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.

Outlines

00:00

😞 Grieving the Loss of a Loved One

The first paragraph describes the speaker asking the audience to stand up if they have experienced the loss of a loved one, heartbreak, divorce, infidelity, disasters, bullying, redundancy, miscarriage, abortion, infertility, mental illness, dementia, physical disabilities, or suicide. She makes the point that adversity affects everyone.

05:02

😔 The Inadequacy of Grief Resources

The second paragraph explains how after the speaker's daughter died, the grief resources made her feel like a helpless victim with no control over her grief. She wanted hope and to actively participate in her grief journey, so she decided to try resilience strategies from her research.

10:10

😊 Three Resilience Strategies

The third paragraph introduces three resilience strategies the speaker relied on: 1) Accepting suffering as part of life, 2) Focusing attention on things you can change, 3) Asking if your actions are helping or harming you. She explains how these strategies can be learned and applied.

15:15

🙏 Lean on Resilience Strategies

The fourth paragraph urges the audience to lean on resilience strategies if they experience devastating loss. The speaker acknowledges the strategies don't remove the pain but says they help with living and grieving simultaneously.

Keywords

💡resilience

Resilience refers to the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties. It is a major theme in the video, as the speaker discusses strategies she used to build resilience after the tragic loss of her daughter. She notes that resilience is not a fixed personality trait but rather requires adopting certain ways of thinking and acting.

💡grief

Grief is the intense sorrow and emotional pain caused by loss. The speaker shares her very personal journey through grief after her daughter was killed in a car accident. She rejects the traditional notion that grieving people are passive victims, and instead takes an active role in navigating her grief.

💡benefit-finding

Benefit-finding refers to the strategy of actively looking for positive aspects or benefits in negative situations. The speaker used this as a resilience strategy to find things to be grateful for even in the midst of grief over her daughter's death.

💡attention

Paying attention refers to where one focuses mentally. The speaker emphasizes carefully choosing where to direct one's attention as a resilience strategy - focusing realistically on what one can change rather than ruminating on threats.

💡acceptance

Acceptance means acknowledging the reality of a difficult situation rather than resisting or avoiding it. The speaker notes how resilient people accept that suffering is an inevitable part of life.

💡social support

Social support refers to comfort and assistance from family, friends, and community. The speaker mentions the social support she received as something to feel grateful for amidst grief.

💡agency

Agency is one's capacity to make choices and influence events. The speaker rejected advice that left her feeling powerless in grief, and instead took an active role in her healing process.

💡thinking

How one thinks about a situation shapes one's experience of it. The speaker emphasizes carefully choosing ways of thinking that are helpful rather than harmful when facing adversity.

💡healing

Healing refers to the process of recovering from grief and distress. The speaker discusses strategies she used that aided her healing, demonstrating that it's possible to heal from even the deepest grief.

💡hope

Hope represents the belief that things can improve even in bleak times. The speaker explains how she turned to research and strategies that gave her hope she could recover after her daughter's death.

Highlights

Adversity doesn't discriminate. If you are alive, you are going to have to or you've already had to deal with some tough times.

I thought my life was already pretty shit. Leaflets describe the five stages of grief.

What I needed most was hope. I needed a journey through all that anguish, pain, and longing.

I wanted to be an active participant in my grief process so I decided to turn my back on their advice.

You can rise up from adversity, that there are strategies that work, that it is utterly possible to make yourself think and act in certain ways that help you navigate tough times.

Resilient people get that shit happens. They know that suffering is part of of life.

Resilient people are really good at choosing carefully where they select their attention.

Being able to switch the focus of your attention to also include the good has been shown by science to be a really powerful strategy.

Resilient people ask themselves "Is what I'm doing helping or harming me?"

This question can be applied to so many different contexts.

I won't pretend that thinking this way is easy. And it doesn't remove all the pain. But if I've learned anything over the last five years, it is that thinking this way really does help.

It has shown me that it is possible to live and grieve at the same time.

Resilience isn't some fixed trait. It's not that some people have it and some people don't.

It actually requires very ordinary processes. Just the willingness to give them a go.

If you ever find yourselves in a situation where you think "There's no way I'm coming back from this," I urge you to lean into these strategies and think again.

Transcripts

So I'd like to start if I may, by asking you some questions. If you've ever lost someone

you truly love, ever had your heart broken, ever struggled through an acrimonious

divorce or being the victim of infidelity, please stand up. If standing up is inaccessible

to you, you can put your hand up, please stay standing and keep your hand up there.

