The Resilience and Wellbeing Toolbox

Building Character and Competence through Life’s Ups and Downs

Madhavi Nawana Parker

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781000197945
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Classroom Management

This fully updated second edition is a practical guide for parents, teachers and other professionals to create cultures of resilience and wellbeing in schools, homes and health care settings. Students will build lifelong competencies to improve their emotional regulation, empathy, persistence, problem solving, mindset, optimism, gratitude, kindness and values; improving their psychological readiness to bounce back from life's ups and downs.

Alongside new lesson plans that are even easier to follow and specific guidance on how to meet criteria on social emotional learning frameworks, the lively and engaging resources in this book include:

• Practical, photocopiable guide sheets and worksheets, also available as eResources via www.positivemindsaustralia.com.au
• Adaptable role plays and activities
• Solid research-based strategies
• A flexible framework that can be creatively implemented in classrooms, homes and health care settings
• Parent tips at the end of each chapter

This is a must-have handbook for anyone seeking to provide young people in their care with a strong foundation for life long social, emotional and learning outcomes.

Gratitude, optimism and perspective

Introduction

Being grateful is an affirmation of the goodness in us and around us. It draws conscious attention to what’s going well and how the source of this goodness comes from both within and around us. In this way, it increases hope in ourselves and others. Gratitude practice has also been linked to stronger immunity, lower blood pressure, better sleep, higher optimism, increased happiness, social connection and much more (Emmons, 2010). Experiencing gratitude for others is important in all relationships and when it is noted and shared it builds deeper bonds (Gordon, Impett, Kogan, Oveis, and Keltner, 2012).

Being grateful for what you have, keeping things in perspective and looking on the bright side, can be easier said than done. Like resilience, there are many factors at play when it comes to gratitude, optimism and perspective. How you’re feeling on the day, current circumstances and who you are connected with at the time can all have an effect. When you’re young, inexperienced and your brain is still developing, it can be even more challenging to execute these skills consistently. Experiencing stress or new challenges will mean that thoughts and feelings have a tendency to run away from you. Feeling gratitude, keeping things in perspective and remaining optimistic will naturally be harder during difficult times.

Gratitude, optimism and healthy perspective are higher order skills that need time, practice and encouragement to build. These skills are hard enough for adults, so it’s important to show young people understanding as they learn to navigate their way towards them.

A feeling of gratitude is a warm and hopeful feeling that comes from noticing what you have and what’s going well, instead of what’s going wrong or what you feel is missing. Being grateful allows your mind to focus on the warmth of positive relationships, the beauty of nature, luck, goodwill and everything else around you that is going well. When gratitude focuses on three things that went well each for a period of 21 days, wellbeing, empathy and happiness increase. Anxiety and stress reduce too (Emmons and McCullough, 2003; Seligman, 2011). Gratitude is also powerful in leading you to experience positive situations again in reflection, almost as if you were experiencing them all over again (Rubin, 2011).

Different perspectives: optimists and pessimists

Seligman (2007) suggests the difference between optimists and pessimists is about how setbacks and victories are interpreted. Optimists see setbacks as temporary, changeable and related to the present circumstances. Pessimists see setbacks as permanent, fixed, and globalise the setback to all aspects of their lives. Victories are viewed by optimists as long term and seen as a reflection of how well their lives are going. Pessimists see victories as temporary, occurring because of luck and something unlikely to be repeated (Seligman, 2007).

To build skills like gratitude and optimism, young people need our leadership to develop a realistic view of life and the learning process. While social comparison is a normal part of development, particularly in middle childhood, an additional burden of social comparison occurs now via social media platforms. It is important we help young people navigate this area that most of us grew up without. Success stories flood the internet and social media, visually displaying achievement without showing the hard work behind that achievement. Obstacles, mistakes and failures that occurred along the way are conveniently ignored, creating a sense of scarcity within and pressure to strive to reach a particular place before you can be happy and grateful. Teaching young people how a variety of factors steer the course of success can help them develop perspective about why things don’t always go according to plan. Relationships, friendships, health, work, sport, play and school interconnect our lives and experiences with the lives and experiences of everyone around us. It would not be possible for things to go smoothly all the time with so much at play.

