When Life Appears to Avoid Solutions, Look Within

Media has corrupted the rational choice method we once enjoyed in all its forms. Its focus on the agenda utilizes a format to send forth and not solicit the input of engagement in logical thinking, leaving us stressed, indecisive, angry, and a range of harmful emotions.

Waiting for common sense to appear, altruistic action, and trusted help to be sent is similar to watching a pot of water awaiting its boiling point. The mantra presented urges, “Do not wait, step into your self-help role, investigate options, and act on what is best for you!” Personal resilience, a step we all can take, requires learning what works for oneself and applying it. The good news is, there is an extensive reservoir of material available, making the project accessible.

The American Psychological Association (APA) provides information to strengthen personal resilience. They are:

1. Seek out others with whom you have confidence. Develop connections that are empathetic to your situation and understand the conflict or challenge you face. Obtaining input from others assists in decision-making and allows additional concepts into your deliberations for positive change.
2. If not feeling well, it becomes more challenging to function positively. Health is essential in all circumstances and may alter beneficial practices. Awareness and change are imperative to achieving constructive change. Advances to good health begin with oneself, through understanding, improvement, addressing issues, and retaining a healthy attitude. Stress is physical and emotional, affected by lifestyle, nutrition, sleep, exercise, anxiety, and depression.
3. Living a purposeful life should be a routine engagement. Aimlessness and a lack of goals will lead to dysfunction, and in that lethargy, depression emerges.

Purpose, as explained by the American Psychological Association, includes:

• Helping others through planning, volunteering, emergency assistance, and response to needs provides a sense of purpose and self-worth and illustrates life’s aspects.
• Being proactive. Not succumbing to depression, making an inquiry about your life, problem-solving, seeking out what fulfills your interests, taking the initiative when needed and where your skills, knowledge, and abilities contribute.
• Establish goals. Without goals, some individuals tend to be aimless. Being proactive, with a purpose, and not taking on more than one can accomplish is fulfilling and motivational.
• Personal growth and self-discovery. Overcoming adversity is soothing and fulfilling. Working through issues and problems builds grit, resilience and provides an awareness of further achievement. These acquisitions remain steadfast in the face of vulnerability and potential threats. Your self-worth improves, and that, in turn, triggers other positive characteristics. With sustainable change emerges personal achievement awareness, which bolsters the next challenge encountered.

As the APA and others validate, resilience provides psychological strengths to cope with hardship and trauma. In diversity, the knowledge and experience of many, when combined, lie the solutions to problems. Seeking input and guidance from others is also available, and like any project of value, utilization is endorsed.

Problems exist throughout life. The model presented addresses them all. Strengthening and enhancing personal resilience assists in overcoming the barriers that hinder positive change. While not a magic key, resilient collaboration elevates solutions, acquires new participation levels, and successful outcomes emerge, not otherwise achieved.

Guest blogger Richard Lumb is a former associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Northern Michigan University, and he is Emeritus from the State University of New York at Brockport, where he was chair of the Criminal Justice Department. He has served in several community organizations including two-term Board Chairman of the York County Counseling Services and Chairman of the Governor's Mental Health Advisory Council for the State of Maine. He served on the Board of Directors for Tri-County Mental Health Services in Maine and is engaged with Maine Resilience, a program that focuses on managing stress, adversity, and trauma. Maine Resilience is working with FEMA, Region I to bring resilience train-the-trainer programs to individuals and communities.