If you've ever lived through a natural disaster, been bullied, or been made redundant,

stand on up. If you've ever had a miscarriage, if you've ever had an abortion or

struggled through infertility, please stand up. Finally, if you or anyone you love

has had to cope with mental illness, dementia, some form of physical impairment or

cope with suicide, please stand up. Look around you. Adversity doesn't discriminate.

If you are alive, you are going to have to or you've already had to deal with some

tough times. Thank you. Everyone takes seat.

I started studying resilience research a decade ago at the University of Pennsylvania

in Philadelphia. It was an amazing time to be there because the professors who trained

me had just picked up the contract to train all 1.1 million American soldiers to

be as mentally fit as they always have been physically fit. As you can imagine, you

don't get a much more skeptical, discerning audience than the American Drill Sergeants

returning from Afghanistan. So for someone like me, whose main quest in life is trying

to work out how we take the best of scientific findings out of academia and bring

them to people in their everyday lives, it was a pretty inspiring place to be. I

finished my studies in America and I returned home here to Christchurch to start

my doctoral research. I'd just begun that study when the Christchurch earthquakes

hit. So I put my research on hold and I started working with my home community to

help them through that terrible post-quake period. I work with all sorts of organizations,

from government departments to building companies and all sorts of community groups,

teaching them the ways of thinking and acting that we know boost resilience. I thought

that was my calling my moment to put all of that research to good use. But sadly,

I was wrong, for my own true test came in 2014 on Queen's Birthday weekend. We and

two other families had decided to go down to Lake Ohau and bike. At the last minute,

my beautiful twelve-year-old daughter Abby decided to hop in the car with her best

friend Ella, also 12, and Ella's mum Sally, a dear dear friend of mine.

On the way down as they traveled on Thompson's track, a car sped through a stop sign,

crashing into them and killing all three of them instantly.

In the blink of an eye, I find myself flung to the other side of the equation, waking

up with a whole new identity. Instead of being the resilience expert, suddenly I'm

the grieving mother, waking up not knowing who I am, trying to wrap my head around

unthinkable news. My world smashed to smithereens. Suddenly I'm the one on the end

of all this expert advice and I can tell you, I didn't like what I heard one little

bit. In the days after Abby died we were told we were now prime candidates for family

estrangement, that we were likely to get divorced and we were at high risk of mental

illness. Wow, I remember thinking, thanks for that. I thought my life was already pretty shit.

Leaflets describe the five stages of grief. Anger, bargaining, denial, depression,

acceptance. Victim support arrived at our door and told us that we could expect to

write off the next five years to grief. I know the leaflets and the resources meant

well but in all of that advice they left us feeling like victims totally overwhelmed

by the journey ahead and powerless to exert any influence over our grieving whatsoever.

I didn't need to be told how bad things were. Believe me, I already knew things were

truly terrible. What I needed most was hope. I needed a journey through all that

anguish, pain, and longing. Most of all, I wanted to be an active participant in

my grief process so I decided to turn my back on their advice and decided instead

to conduct something of a self experiment. I'd done the research. I had the tools.

I wanted to know how useful they would be to me now, in the face of such an enormous

mountain to climb. Now I have to confess at this point I didn't really know any of

this was going to work. Parental bereavement is widely acknowledged as the hardest of losses to bear.

But I can tell you now five years on what I already knew from the research, that you

can rise up from adversity, that there are strategies that work, that it is utterly

possible to make yourself think and act in certain ways that help you navigate tough

times. There is a monumental body of research on how to do this stuff. Today I'm

going to share three strategies with you. These are my go-to strategies that I relied

upon and saved me in my darkest days. There are three strategies that underpin all

of my work and they're pretty readily available to us all. Anyone can learn them, you can learn them right here today.

So number one: resilient people get that shit happens. They know that suffering is

part of of life. This doesn't mean they actually welcome it in. They're not actually

delusional. But when the tough times come they seem to know that suffering is part

of every human existence. And knowing this stops you from feeling discriminated against

when the tough times come. Never once did I find myself thinking why me? In fact,

I remember thinking why not me? Terrible things happen and to you just like they

do everybody else. That's your life now. Time to sink or swim. The real tragedy is

that not enough of us seem to know this any longer. We seem to live in an age where

we're entitled to a perfect life where shiny happy photos on Instagram are the norm

when actually as you all demonstrated at the start of my talk, the very opposite is true.

