Resilience is not a DIY endeavour

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-put-down-the-self-help-books-resilience-is-not-a-diy-endeavour/

by kevintb • 7 years ago

56 13 7 years ago

I find self-help books and self-help gurus like Sampson to be something akin to placebos for willpower, but placebos work for a lot of people so I guess I just go through life gritting my teeth and bearing it rather than spending my time complaining how it's all a bunch of bull.

azhu2• 7 years ago

What is willpower if not a placebo? It’s simply a belief at the end of the day.

bigred100• 7 years ago

Line from a song I heard recently: “Faith ain’t nothing but a game face, cousin.”

sfgweilr4f• 7 years ago

This section resonated with my experience:

"For example, we heard stories of school guidance counsellors who insisted that parents take time off from minimum-wage jobs to attend case conferences because guidance counsellors and psychometricians do not work evenings."

This is indicative of a lot of service providers especially government departments. Pure arrogance and inflexibility. Those same departments then complain about low participation and/or lazy people "who can't be bothered" or who "don't follow up" their various "government intervention" plans.

nudpiedo• 7 years ago

Very revealing, especially in a forum where often overachievement is praised and it is not rare to read testimonials of burnout. It also highlights the importance of having a supporting net and an environment... I guess the same applies to Startups, after all Y Combinator offers such kind of environment, not just financing.

rramadass2• 7 years ago

Good article. The author's focus on the Environment more than the Individual is very right. It helps explain why when people move away from cloistered/detrimental environments to a more nurturing one for their talents, they often bloom. There is a symbiotic relationship between the Environment and the Individual with the former often holding the upper hand. An Individual can be easily shaped by the Environment while the reverse is quite hard to do (and thus the reason for the self-help industry).

The above may seem like a mere platitude but unfortunately people often focus too much on the Individual and forget the Environment. For example see research on "Behaviourism/Operant Conditioning" and also "learned helplessness". Nature only gives you possible potential, it requires tremendous Nurture to activate and make it bloom.

Finally; a caution, we should NOT make the mistake of assuming that the Individual is helpless. Willpower, Attitude, Fighting Spirit etc. are all to be cultivated. So self-help is still needed. It is just that their effect in changing ourselves and the Environment is often overemphasized. This is the crux, if the Environment is not conducive, no amount of self-help practice is going to help, you need to move out of the bad to a good Environment for you as an Individual to win.

addicted1005• 7 years ago

" Change your world first by finding the relationships that nurture you, the opportunities to use your talents and the places where you experience community and governmental support and social justice. Once you have these, your world will help you succeed more than you could ever help yourself." -- but how?

0xcde4c3db• 7 years ago

Yeah, this genre of advice (as with most other self-help advice, to be frank) is pretty much "draw the rest of the fucking owl".

rramadass2• 7 years ago

By simply changing your Environment by moving to a new one or developing new relationships with new people in the old Environment.

For example;

a) Mike Tyson's relationship with his mentor Cus d'Amato was responsible for his rise to fame.

b) Malala's bloom on moving out of Pakistan/Afghanistan's restrictive culture for Women.

crawfordcomeaux• 7 years ago

Great article. I wish the title wasn't so extreme because it sends a rather disempowering message. I recognize more nuance needed for healing because I'm betting there are outliers to their statistics and those people could greatly benefit from changing themselves, as well. The author preserves the myth that we are separate from our environment, when our internal environment is a continuation of the external in many ways. Like falsely dichotomous arguments about nature vs nurture, the article presents a false dichotomy of internal vs external, promoting external change over internal in times of crisis. I'm guessing the truth is more nuanced and every person can stand to benefit from seeking change in both. After all, culture is a powerful force when it comes to the distribution of resources and culture changes through individuals changing in ways others choose to copy.

Having said that, here's my response to your question: through self-hacking. I want to note that almost all the self work I'm listing below was enabled through my parents spending tens of thousands of dollars so I could go to an internet addiction recovery center (which helped a bit, but not nearly as much as the applied behavioral analyst they hired for me and nonviolent communication, which I discovered in their waiting room and not through their practices) and another 15k or so to allow me to live without working for a year while I grew. Without those resources OR the work I put in, I don't know where I'd be.

