Strength for the year everything changes.
Applications, calls, decisions, leaving home. Ten lessons from the Church’s Emotional Resilience course, rebuilt for the people actually living through senior year — with slides any facilitator can run and tools you can pull up on your phone when the pressure hits.
Not an official Church site. Every lesson follows Finding Strength in the Lord: Emotional Resilience chapter by chapter and links straight to churchofjesuschrist.org for the manual and videos.
Same ten chapters. Same doctrine. Your year.
Each lesson follows the chapter’s five moves — Report, My Foundation, Learn, Ponder, Commit — with the manual’s quotes, questions, activities, and videos intact. What we add is clearly marked: senior-year framing, optional warm-ups, and a couple of practical tools.
A pocket kit, not a syllabus.
Your weekly commitments with checkboxes that remember. Your action partner’s name and check-in time. Ready-to-send texts. The videos without hunting through menus. And a reset for when the bottle is shaking.
Anyone can run it.
Every slide carries scripts, questions, timing, and cues in a presenter-notes panel (press N). A planned-vs-elapsed timer keeps you honest. A printable guide lets you teach from paper if the projector dies.
Ten lessons. One per week.
From Finding Strength in the Lord: Emotional Resilience (2020). Each opens with a My Foundation principle and teaches a set of emotional skills.
Read the whole manual on churchofjesuschrist.org · All course videos in the Self-Reliance Videos collection.
The 60-second reset.
Before the interview. Before you open the decision email. In the parking lot before the test. One minute, three steps.
- Pause and breathe. Box breathing — in 4, hold 4, out 4, hold 4. Four rounds. Follow the orb.
- Name it, without judgment. “I am feeling overwhelmed right now — and that is allowed.” Naming a feeling is the first step of choosing how to respond to it.
- Take the next small step you control. Not the whole plan. One thing inside your circle. Then hand the outer circle to God in a sentence of prayer.
Steps two and three come from Lesson 1: “we have the power to act and to choose how we will respond” (Elder David A. Bednar; see 2 Nephi 2:26). The manual teaches body and stress skills in depth in Lessons 3 and 4.
Follow the manual. Trust the group.
The manual’s own guidance for running this course, especially with youth. Read the full For Facilitators section before your first lesson.
With youth
“If these materials are used with youth groups, it is recommended that participants be at least 16 years old and that two adults be present. If you have concerns about a youth’s safety because of something he or she shares in a meeting, please let the parent or guardian know.”
Not therapy
“This group is for educational purposes only. It is not group therapy or professional treatment for mental health issues.” Read that aloud in Lesson 1. If someone needs more than a council can give, help them find it.
Ideal size
8–10 participants. Larger groups work — protect sharing time with a timekeeper. The topics are sensitive; some students may become emotional. Be understanding, and let the group support them.
Do
- Download videos and check equipment before each meeting
- Start and end on time; open and close with prayer
- Choose a timekeeper; encourage everyone to participate
- Be a group member — make, keep, and report your own commitments
- Have fun and celebrate success
- Trust and follow the workbook
- Contact and encourage members during the week
Do not
- Prepare a lesson (follow the materials instead)
- Teach or act as the expert; speak more than others
- Answer every question or give your opinion after each comment
- Be the center of attention; sit at the head of the table; stand to facilitate
- Skip the Ponder section
- Change or enhance the activities
About that last one: the warm-ups, the Circle of Control, the thought-trap preview, and the 3-step reset on this site are facilitator additions, marked “Optional” in the deck. The manual’s activities themselves are kept as written. Use the additions with judgment, or skip them.
You do not have to carry it alone.
Call or text the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline any time, in the US. Free, confidential, 24/7. 988lifeline.org
A parent. Your bishop or Young Women / Young Men leader. A school counselor. Your action partner. Saying it out loud to one person is the first step of every skill in this course.
Mental health resources from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, including how to find professional help.