What i really think about when I think about resilience I think about it's our ability to
find the resources navigate to find what we need, as well as our ability to negotiate to
get what we need in ways that make sense to us, and then of course to appreciate what we got.
I kind of like to think of it as the difference between thinking about the
story of Cinderella just from the point of Cinderella, as somehow that she magically
grows up in this awful environment with an evil stepmother and finds the prince
and everything goes right just because she is just so good and has these intrinsic qualities.
What i prefer is the focus on the Fairy Godmother in the story.
Because without the fairy godmother, Cinderella is just another abused kid
who probably runs away from home, doesn't end up in the palace but ends up behind the palace,
cold, hungry and the script goes in a completely different way.
So what I really think about is: can we focus a little bit more in terms of who are our Fairy
Godmothers, or Fairy Godfathers, where are the resources we need to bring out our best selves,
so that we can shine, so that each of us can feel like a princess — or like a prince —
But we can feel special and we have the supports we need to be that best self.
Without the Fairy Godmothers in the story, somehow we all will not get through this.
And that's why, if you think about whether it's a government social policy,
or a family member who reaches out, these
at different systemic levels, we are learning what it takes to get through a pandemic.
We do see a set of things like relationships, a powerful identity,
a sense of what we say is efficacy or the ability to make decisions for yourself.
Those are things that are common, but what they look like in different families is always going to
be changing,
depending on the particular challenges that people are facing.
There are definitely some some more mindfully
based patterns that you can introduce, you don't have to meditate,
I mean if you you know if you're into meditation great,
but simple things like maintaining routine in your life has really been shown in studies of stress,
especially in disaster contexts, you know getting kids back to school, getting us into our routine,
if that used to be a morning coffee or whatever it was,
finding substitute routines will trigger the sense of predictability in our lives.
We can also sort of work just inside of things, like say taking a few minutes each day
to show gratitude for the things that actually went.
Well, okay: my bank account's empty, this is really stressful, I'm disconnected yes, yes, yes.
But at some point in that day something, maybe you were one of the millions of Canadians
baking, you know your bread actually rose this time or something, right?
Like, maybe there was something that actually went a little bit right this particular day,
so that that exercise of gratitude, the exercise of simply reaching out as well,
or making a contribution, you know even with
social isolation we can still help our neighbours, we can combine shopping trips.
All these things kind of velcro together to create an opportunities so that when bad things happen,
we can glide through them.
And the good news is, that generally speaking when people have a sort of some rugged
qualities, you know they're able to persevere, they have some positive thinking, they don't
let themselves you know misattribute bad things to something that they've done,
and they also have this network of resources around them, about 70 percent of us slide through.
We, you know we dip we have a few bad nights or whatever,
but generally speaking we recover or we come back to normal functioning quite quickly.
It's that other 30 percent though that can kind of get stuck a little bit.
We know that people who have both those rugged qualities and those resources are the ones who,
you know, are actually able to be in that 70 percent who get through
a time like this, relatively unharmed.