Personal Development Ideas

Personal growth: The power of transformative resilience January 31, 2018

When a calamitous event knocks us down in life, the usual, and perhaps simplistic, advice is to simply get up and bounce back; however there may be a more effective and life-altering approach towards moving forward, a process described in the New York Times online edition as transformative resilience.

In an article titled The 6 Steps to Turning Setbacks into Advantages, the writer reports on recent research demonstrating how various people dealt with major and seemingly crippling life-setbacks through a six-stage process known as transformative resilience.

Essentially the process involves using a major setback as a foundation for significant personal growth and effectiveness.

The article highlights the story of a young woman, who although possessing a Master’s Degree, was unable to get a decent-paying job, and was burdened with almost $100,000 in student debt.

She went through various stages of despair, which included suicide ideation,  in her journey out of this difficult situation, started a blog detailing her progress, and eventually began counselling people in response to them writing to her for advice on their employment difficulties and student debt problems.

My takeaway from the article is that the process of transformative resilience is a practical working example of the old adage: If life hands us lemons, make lemonade.

Our problems can actually become the life-changing catalyst for their solutions – solutions that go beyond simple problem-solving, but rather transform our lives.

I could not get a link that worked to the article, so to read the full article, I would suggest you enter the following in a search engine like google:

New York Times The 6 Steps to Turning Setbacks into Advantages

— Dennis Mellersh