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GROWTH THROUGH ADVERSITY – Turn Every Challenge into a Stepping Stone · Motivational Podcast

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: When Heaven is about to confer a great responsibility on
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: any man, it will exercise his mind with suffering, subject
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: his sinews and bones to hard work, expose his body
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: to hunger, put him to poverty. Place obstacles in the
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: paths of his deeds, so as to stimulate his mind,
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: harden his nature, and improve wherever he is incompetent. What
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: doesn't kill me makes me stronger. This chapter is about
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: what we might call the adversity hypothesis, which says that
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: people need adversity, setbacks, and perhaps even trauma to reach
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: the highest levels of strength, fulfillment, and personal development. I
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: don't want to I don't want to have this chance.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: But it's here now, and what am I going to
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: do about it? Am I going to rise to the occasion.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: For decades, research in health psychology focused on stress and
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: its damaging effects. A major concern in this research literature
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: has always been resilience, the ways people cope with adversity,
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: fend off damage, and bounce back to normal functioning. Researchers
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: have gone beyond resilience and begun to focus on the
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: benefits of severe stress post traumatic growth. In direct contrast
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: to post traumatic stress disorder. Researchers have now studied people
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: facing many kinds of adversity, including cancer, heart disease, HIV, rape, assault, paralysis, infertility,
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: house fires, plane crashes, and earthquakes. How people cope with
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: the loss of their strongest attachments, children, spouses or partners
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: and parents. Rising to a challenge reveals your hidden abilities,
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: and seeing these abilities changes your self concept. None of
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: us knows what we are really capable of enduring. You
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: might say to yourself, I would die if I lost X,
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: or I could never survive. But why is going through?
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: If you did lose X or find yourself in the
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: same position as why your heart would not stop beating,
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: you would respond to the world as you founded, and
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: most of those responses would be automatic. People sometimes say
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: they are numb or on autopilot after a terrible loss
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: or trauma. Consciousness is severely altered, yet somehow the body
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: keeps moving. Over the next few weeks, some degree of
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: normalcy returns as one struggles to make sense of the
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: loss and of one's altered circumstances. What doesn't kill you
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: makes you, by definition, a survivor, about whom people then
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: say I could never survive? What why is going through.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: One of the most common lessons people draw from bereavement
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: or trauma is that they are much stronger than they realized.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: This new appreciation of their strength then gives them confidence
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: to face future challenges, and they are not just confabulating
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: a silver lining to wrap around a dark cloud. People
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: who have suffered through battle, rape, concentration camps, or traumatic
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: personal losses often seem to be inoculated against future stress.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: They recover more quickly, in part because they know they
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: can cope. Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: character produces hope. The person who has had more experience
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: of hardships can stand more firmly in the face of
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: problems than the person who has never experienced suffering. From
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: this angle, then some suffering can be a good lesson
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: for life. Trauma changes priorities and philosophies toward the present.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: The reality that people often wake up to is that
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: life is a gift they have been taking for granted.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: I don't want to celebrate suffering, prescribe it for everyone,
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: or minimize the moral imperative to reduce it where we can.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: I don't want to ignore the pain that ripples out
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: from each diagnosis of cancer, spreading fear along lines of
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: kinship and friendship. I want only to make the point
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: that suffering is not always all bad for all people.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: There is usually some good mixed in with the bad,
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: and those who find it have found something precious. A
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: key to moral and spiritual development. Must we suffer? Adversity
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: may be necessary for growth because it forces you to
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: stop speeding along the road of life, allowing you to
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: notice the paths that were branching off all along, and
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: to think about where you really want to end up.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: Human beings were shaped by evolutionary processes to pursue success,
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: not happiness. People enthusiastically pursue goals that will help them
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: win prestige in zero sum competitions. Success in these competitions
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: feels good, but gives no lasting pleasure, and it raises
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: the bar for future success. When tragedy strikes, however, it
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: knocks you off the treadmill and forces a decision hop
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: back on and return to business as usual, or try
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: something else. There is a window of time, just a
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: few weeks or months after the tragedy, during which you
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: are more open to something else. During this time, achievement
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: goals often lose their allure, sometimes coming to seem pointless.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: Many people change their goals in the wake of adversity.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: They resolve to work less, to love and play more.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: If in those first few months you take action, you
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: do something that changes your daily life, then the changes
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: might stick. But if you do nothing more than make
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: a resolution I must never forget my new outlook on life,
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: then you will soon slip back into old habits and
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: pursue old goals. You need interesting material to write a
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: good story. You can have a good life story without vicissitudes.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: Several genres are associated with well being. In the commitment story,
