Reset Your Resilience: Tools to Thrive at Le Moyne From the Inside Out
What if stress wasn’t something to avoid, but something to understand?
In a recent “Insights from the Heights” webinar, former Dean of Student Well-Being Anne Kearney returned to share powerful, science-backed tools to help students respond to life’s challenges with clarity, calm, and confidence.
Resilience isn’t about powering through, it’s about resetting.
Kearney, a licensed clinical social worker and resilience coach, breaks resilience into three digestible skills, the “Three R’s”:
- Regulate your nervous system
- Reframe how you interpret stress
- Reconnect with others and yourself
Her message is clear: You don’t have to be calm all the time—you just need strategies to get back to calm.
The Science of Stress
Kearney walked students through how the body reacts to stress, from racing hearts to spiraling thoughts, and how those reactions are normal, human, and biologically programmed. The key is learning to “tap the brakes” using tools like deep breathing, movement, or even simply paying attention to the feeling of your feet on the ground.
You can’t think your way out of a nervous system state. But you can breathe your way through it.
What You Can Do (Right Now)
Try Kearney ’s two-minute reset:
- Breathe in for 4 counts
- Exhale for 6 counts
- Repeat for two minutes
This small pause can bring your prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain that helps you think clearly, back online.
Other simple tools?
- Take a walk.
- Focus on what you can see, hear, smell, or feel.
- Look at something in nature (even a photo helps).
Reframe the Stress
Kearney also emphasized that stress isn’t the problem: it’s how we relate to it. By shifting how we interpret stress, from threat to signal, we give ourselves a better shot at managing it. This mindset, backed by research from Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonigal, actually changes how our bodies process stress.
Final Word
Whether you’re a current student feeling the mid-semester squeeze, or a prospective family exploring how we care for our students, you belong here. And your well-being matters.
Take a Deeper Dive
Inspired by These Ideas?
We believe student success is about more than GPA. It’s about caring for the whole person: academically, emotionally, and spiritually. Anne Kearney's work continues to shape how we support students through life’s hardest moments, and we’re proud to carry that legacy forward.
