The three secrets of resilient people | Lucy Hone | TEDxChristchurch

So I would like to start, if you will allow me, by asking you a few questions. If you've ever lost someone you truly love, ever had your heart broken, ever struggled through a bitter divorce, or been the victim of infidelity, stand up. If standing is inaccessible to you, you can raise your hand, remain standing and keep your hand there. If you've ever experienced a natural disaster, been harassed, or been fired, stand up. If you have ever had a miscarriage, if you have ever had an abortion or have struggled with infertility, please stand up. Finally, if you or a loved one has had to deal with mental illness, dementia, any type of physical disability, or face suicide, stand up.

Look around. Adversity does not discriminate. If you are alive, you will have to do it or you have already had to face difficult times. Thank you. Everyone takes a seat. I began studying resilience research a decade ago at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. It was an incredible moment to be there because the professors who trained me had just gotten the contract to train the 1.1 million American soldiers to be as fit mentally as they have ever been physically. As you can imagine, there isn't a much more skeptical and insightful audience than American drill sergeants returning from Afghanistan.

So for someone like me, whose main quest in life is to try to figure out how to get the best out of scientific findings from academia and bring them to

people

in their everyday lives, it was a pretty inspiring place. I finished my studies in the United States and returned home to Christchurch to begin my doctoral research. He had just begun that study when the Christchurch earthquakes hit. So I put my research on hold and began working with my home community to help them during that terrible period after the earthquake. I work with all types of organisations, from government departments to construction companies and all types of community groups, teaching them the ways of thinking and acting that we know drive resilience.

I thought this was my time to put all that research to good use. But sadly I was wrong, as my real test came in 2014, over the Queen's Birthday weekend. We and two other families had decided to go down to Lake Ohau and ride our bikes. At the last minute, my beautiful twelve-year-old daughter Abby decided to get in the car with her best friend Ella, also 12, and her mother, Sally, a dear friend of mine. On the way down, as they were traveling on Thompson Track, a car sped through a stop sign, crashed into them, and killed all

three

of them instantly.

In the blink of an eye, I find myself thrown to the other side of the equation, waking up with a completely new identity. Instead of being the resilience expert, I'm suddenly the grieving mother, waking up not knowing who I am and trying to digest unthinkable news. My world was shattered. Suddenly I'm the one on the end of all this expert advice and I can tell you that I didn't like what I heard one bit. In the days after Abby's death, we were told that we were now prime candidates for family estrangement, that we were likely to divorce, and that we were at high risk for mental illness.

Wow, I remember thinking, thanks for that. I thought my life was already shit. The pamphlets describe the five stages of grief. Anger, bargaining, denial, depression, acceptance. Victim support came to our door and told us we could expect the next five years to be one of pain. I know the pamphlets and resources were well-intentioned, but with all that advice they left us feeling like victims, totally overwhelmed by the journey ahead and powerless to have any influence over our grief. I didn't need to be told how bad things were. Believe me, I already knew things were really terrible.

What I needed most was hope. I needed a journey through all that anguish, pain and longing. Above all, I wanted to be an active participant in my grieving process, so I decided to turn my back on their advice and instead decided to conduct a self-experiment of sorts. I had done the research. I had the tools. I wanted to know how useful they would be to me now, with such a huge mountain to climb. Now I have to confess that at this point I really didn't know any of this was going to work. It is widely recognized that parental grief is the most difficult loss to bear.

But now I can tell you, five years later, what I already knew from research: that you can rise from adversity, that there are strategies that work, that it is entirely possible to force yourself to think and act in certain ways that help you navigate. Hard times. There is a huge amount of research on how to do this. Today I am going to share with you

three

strategies. These are my go-to strategies that I relied on and saved me on my darkest days. There are three strategies that underpin all of my work and are quite available to all of us.

Anyone can learn them, you can learn them today here. So, number one:

resilient

people

understand that those things happen. They know that suffering is part of life. This doesn't mean they really appreciate it. In reality, they are not deceived. But when hard times come, they seem to know that suffering is a part of every human existence. And knowing this prevents you from feeling discriminated against when difficult times come. Not once did I find myself thinking why me? In fact, I remember thinking why not me? Terrible things happen and they happen to you like everyone else. That's your life now.

