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The Resilience Factor
Lisa Wilson
The Resilience Factor reminded me of a few years ago when I lost weight. I had a lot of stress in my personal life and I began to run and I lost 30 pounds. At 5’02” that was a lot of weight, but to get to my point; people commented on my achievement and how losing weight was something they also wanted to do but didn’t want to run or didn’t have time. The excuses for not doing it were numerous. It is the same with the book. If a person truly wants to make a change in their life then this book will help them. I believe this because as I read the book I had “aha” moments. One such moment was in the section on page 66, You Are What You Think. The very last paragraph on that page states, “In fact, it is not the events that happen to us that cause our feelings and behaviors – it is our thoughts or, as we’ll call them, Beliefs (B’s) about the events that drive how we feel and what we do.” After reading that particular sentence a couple of times, I thought back to situations where I did exactly that…I let my thoughts about these particular situations take over. The ticker-tape was the same in each of these situations which caused me great misery. I can see that now.
Chapter four, Learning Your ABCs was enlightening for me. It made sense so I began practicing it. I found that I am the type of person who goes from 0-10 in seconds when my button gets pushed. This seems to happen more at work than in my home life. My number one signature strength is bravery, with integrity second. So when those in power at my work have the opportunity to do what is right and they don’t, it infuriates me. Even though it isn’t necessarily a violation of my rights, I believe it is a violation of doing what is right that angers me. I know this doesn’t actually fall into the B-C connections found on page 75 but it was the closest thing that I came up with because the consequence for me is anger. My ticker-tape belief is they don’t practice what they preach and I find that I have tunnel vision with the way management handles certain situations. I know that I need to take a step back and refocus on the big picture because my office does, in fact, do the right thing the majority of the time. Besides, I know that the way management runs the office is out of my control and it only makes me have a negative attitude in my work environment, which, as we know, drains my energy and makes me less effective in my job. So this is definitely something I am practicing, my ABCs. This leads me to Chapter Nine and The Fast Skills.In Chapter Nine I identified with Jeremy – the hothead or correctly called an amygdala hijack. I think for me the controlled breathing technique will help right as I feel my emotions escalating but as for the exercising at work, that wouldn’t be applicable. Skill 7 – Real-time Resilience seems to be more appropriate for me. I know Putting It in Perspective would also be a great skill to learn but in the seconds it takes for me to get enraged, I like the one tag line that states “A more accurate way of seeing this is…” because it gets me to focus on the situation not on my belief and it is a line that is easy to remember.
Another chapter that I particularly liked was Resilience in Parenting. One thing that struck me was the honesty of the story of Emma. Her parents told her that “You can do anything you set your mind to…” And the truth of that story was Emma wasn’t a good ballerina. She wasn’t coordinated nor did she have the skill to do ballet. And in the future when her parents praised her she would be doubtful of their praise because of her ballet experience. I will most likely take that sentence, “You can do anything you set your mind to…” out of my parenting dialogue. I can see how that will make a child skeptical towards their parents praise. I did have to disagree with the “Because-I-Said-So Parenting” especially with the example that was given. A seven year old boy wants to go across the street to the park with his friend…not going to happen in my home. Seven, in my opinion is still too young to go anywhere unsupervised. Also because-I-said-so is, again in my opinion, just fine to say to a seven year old. They are still too young to question their parent’s authority. I feel a seven year old is not one that I need to explain myself or my decision making too. If I said no – I didn’t need to follow up with an explanation. Now when my children turned ten, that was a different story. They better understood my reasons for not allowing them to do something and we were able to have a conversation about it. They voiced their opinion and I listened. Sometimes I would change my mind, sometimes I wouldn’t. I raised my kids to respect me and the decisions I make and in turn, I respect their opinions but not always do I agree, which makes me believe that I am definitely an authoritative parent. As a parent I always want to protect my children but I do realize the importance of teaching them how to be resilient.
I think the book does do a good job with respects to the four key resilience skills for children. All in all, I believe this book is a great tool for making change and for learning skills to overcome life’s hurdles.
Lisa,
i really enjoyed reading your response to this book, especially in regards to the section on parenting. I don't have any kids as of yet and tend to take an author's word for it when speaking about child rearing because i have nothing to compare it to. Now that think about it, i can definitely see situations where saying, "because I said so" would be appropriate, especially to a seven year old.
It seems like you were really able to utilize many of the exercises in the book while also remaining critical.
My question for you is: would you teach the skills that were presented in the book for children to your children? or do you think that there are ways to work small "lessons" into everyday life in order to increase their resilience?