By: Bob Bertsch
I need people. It was easy for me to forget that pre-COVID-19. I was caught up in the daily stresses of work and family, and concerned with crises that now seem insignificant in light of our new reality. The social distancing and self-quarantine we are practicing to reduce the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic have reminded me how much we all depend on social support for our individual resilience.
Due to the pandemic, we’ve lost many of the routines that brought us together (e.g., worship services, community meetings, seeing people in the office, etc.). Now more than ever, we need to be intentional about nurturing our existing relationships and creating new connections.
A couple of years ago, my OneOp colleagues and I created the “Building Networks for Resilience” Learning Experience. It focuses on using elements of John Stepper’s Working Out Loud process, positive psychology, behavioral science and more to build and maintain relationships that improve our resilience.
I think this learning experience can be especially helpful right now. It provides a new routine for working on your relationships and a structure to help you focus on improving the social support networks that are critical to our individual resilience.
When you subscribe to the “Building Networks for Resilience” Learning Experience, you’ll receive 8 weekly emails, each containing a resource and one thing to do to practice building relationships. The resources include five podcasts exploring each of the five elements of Working Out Loud: purposeful discovery, relationships, generosity, visible work, and a growth mindset.
The learning experience was designed so you could do it on your own, but you can make the experience even more meaningful by sharing it with colleagues or friends. Schedule video chats and subscribe to the learning experience together, then get together (virtually, of course) to discuss how your personal practice is changing.
We need each other, not only for our individual resilience but also for the resilience of our communities. I hope you’ll give “Building Networks for Resilience” a try, and that it helps you build the social support you need to get through this crisis and the challenges still to come.
Subscribe to the Building Networks for Resilience Learning Experience