It's time to sink or swim. The real tragedy is that it seems that not many of us know this anymore. It seems like we live in a time where we are entitled to a perfect life where bright, happy photos on Instagram are the norm when in reality, as you all demonstrated at the beginning of my talk, it's quite the opposite. Number two: Resilient people are really good at carefully choosing where to select their attention. They have a habit of evaluating situations realistically and managing to focus on the things they can change and somehow accept the things they can't.

This is a vital skill that can be learned for resilience. As humans, we are very good at noticing threats and weaknesses. We are programmed for those negative aspects; we are very, very good at noticing them. Negative emotions stick to us like Velcro, while positive emotions and experiences seem to bounce off like Teflon. Being connected in this way is really good for us and we found it very useful from an evolutionary perspective. So imagine for a moment that I am a cavewoman and I walk out of my cave in the morning and there is a saber-toothed tiger on one side and a beautiful rainbow on the other.

In a way, it pays off for me to survive if I notice this tiger. The problem is that we now live in an era where we are constantly bombarded with threats all day long. And our poor brains treat each of those threats as if they were a tiger. Our focus on threat, our stress response, is permanently activated. Resilient people don't minimize the negative, but they have also found a way to tune into the good. One day, when doubts threatened to overwhelm me, I distinctly remember thinking, "No, this won't eat you up. You have to survive. You have so much to live for.

Choose life, not death. Don't do it." "Lose what you have for what you've lost." In psychology, we call this seeking benefits. In my brave new world, it meant trying to find things to be grateful for. At least our little girl hadn't died of some illness. terrible, long and prolonged. She died suddenly, instantly, sparing her and us from that pain. We had great social support from family and friends to help us get through. And, above all, we still had two beautiful children to live for, to support us. they needed now and deserved to have as normal a life as possible.

Science has shown that being able to shift the focus of attention to also include the good is a really powerful strategy. So in 2005, Marty Seligman and his colleagues conducted an experiment and asked. people to think about 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 study. six months. When you are grieving, you may need a reminder or permission to feel grateful. In our kitchen we have a bright pink neon sign reminding us to embrace the good.

In the US military, they approached it a little differently. They talked to the army about hunting for good things. Find the language that works for you, but whatever you do, make an intentional, deliberate, and continuous effort to tune into what is good in your world. Number three: Resilient people ask themselves, "Is what I'm doing helping me or hurting me?" This is a question that is used a lot in good therapy and is powerful. This was my frequent 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 hurt me? Well, that was a no-brainer for me. I decided to stay away, but Trevor, my husband, decided to meet the driver later. Late at night, he would sometimes find me looking at old photos of Abby, getting angrier and angrier. He was asking me, "Really? Is this helping you or hurting you? Put the photos away, go to bed for the night, be kind to yourself." This question can be applied to many different contexts. It's the way you think and act, helping or hurting you as you try to get that promotion, pass that exam, recover from a heart attack, in so many different ways.

I write a lot about resilience, and over the years this strategy has generated more positive feedback than any other. I get dozens of letters, emails, and stuff from all over the place from people saying what a huge impact he's had on their lives, whether it's forgiving family transgressions, arguments from Christmases past, or just trolling on social media, whether it's asking if you really need that extra glass of wine. Asking yourself if what you are doing, the way you think, the way you act helps you or hurts you, puts you back in the driver's seat. It gives you some control over your decision making.

Three strategies. Pretty simple. They are available to all of us, anytime, anywhere. They don't require rocket science. Resilience is not a fixed trait. It's not that some people have it and others don't. In reality, it requires very common processes. Just the will to try. I think we all have moments in life when our life path forks and the journey we thought we were going to take veers in a terrible direction that we never anticipated and certainly didn't want. It happened to me. It was horrible beyond belief. If you ever find yourself in a situation where you think, "There's no way I'm going to get out of this," I urge you to lean on these strategies and think again.

I won't pretend that thinking this way is easy. And it doesn't eliminate all the pain. But if I've learned anything in the last five years, it's that thinking this way really helps. More than anything. It has shown me that it is possible to live and cry at the same time. And for that I will always be grateful. Thank you.