My thoughts/experience on the specific things he recommends:

"Finding the relationships that nurture you" - for me, this required me to first learn about universal needs (an ongoing field of research), identify strategies for meeting them, learning to ask for & receive help, learning how to connect with people (spent decades in information addiction disconnected from people until age 32/33 & only really started getting good at connecting after 6-12 months of practice), learning how to be honest with myself and others so I could find out who I truly was/am/wanted to be so I could present myself authentically, learning to speak my mind when social politeness said to not, learning to be vulnerable with people close to me & strangers, learning radical acceptance/forgiveness, nonviolent communication, neuroplastic healing techniques, mindfulness, other forms of meditation, abandoning judgment & preferences, and possibly more things.

"The opportunities to use your talents" - learning to recognize my own strengths, especially those cultivated in response to trauma (skills I practiced addictively are still very useful skills to have when practiced mindfully), learning to practice those skills mindfully, and the willingness to start saying "yes, and..." instead of avoiding new opportunities based on my predictions of how they'd go while making sure all my needs are being considered and none are being denied via the opportunity, and learning to offer help/advice instead of providing it unsolicited.

"The places where you experience community" - This followed from learning about myself. I joined Toastmasters and Codependents Anonymous as forms of healing and found good support through them. In the past two years since I've been living in a small town without either, I had to find like-minded people. I learned to dress however I want, rather than the social/urban camouflage (brown, black, grey, and/or other dark colors) that's fairly typical out there these days. This served as a natural beacon for others to spot me. I also wear a rainbow beanie a friend crocheted fairly regularly and am frequently stopped by people expressing joy over seeing it. This has led to other wonderful connections and the discovery either of communities ready to receive me or people also looking to build community.

"governmental support" - I moved to the state of Washington for rehab and have chosen to experiment with living using as little money as possible to challenge myself, escape the hold the moneyed society has on me, connect with and develop empathy for others who didn't freely choose to enter poverty, and develop portable models for living without money (which I replace with community support). It is only through this path that I can have access to food stamps and health insurance from the state. Otherwise, I'd fall into the social welfare gap of making too much money to qualify for support and barely enough to meet my housing needs.

Also, I found love on my journey and my partner has about 20k in a 401k + a little more in stocks we've been living off of while we both stay at home raising our first child.

"Social justice" - I'm an extremely privileged individual. I'm white, male-bodied, and spent most of my life as a cisgender straight man. For my entire life, I've lived on and am living on land stolen from indigenous people. I received a lot of financial support from my parents, who are still happily together an active members of their community. My partner has more money in savings than I and many people I've known ever had. I've healed and am healing through sexual and emotional trauma through the use of many psychotherapeutic tools, some of which I've come up with on my own. I rarely, if ever, feel disappointment, not because I don't want things, but because I've learned to radically and joyfully accept and adapt to change. I've learned to embrace uncertainty. I've learned to ask for help and accept people's honesty when they say "no." I do not harbor resentment or expectations. I've received lots of official education and given myself way more.

What this says to me is I'm a point where social justice needs to stem from. My job, as a highly privileged person, is to create and open doors for others. My partner and I are seeking to do this by researching and developing ways for land owners to return their land to the tribes and/or the commons, as well as to develop communities on the land. We view this as having high potential for destabilizing capitalism, as major source of social injustice.

We can only succeed if we work with indigenous people and others suffering social injustices, as well as those with wealth who wish to redistribute it and don't know how. A holistic solution would only emerge by pure luck if we didn't. If you or anyone you know is interested in providing perspective and/or time & energy toward this cause, my contact info is in my profile.

gbuk2013• 7 years ago

This is a difficult article to read because on the one hand there is a lot of truth in it, but on the other there is a fair bit of confusion.

Trying to build resilience in the middle of a crisis is like teaching prevention to someone who is seriously ill - it is simply too late. At that point the person needs outside help to recover.

This does not mean that taking responsibility for your well-being is somehow pointless and that adapting essentially a victim mentality is all that one is reduced to. And yes, you will most likely need someone's guidance and yes, the environment you are in will make a big difference. But dismiss personal development and the taking of responsibility for it is simply nonsense.

I wish I had the time to write a longer response but I don't and anyway who's going to bother reading it anyway. ;)

azhu2• 7 years ago

The article has an unfortunately baity title. The content discusses the merits of positive thinking.

bordercases• 7 years ago

USA's SOF truth #4: "Competent Special Operations Forces cannot be created after emergencies occur."

And they're built to be resilient.

Resilience is not a DIY endeavour

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