Disappointment, disruption, unfairness, failure, rejection and disease are part of being human.\u00a0 We build a house of cards in our minds as to what ought to be and are devastated when it falls.\u00a0 This pattern is one of the first to appear in our cognitive development; it\u2019s also the most important, and certainly the most beautiful.\u00a0 Given its importance, and the inevitable negative side of this human wonder, we need a recovery mechanism.\u00a0 It\u2019s called resilience.<\/p>\n
Resilience is part of the biological world and it\u2019s truly remarkable.\u00a0 Cognitive resilience is uniquely human and likely in some respects genetic.\u00a0 Nurturing inherent resiliency is an important part of being a parent, a grandparent, a teacher and a coach (I\u2019ll add leader\u00a0as well). \u00a0There are different pathways to resiliency, and the effective and timely deployment of a combination of these pathways is the secret.<\/p>\n
The pathways are complex and interdependent; they\u2019re physical, cognitive and emotional.\u00a0 Some are fast, some slow, some require higher levels of cognitive function, and thus can\u2019t be deployed until adolescence and young adulthood.\u00a0 These pathways work in sequence and ni parallel; they work together like a complex circuit.\u00a0 Personal experiences, learned behavior and chemical imbalances can interfere with these pathways.\u00a0 These pathways need to be nurtured and practiced, and developed over time.\u00a0 There are experts, but most of us always have a pathway or two that could use some strengthening.<\/p>\n
The pathways are: self-awareness, tolerance, reframing, hope, self-determination, and action; I call them the Yep, OK, See, Can, Will, Do pathways.\u00a0 As a pediatric oncologist I\u2019ve seen a lot of disappointment and unfairness, and a lot of resilience.\u00a0 I\u2019ve seen these pathways in action.\u00a0 The Yep, is acknowledging that this is bad, and that you\u2019re sad or mad about it.\u00a0 Feeling negative emotions is natural and human, it\u2019s the depth and breadth we need to minimize to have resilience.\u00a0 The first lesson we can model and coach is as follows, \u201cIt\u2019s ok to feel bad, take a deep breath and try not to stay in that dark place too long.\u201d<\/p>\n
OK is sometimes accepting (but that\u2019s hard), but mostly tolerating, or living with it so to speak.\u00a0 We\u2019ve all seen children do this step very quickly and we\u2019ve all seen them take too long.\u00a0 Why the difference?\u00a0 Attachment.\u00a0 The second lesson, \u201cit is what it is, it happened, it\u2019s in the past, it doesn\u2019t need to take me over, or define who I am.\u201d\u00a0 You can probably see the developmental progression in that lesson.<\/p>\n
See is my favorite; it is so uniquely human and has resulted in so many wonderful things.\u00a0 It\u2019s intuitive, but must be enabled.\u00a0 It can be quick, or take a while.\u00a0 It can be simple or it can be complex.\u00a0 It can be constructive \u00a0or destructive.\u00a0 Our role as parent, teacher, coach or leader is to enable and empower this pathway, by offering suggestions, modeling the way, or sometimes just telling them what to do.<\/p>\n
Can is about hope and optimism.\u00a0 Some call it a sense of self-efficacy or confidence.\u00a0 Will is about self-determination and perseverance.\u00a0 Do is perhaps intuitive, but the faster you can get to it, the better.\u00a0 In fact, one ought not to seek perfection in the other pathways, or get lost in them at the expense of putting off action.<\/p>\n
We ourselves need to have resilience when helping others\u00a0use these pathways: Yep, controlling emotions is hard, Ok this takes time, I See another way to help, I believe this person Can do this, we Will do this together, let\u2019s Do it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Disappointment, disruption, unfairness, failure, rejection and disease are part of being human.\u00a0 We build a house of cards in our minds as to what ought to be and are devastated when it falls.\u00a0 This pattern is one of the first to appear in our cognitive development; it\u2019s also the most important, and certainly the most […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/leadingachildrenshospital.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/leadingachildrenshospital.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/leadingachildrenshospital.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leadingachildrenshospital.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leadingachildrenshospital.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=299"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/leadingachildrenshospital.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":300,"href":"https:\/\/leadingachildrenshospital.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299\/revisions\/300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/leadingachildrenshospital.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leadingachildrenshospital.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leadingachildrenshospital.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}