Don't give up: Claiming your personal agency | Amy Wolff | TEDxPortland

Alright, on a cold and rainy night in October 2017, a man walked into a pizza place to pick up dinner for his family. No one there saw his depression when he walked away. He decided that that night he would end his life. He took a different route home. one that was most nostalgic to him that he had used as a child to go to school and it was on that unusual way home that he saw something that took him completely by surprise, in fact he stopped his car in disbelief stuck in the grass . Along the road there was a big white sign with three words: Don't

give

up.

Instead of going home and hurting himself, he went home and told his family how deeply he was suffering. I had no idea that my idea for a small yard sign would be a grassroots family movement. Spreads hope in all 50 states in over 27 countries. Crazy, it all started in May 2017, five months before. He was hanging out with some friends after work when one of them mentioned the suicide rates in our small town. I was shocked, heartbroken and thought I had to do something, my sense of urgency and action began when I was 14, after witnessing the drowning of my older brother Jeremy.

I remember exactly one year after his death, I was sitting on my bed with my Bible in my journal and I made a pretty big life commitment. I want to be a bridge between people's suffering and their hope, so on May 17th I heard from a gratuitous suicide in my community and I think I have to do something but I don't feel qualified at all and in fact Mental health challenges were uncharted territory for me

personal

ly, but I was determined, so I printed 20 encouraging posters. The day came to put them up anonymously around town, my husband buckled our two sweet daughters into his car seats and while I was putting the signs in my trunk, I thought they were yard signs.

These are so cliche. They are so bad. They won't help anyone, but I did it anyway and they helped many people through addictions, divorce diagnoses, deaths and mental health crises, so we created a spectrum of products from stickers, pins, pencils, stickers and pins, Two college friends, Jessica and Vangie, joined our team and we clarified the mission of making love and hope tangible to anyone, anywhere, for any reason. Thousands of people joined our mission by bringing our products to Pride. parades corporate events summer camps for foster children family reunions high school swimming music concerts church programs our movement spread quickly if anyone saw these signs or it was the first happy foreign fast and it even went viral, although not always for the right reasons thanks to this clever reddit post nevermind

give

up really funny that was great today.

I come to you not as an expert on hope, but as someone who reclaimed my

personal

agency

to spread it. I reclaim my ability to spread hope, not because I am perfect but because I was determined and that is the idea that I want to share with all of you today, that we must reclaim personal

agency

, agency is the belief in our ability, our own power, our own influence, we can't control everything that happens to us or around us, but we can We can control how we show up, how we overcome, how we respond, hope and agency actually have a very beautiful relationship, so let's briefly delve into this psychology of hope.

Rick Snyder was a positive psychologist and was considered the first social scientist of hope who discovered that There are three important factors, paths of hope and agency, hope, not wishful thinking, hope for desired positive outcomes for our lives, things we hope to do, hope of being, hope of having, the second is Paths that we have to identify ways to achieve the hopeful goals and, thirdly, we. the front row got it agency we have to believe in our ability to achieve our hopeful goals according to their findings two men two researchers Gwen and Hellman discovered that on the journey towards hope when there is a setback, an obstacle, perhaps a crisis or a challenge , then we go from hope to anger, legitimate anger, but if we cannot identify paths to overcome those obstacles, then we go from anger to despair and, if we lose our sense of agency, the belief in our ability to overcome when we cannot reinvent ourselves or our communities after a setback. or suffering, then we go from despair to the opposite of hope, apathy, we simply stop caring, we give up.

Do any of those register with you and resonate with you? Think about all the headlines over the past few years where things felt too big, too broken, too dysfunctional. discouraging, so helpless, a global pandemic and beyond the staggering deaths in the economic impact that significantly affected our mental well-being. One in five American adults struggled with mental illness in 2020. Thank goodness, 26.3 million of us received virtual mental health services in 2020. So, thank goodness, we are publishing stigmatizing stories about how to get help, but 44 of young people around the world saw a decline in their mental well-being in categories of struggle and distress, but beyond the pandemic and mental crises, there is an opioid crisis, natural disasters, war violence and homelessness even here in Portland, our Pacific.

Northwest Wonderland anyone feels compassion, fatigue, me too is a lot, so what's the solution? Well, there is no magic wand to change the world. It's just you and me. Empathy and kindness prevail through us. We were the solution. This is a crucial moment, a crossroads because the reality is that. Tomorrow may never come. All we have is now. Then, what are we going to do? What if today you had the audacity to claim

your

personal agency? What if you really believe that you have the ability, the power, the influence to change things for the better? Yes, with

your

broken heart or your busy schedule or your empty wallet you can offer New Hope and possibilities to the world around you you are the catalyst for Hope so if you are willing here is the plan when the apathy Whispers is too big it is too broken respond with look at me try the agency takes action, any action, so the next time you're reading a headline, your heart will break or you'll walk past someone in obvious physical need, don't scroll past it, do something , don't limit your imagination and when it feels too much. cliché too silly too small or too big do it anyway you could start in your own front yard maybe with a yard sign remember that the man in Salem who found the yard sign wrote an anonymous letter to the address where it was posted the sign. written and addressed to the do-gooders he wrote your sign it didn't solve my depression you were signed and you solved all my problems but you should know that you are responsible for saving my life and I am grateful that you can become a powerful victor and do it -It is better when you claim for first time your personal agency and if the world's problems make you feel tired today, then I want to end with three simple words: don't give up.