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: the protagonist, as a supportive family background, is sensitized early
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: in life to the sufferings of others, is guided by
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: a clear and compelling personal ideology, and at some point
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: transforms or redeems failures, mistakes, or crises into a positive outcome,
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: a process that often involves setting new goals that commit
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: the self to helping others. In contrast, some people's life
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: stories show a contamination sequence, in which emotionally positive events
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: go bad and everything is spoiled. People who tell such
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: stories are not surprisingly more likely to be depressed. Indeed,
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: part of the pathology of depression is that while ruminating,
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: the depressed person and reworks her life narrative by using
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: the tools of Beck's negative triad, I'm bad, the world
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: is bad, and my future is dark. Although adversity that
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: is not overcome can create a story of depressing bleakness,
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: substantial adversity might be necessary for a meaningful story. Trauma
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: often shatters belief systems and robs people of their sense
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: of meaning. In so doing, it forces people to put
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: the pieces back together, rebuilding beautifully those parts of their
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: lives and life stories that they could never have torn
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: down voluntarily. When people report having grown after coping with adversity,
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: they could be trying to describe a new sense of
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: inner coherence. This coherence might not be visible to one's friends,
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: but it feels like growth, strength, maturity, and wisdom from
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: the inside. When bad things happen to good people, we
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: have a problem. We know consciously that life is unfair,
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: but unconsciously we see the world through the lens of reciprocity.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: The downfall of an evil man, in our biased and
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: moralistic assessment, is no puzzle. He had it coming to him.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: But when the victim was virtuous, we struggle to make
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: sense of his tragedy. The desperate need to make sense
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: of events can lead people to inaccurate conclusions. The ability
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: to make sense of tragedy and then find benefit in
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: it is the key that unlocks post traumatic growth. Psychologists
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: have devoted a great deal of effort to figuring out
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: who benefits from trauma and who is crushed. The answer
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: compounds the already great unfairness of life. Optimists are more
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: likely to benefit than pessimists. People who have a basic
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: level trade of optimism tend to develop a coping style
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: that alternates between active coping and reappraisal. Because optimists expect
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: their efforts to pay off, they go right to work
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: fixing the problem, but if they fail, they expect that
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: things usually work out for the best, and so they
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: can't help but look for possible benefits. When they find them,
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: they write a new chapter in their life story, a
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: story of continual overcoming and growth. In contrast, people who
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: have a relatively negative affective style live in a world
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: filled with many more threats and have less confidence that
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: they can deal with them. They develop a coping style
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: that relies more heavily on avoidance, and other defense mechanisms.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: They work harder to manage their pain than to fix
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: their problems, so their problems often get worse. Drawing the
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: lesson that the world is unjust and uncontrollable and that
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: things often work out for the worst, they weave this
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: lesson into their life story, where it contaminates the narrative.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: If you are a pessimist, you are probably feeling gloomy
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: right now, but despair not. The key to growth is
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: not optimism per se. It is the sense making that
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: optimists find easy. If you can find a way to
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: make sense of adversity and draw constructive lessons from it,
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: you can benefit too. You have to use words, and
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: the words have to help you create a meaningful story.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: If you can write such a story, you can reap
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: the benefits of reappraisal. Even years after an event, you
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: can close a chapter of your life that was still open,
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: still affecting your thoughts and preventing you from moving on
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: with the larger narrative. Anyone therefore, can benefit from adversity.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: The first step is to do what you can before
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: adversity strikes to change your cognitive style, no matter how
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: well or how poorly, prepared you are when trouble strikes
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: at some point in the months afterwards, pull out a
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: piece of paper and start writing. Don't edit or censor yourself.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: Don't worry about grammar or sentence structure. Just keep writing.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: Write about what happened, how you feel about it, and
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: why you feel that way. If you hate to write,
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: you can talk into a tape recorder. The crucial thing
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: is to get your thoughts and feelings out without imposing
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: any order on them, but in such a way that
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: after a few days some order is likely to emerge
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: on its own. Before you conclude your last session, be
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: sure you have done your best to answer these two questions.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: Why did this happen? What good might I derive from it?
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: For everything, there is a season. The mind is its
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: own place, and in itself can make a heaven of
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: hell a hell of heaven. When it comes to explaining personality,
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: it's always true that nature and nurture work together. If
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: the adversity hypothesis is true, then there should be times
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: in life when adversity will be more or less beneficial.
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: Things die. It is the way of life. All we
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: can do is try to find a reason to go on,
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: build it again,