Renewing Our Sense of Calling: Cultivating Inner Resilience in Ourselves and Our Children

For many of us in the serving professions, our professional lives may have started out with a deep inner calling. We may have held onto a sense that our occupation was also our vocation. However, as we continued to serve and lead in a variety of roles, staying connected to this calling and sense of inner purpose may at times have become challenging. In turn, what we offer our colleagues, our families and our community remains directly related to our own inner lives and this particular state. In these unpredictable times, adults and young people alike are in need of a deeper sense of community and more opportunities to cultivate a capacity for meaning and purpose in our lives. We need safe places and experiences that challenge us to, in Parker Palmer’s words, “live on the outside, the truth we know on the inside.”

This presentation discusses how we can nurture our own sense of purpose and vision and create opportunities for reflection and personal renewal for ourselves and others in our life and work. We will explore how we as adults can cultivate the habits of mind, body, and heart to systematically relieve the pressures that we face in order to give our best to those we serve. Using principles, derived from modern brain research, we will focus on how to strengthen our social and emotional capacities by equipping both adults and young people with mindfulness practices that can help regulate emotions, increase compassion, and foster stillness and cultivate inner resilience.