The three secrets of resilient people | Lucy Hone | TEDxChristchurch

Summary

After a personal tragedy, a resilience researcher realizes that much of the conventional advice for grieving wasn't helpful. She decides to apply evidence-based strategies to her own healing process. Sharing three key resilience principles, she explains how believing hardship is inevitable, focusing on positives, and evaluating if actions are helpful/harmful assisted her through grief. Concluding that resilience requires ordinary processes and willingness, she urges people facing crises to lean on these strategies rather than lose hope.

Takeaways

• 😢 Karen suffered immense personal tragedy when her 12-year old daughter died suddenly
• 😤 She rejected the typical advice given to grieving parents as disempowering and lacking hope
• 🧠 Instead, Karen drew on her background in resilience research to take an active role in her own grieving process
• 💪 Resilient people understand that adversity is inevitable and don't see themselves as victims when it strikes
• 👀 Resilient people consciously direct their attention to things they can control rather than ruminating on the negative
• ✅ Resilient people continually evaluate whether their thoughts and behaviors are helping or harming them
• 🙌 Karen found 3 key research-backed strategies - perspective, attention direction, self-evaluation - enormously helpful in coping
• 😌 While still painful, these strategies empowered Karen to grieve while still embracing life
• 🔑 The techniques require no special skills - anyone can practice perspective-taking, directing attention, and self-evaluation
• 📈 Karen's personal story and strategies have resonated strongly with and helped many people facing adversity

Q & A

What was the speaker's initial focus when she started studying resilience research?

She was studying resilience research at the University of Pennsylvania and focusing on training American soldiers to be as mentally fit as they were physically fit.

How did the speaker's life change after the Christchurch earthquakes?

After the earthquakes, she put her research on hold and started working with her community in Christchurch to help them through the difficult aftermath.

What personal tragedy happened to the speaker in 2014?

In 2014, her 12-year-old daughter Abby was killed instantly in a car accident along with her friend Ella and Ella's mother Sally.

How did the common advice and resources given to grieving people make the speaker feel?

She felt they left grieving people feeling like overwhelmed, powerless victims with no influence over their own grieving process.

What three main strategies for resilience did the speaker share?

1) Knowing that suffering is part of life 2) Carefully choosing where to focus your attention 3) Asking if your thoughts and actions are helping or harming you.

How can focusing on positives as well as negatives help with resilience?

Research shows that taking time each day to think of positive events can increase gratitude, happiness and reduce depression over time.

What was the question the speaker would ask herself repeatedly after her daughter's death?

Is what I'm doing helping me or harming me?

What feedback has the speaker received about the helping or harming strategy?

She has received many letters and emails from people saying it has had a huge positive impact on their lives.

What does the speaker say resilience requires?

She says resilience requires very ordinary processes and the willingness to try certain strategies, not some innate fixed trait.

What message does the speaker have when people feel they can't come back from adversity?

She urges them to lean into resilience strategies, as thinking in certain ways can help enormously even if it doesn't remove all pain.