
wired, and so one of the skills that we need to hone is the ability to see all the things that are going
well or even just okay.”
In the classroom, for example, we can prompt ourselves to regularly notice students who are paying
attention and on-task, rather than giving all our attention to the few students who aren’t. By developing
this habit, we increase our sense of empowerment, which in turn builds greater resilience.
8. Cultivate Compassion
When we practice compassionate thinking for others and ourselves, we become better equipped to
handle difficult situations. “Cultivating compassion, broadening our perspective on how we see a
situation, helps us to empathize with others, to see the long view, to take ourselves out of the drama of
the moment,” Aguilar says. So when students misbehave, a colleague is short with us, or a parent
challenges one of our decisions, being in the habit of viewing these situations through the lens of
compassion can help you not take that behavior personally, which leads to smarter, less reactive
decision-making.
9. Be a Learner
“Resilient people are curious,” Aguilar says. “Resilient people experience a challenge and turn around
and say, Wow. That was really hard. That pushed me to my limits. What can I learn from that? Just
that question alone immediately propels you into a place of being able to build your resilience.” So this
month, teachers are encouraged to reflect on who they are as learners, to better understand the
stages of the learning process, and to practice seeing challenges as invitations to curiosity.
10. Play and Create
One tool for building resilience that is easy to overlook is the habit of play. “I think it’s a human right to
be creative, to create, enjoy, and appreciate art,” Aguilar says. “Playing and creating can unlock inner
resources for dealing with stress, for solving problems…it can help us see different things and find
different approaches to tackle challenges.” This month—which may hit right around spring break—
teachers are encouraged to build regular periods of play and creation into their daily lives.
11. Ride the Waves of Change
The end of the school year inevitably brings all kinds of changes; some of these can completely throw
us off track if we’re not prepared for them. Aguilar recommends teachers spend this month looking at
“how we can harness our energies to manage those changes and also direct our energy to the places
that we can make the biggest difference.” This practice includes slowing down, facing and dealing with
fear, and mindfully evaluating situations to determine which responses will have the most impact.
12. Celebrate and Appreciate
As the school year winds down, we have lots of opportunities to celebrate our own accomplishments
and those of our students and colleagues. This month, teachers are encouraged to develop daily
habits of gratitude and to carry those habits throughout the year. “Even in the hardest moments,” she
says, “if we can shift into a stance of appreciation, we can build our resilience.”