OWLS is excited to announce this new class which synthesizes over 20 years of resilience and stress management training material and streamlines it for coaches and consultants. 

Resilience Coaching: The Sweet-Spot between Wellness, Well-Being, and Mental Health

(by Joel Bennett)

Articulating Stress

When it comes to the topics of stress and resilience, it helps to have a more refined view. First, think about when you use the term “stress” – such as “I am too stressed out to read this right now.” This is really just a crude short-hand. Stress is actually a wondrous myriad of brain-body reaction sequences that we can actually understand, modify, and improve. The same goes for resilience. Secondly, both stress and resilience point to life-giving and transformational opportunities that await us every day of our lives.

When we really pay attention to our life situation (the stressors) we can not only bounce back from stress, we can use stress to learn, grow, and achieve higher levels of consciousness. This attentiveness is at the heart of well-being and mental health. There is a clear path between stress, resilience, and thriving. This 1-minute video describes this refined view and SECRET power of stress.

From Organizational to Individual Resilience

Over the past 20 years, I have been teaching these principles in a facilitator-training program that has reached thousands of workers and has been recognized as evidence-based. In the past year, various students and colleagues have asked me to develop a resilience-to-thriving version for individual and group coaching. This is because the training (and my book Raw Coping Power) provide many tools and protocols that trained facilitators are using for their own individual growth and in wellness, lifestyle, and leadership coaching.

At first, as an occupational health psychologist, I resisted this idea. The original training was more about enhancing the work culture, peer-to-peer support, and positive team dynamics so that the workplace itself had less stress. I lean more toward the “it takes a village” than “build a hero” philosophy.  But then I talked with my colleagues Michael and Deborah Arloski (of Real Balance Coaching) and happily realized I can do both.

A New Synthesis

Starting this year, I will be offering a resilience certification training for both basic resilience coaching and more advanced “coachsulting” (a hybrid—part-coach and part-consultant). This certification draws on some of the core wellness coaching competencies as taught in the curriculum offered by Real Balance Global Wellness. It applies these competencies to helping clients with the many different levels of stressors—triggers, hassles, challenges, adversity—and through the lens of self-actualization. The advanced course is a deeper dive on how to consult with organizations on aligning individual, team, and organizational resilience and with a more human resources and organizational development lens.

I am very excited to share this news (Next Evolutionary Whispering Signpost). I am also glad to be working in association with Real Balance for this initial offering.