Number two: resilient people

are really good at choosing carefully where they select their attention. They have

a habit of realistically appraising situations and managing to focus on the things

that they can change and somehow accept the things that they can't.

This is a vital, learnable skill for resilience.

As humans, we are really good at noticing threats and weaknesses. We are hard-wired

for that negative - we really, really good at noticing them. Negative emotions stick

to us like velcro, whereas positive emotions and experiences seem to bounce off like

teflon. Being wired in this way is actually really good for us and served us well

from an evolutionary perspective. So imagine for a moment I'm a cave woman and I'm

coming out of my cave in the morning and there's a saber-toothed tiger on one side

and a beautiful rainbow on the other. It kind of pays for my survival for me to notice

this tiger. The problem is we now live in an era where we are constantly bombarded

by threats all day long. And our poor brains treat every single one of those threats

as though they were a tiger. Our threat focus, our stress response is permanently

dialed up. Resilient people don't diminish the negative - but they also have worked out a way of tuning into the good.

One day when doubts were threatening to overwhelm me I distinctly remember thinking

"No, you do not get to get swallowed up by this. You have to survive. You've got

so much to live for. Choose life not death. Don't lose what you have to what you

have lost." In psychology, we call this benefit-finding. In my brave new world it

involved trying to find things to be grateful for.

At least our wee girl hadn't died of some terrible, long, drawn-out illness. She died

suddenly, instantly, sparing us and her that pain. We had a huge amount of social

support from family and friends to help us through. And most of all, we still had

two beautiful boys to live for, who needed us now and deserve to have as normal a life as we could possibly give them.

Being able to switch the focus of your attention to also include the good has been

shown by science to be a really powerful strategy. So in 2005, Marty Seligman and

colleagues conducted an experiment and they asked people to think of three good things

that had happened to them each day. What they found over the six months of this study

was that those people showed higher levels of gratitude, higher levels of happiness,

and less depression over the course of the six-month study. When you're going through

grief, you might need a reminder, or you might need permission to feel grateful.

In our kitchen, we've got a bright pink neon poster that reminds us to accept the

good. In the American Army, they framed it a little differently. They talked to the

army about hunting the good stuff. Find the language that works for you, but whatever

you do, make an intentional, deliberate, ongoing effort to tune into what's good in your world.

Number three: resilient people ask themselves "Is what I'm doing helping or harming

me?" This is a question that's used a lot in good therapy and boy is it powerful.

This was my go-to question in the days after the girls died. I would ask it again and again.

Should I go to the trial and see the driver? Would that help me or would it harm me?

Well, that was a no-brainer me. I chose to stay away but Trevor, my husband, decided

to meet with the driver at a later time. Late at night I'd find myself sometimes

pouring over old photos of Abby, getting more and more upset. I'd ask myself "Really?

Is this helping you or is it harming you? Put away the photos, go to bed for the night, be kind to yourself."

This question can be applied to so many different contexts. Is the way you're thinking

and acting, helping or harming you in your bid to get that promotion, to pass that

exam, to recover from a heart attack, so many different ways. I write a lot about

resilience and over the years, this one strategy has prompted more positive feedback

than any other. I get scores of letters and emails and things from all over the place

of people saying what a huge impact it's had on their lives, whether it is forgiving

family transgressions, arguments from Christmases past, and whether it is just trolling

through social media, whether it is asking yourself whether you really need that extra glass of wine.

Asking yourself whether what you're doing, the way you're thinking, the way you're

acting is helping or harming you puts you back in the driver's seat. It gives you some control over your decision making.

Three strategies. Pretty simple.

They're readily available to us all, anytime, anywhere. They don't require rocket

science. Resilience isn't some fixed trait. It's not that some people have it and some people don't.

It's actually requires very ordinary processes. Just the willingness to give them

a go. I think we all have moments in life where our life path splits and the journey

we thought we were going down veers off to some terrible direction that we never

anticipated and we certainly didn't want. It happened to me.

It was awful beyond imagining. If you ever find yourselves in a situation where you

think "There's no way I'm coming back from this," I urge you to lean into these strategies and think again.

I won't pretend that thinking this way is easy.

And it doesn't remove all the pain. But if I've learned anything over the last five

years, it is that thinking this way really does help. More than anything. It has

shown me that it is possible to live and grieve at the same time. And for that, I will always be grateful. Thank you.