Understanding Spiritual Life Skills and Resilience Building

Ihave taken time to question the essence of life in the now. This was buoyed by my profession as a reflective mental health practitioner in the field of counselling and psychotherapy focusing on transformational change and clinical growth interventions with a balance on divine verities of God.

The central message running across all the shared themes in spirit, soul and body is about ‘ Spiritual Life Skills and Resilience Building’. In Covid 19, we have so many mental health and other challenges hence we struggle to make sense or decode all that is really going one scalating cases of Gender Based Violence manifesting through sexual, physical, emotional, financial, social to mention the obvious.

Words are so powerful and many a times we do not recognize that simple as they may look, they too are a symbol of our communication tool in families and diverse social contexts and have perpetuated violence and therefore need to be understood.

As a people, collectively Batswana are known to have a socially constructed sense of being that is anchored on the socio-cultural values of botho, love and peace and it is when we observe the contrary happening with speed, intensity and gruesomeness that we struggle to appraise what is happening. We however are aware that we are progressively experiencing change and it is the reality of this impact that is hitting on the core of our being. We can give simple and complicated analysis because we need it to design our response approaches but we certainly need to raise our voices in suggesting modalities and strategies on how best to deal with the situation.

Spiritual Life Skills and Resilience Building is a full package understood in diverse ways but it is in the context we see life as endowed with a range of coping and managing strategies as we constantly are drawing from that we need as individuals, families, communities and as nations.

Spirituality is a complex phenomenon but we cannot as a people afford to underrate its significance as a pivotal facet of life. For some it means the religious practices we engage in on daily basis, for others it is the rituals that matter most to us including connecting through nature such as the sun, tree or physical yoga and meditation and for others it is our ancestral relationships with the dead as we invoke their presence in our daily lives. For some, it is a sign of our being less materialistic and caring about other people or being detached from mundane things as we draw our inner power and energy from a higher being.

I r resp e ct i v e of the dimension one chooses to take, it is what makes sense to us as individuals to draw the very best of our understanding aswe pull our capacity to engage in a meaningful way when engaging in transcendental matters. Life Skills are the tools that we engage at different levels of our being to get through by coping that enables and empowers us to handle the day to day issues of life. Some are simple whereas others are complex and therefore as we engage, we realise what works for who, when and in what situations and can now build survival patterns for that is what separates us in life.

In this context, spirituality draws f rom our deep understanding that we have a meaningful divine connection that allows our inner being to have access into the divine verities of God.

The Holy Spirit penetrates the influence of our decisional ability which is contained in our minds as located in the soul and this happens through submission and obedience. It removes burdens from carrying issues of life and empowers us through grace to enjoy a life full of peace, joy and strength and this is essentially a life of faith.

Many nuggets will be availed as spiritual life skills for resilience building as we navigate daily issues of life and they will be explored.

Let us take cognisance that ‘ without faith it is impossible to please God because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He is meaning they believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly or diligently seek Him’ (Hebrews 11:6). Moreover, this prophetic word is just near us as it is in our mouths and hearts that “Jesus is Lord,” and if we believe in our hearts that God raised Him from the dead, we will be saved for it is with our ‘hearts that we believe and are justified, and it is with our mouths that we profess our faith and are saved’ and there is a promise that ‘‘Anyone who believes in him will never be put to shame.” (Romans 10:8-11).