We sat down with Gupta to discuss her current work and to learn more about her perspective on wellness.
What are you working on now?
I received a fellowship from the UC National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement for a project designed to help professionals in college environments develop the mindfulness-based resilience they need to handle challenges to free speech on campus — the kinds of conflicts that can occur when working with student groups and peers. These facilitators are an essential part of the higher education infrastructure. Whether they work with students through programs in financial aid or help support international student centers, transfer student groups, or cultural affinity groups, they can find themselves handling powerful and complex issues of racism, sexism, and cultural sensitivity. They have to function as mediators in situations where there can be powerful accusations and arguments, or where students struggle with suicidal ideation or other serious mental health issues. The constant exposure to this kind of conflict can lead to chronic stress, burnout, and trauma by association, and that’s among people who are expected to be the calm presence in a tough situation. That’s what I work on with them. I’m interested in understanding how these incidents disrupt our sense of purpose and well-being, and how we can remain grounded and helpful to the people we serve. I hope to capture and document not just what’s going on but how we, as an institution, deal with it. Additionally, I want to foster resilience, the ability to be flexible and adaptive in the face of challenge. Resilience plus grit, which I define as the willingness to show up and face fear, equals success. Read More From Gupta on Stress
Gupta on Stress
We all need to be better informed about stress. What is something we should know to increase our stress IQ?
Stress is an indicator that is trying to communicate something. Stop, pay attention, and take the appropriate action to move you through to the other side of the situation.
Gupta on Resilience
How do you define resilience?
Resilience is an innate mechanism that drives us to get from one day to the next through the end of our lifetime. It isn’t something we have to attain. Instead, we must be present to our resilience and understand what makes it work and how to nurture and access it strategically. Resilience is maintained by investing efforts in physical health (movement, nutrition), mental health (growth mind-set, emotional hygiene), and spiritual health (making meaning out of life, reconciling our mortality, offering service). In other words, our inner resilience is stoked through self-care so that, to the best of our ability, we can show up to meet any challenge that presents in any given moment. The more flexible we are with our thinking and response to a challenging situation, the more learning and innovation we can gain from that challenge toward a new kind of solution. Resilience requires flexibility, and it also leads to greater flexibility. Each failure or roadblock that we tackle by its nature expands our capacity to think through the next situation. Part of resilience, then, is accepting that life is going to present ups and downs; it’s a given. Our only job is to show up to meet the challenge and trust that the rest will unfold through our effort, through forces outside of us, and through time.
We all at one time or another have a life experience that challenges our resilience. Can you describe what you learned about your own resilience after such an experience?
I learned what resilience means on a psychobiological level. It is allowing myself to be present and engaged in times of uncertainty, disruption, and challenge — both positive and negative — so that I get through to the other side of that experience where I feel at greater peace. I learned that I can find a way through a difficult situation by taking the experience one moment, one impulse at a time. Resilience, I’ve discovered, is about walking one foot in front of the other, especially when the path isn’t clear, because as you set your foot down, the path will reveal itself. I’ve learned about trusting that life is unfolding and that my innate mechanism of growth, discovery, navigation, and survival is fueling me forward. I now recognize that the anxiety I feel is an indicator that I’m growing and adapting my neurology to new experiences in the world. I’ve also learned that it is important to take care of myself, to trust myself, and to honor my process as part of what it means to be resilient.
