On Wednesday we had a fantastic guest speaker Jake Bailey.  At 18 Jake was unexpectedly confronted with stage 4 cancer and given only weeks to live.  Now 25 he is sharing his story so that we can learn what he discovered we are all capable of - resilience.

He said resilience was down to 4 key principles that we all need to practise.

1. Slow down - when we are challenged with adversity take it one moment, one day at a time.  Slow down and don't look too far ahead.
2. Seek the good - find something each day to look forward to and to be grateful for.
3. Solution seeking - activate your brain to focus on solutions rather than activating the worry part of our brains.  When faced with a challenge we need to train our brain to use the frontal lobe first and not to default to the limbic system.
4. Support - we don't have to do this alone, those that surround themselves with support are more resilient.  Support is our faith, our family, our friends.

This will pass - he told us when we are worried to think will this matter in 10 years, if the answer is no we need to redirect this energy by focusing on the 4 s's.