For a long time, I thought resilience meant pushing through. Keep going. Stay productive. Push past exhaustion. Ignore stress .Power through. People have often commented on how much energy I have and how much I’m always doing. Whether it was DIY projects, biking, gardening, working multiple jobs, coordinating activities with friends, attending social events, or constantly staying busy, I often felt like the Energizer Bunny . I was also the person making long, often unrealistic to-do lists and...

When I first started working as a psychiatric nurse about five years ago, one of the tools we learned during training was the acronym HALT. HALT stands for: Hungry Angry Lonely Tired At first, I found it especially helpful when working with patients. Sometimes what appeared to be irritability, emotional reactivity, withdrawal, or escalation was actually connected to something much more basic — unmet physical or emotional needs. I saw firsthand how small things could make a meaningful...

It’s easy to move through the day focusing on what’s not working. What didn’t get done. What didn’t go as planned. What still needs attention. We’re wired that way—our brains are designed to look for problems. And if I’m being honest, this is something I still have to work on. I can be pretty hard on myself. In a recent workshop, we talked about something simple that can help shift this pattern: Noticing small wins. These aren’t big milestones or major accomplishments. They’re the small...