Add natural temperament, personality and environmental differences, and some people just find it easier to feel grateful and look on the bright side than others. Developing skills in gratitude, perspective and optimism in those who have a less sunny temperament is a process enhanced with time and practice.

With practice, the brain’s neuroplasticity allows stronger connections to develop in the areas of gratitude, good perspective and optimism, weakening old connections for negative perspective and pessimism. Being more optimistic and grateful can be taught (Shawn Achor, 2018).

Group discussion

Explore the following quote:

Do not spoil what you have b y desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have, was once among the things you only hoped for.

Epicurus

Ask students to reflect on what the quote means to them and if it has ever been relevant to them.

Inspiration from a young person who was grateful and hopeful: Eileen Joyce and the Pub Piano, Kalgoorlie, Australia

Life was an up and down struggle for the Joyce family. As a small girl, Eileen felt immediately drawn to play the piano. Her family could barely lay food on the table, let alone support piano lessons – or the grand dream of owning her own instrument. Eileen watched other girls learning the piano at school, but her family couldn’t afford the six pence per lesson. One day, at the local pub with her mother, Eileen noticed a battered, stained and out of tune piano. Her Mum taught her what she knew and Eileen brought the piano to life with her persistence and enthusiasm. Eileen was determined to earn her own pocket money to pay for the precious six pence lessons at school. She busked in Kalgoorlie and played her mouth organ to the miners after work. Finally, she had six pence and took it to her music teacher at school, who declared Eileen as one of the fastest learning pupils her school had ever seen. Word spread and a generous stranger paid for her lessons to continue. On the night of her tenth birthday, thirsty to relax by the precious old pub piano, her heart sank as she saw an empty space where the rickety old instrument had once sat. Eileen went home with a heavy heart. There, she saw her family eagerly awaiting her and in her room, the gift of the pub piano, now clean and tuned and all hers. Eileen’s talent was becoming the talk of Kalgoorlie. Scholarships followed and at the age of 12, she was discovered by the famous composer Percy Grainger and international pianist Wilhelm Backhaus. The people of Perth, Australia and the miners who she’d played for raised the funds for Eileen to travel to the Leipzig Conservatorium of Music, where gifted performers from around the world came to study. Eileen soon became Australia’s most travelled musician of her time. Eileen died in 1991, aged 83, leaving behind a legacy of hope, optimism and gratitude.

Group discussion

What character strengths do you see in Eileen?

What personal attributes do you think were behind her success? (Luck? Talent? Hope? Gratitude? Persistence?)

Topic 1.1 Gratitude

Explanation for students

Gratitude is noticing what’s going well in your life and appreciating it. Over time, gratitude helps you feel more content and resilient. Learning to be grateful, like anything worth doing, takes time and practice.

By spending time every day noticing what is going well you can create pathways in your brain to focus on what you do have and notice what’s going right, more than what is going wrong. Gratitude can also help keep things in perspective and see that tough times don’t last forever.

A gratitude star (younger students)

Provide students with their journals or a piece of paper where they draw a large star (or other shape). Encourage them to fill the shape with at least five things that they have and five things that are going well.

Grateful thought dump (primary and older students)

Provide your students with their journals and allow five minutes for everyone to write down everything that’s going well in their life right now. It can be anything and everything. Nothing is too small to mention.

When they finish journaling, allow a moment for everyone to choose something from their list they are most grateful for, then close their eyes and say ‘thank you’ in their mind, visualising themselves in that grateful moment.

Group discussion for brainstorming and mind mapping: gratitude

The questions that follow provide a framework to get everyone thinking about what gratitude is and how it might fit into your life. Encourage a student-led dialogue that is accepting of different ideas and respond non-judgementally to everyone’s input. If a student offers challenging answers, gently redirect them without reprimanding them. Their reaction to the discussion might be a reflection of something else going on for them under the surface. The topic of gratitude is particularly challenging for those who have difficult circumstances in their lives.

The questions:

Is gratitude important to you?

Can you think of anything that’s too small to be grateful for?

What words show someone you’re grateful?

How do you feel when someone is grateful to you?

How do you feel when you do something for someone and they don’t show you they are grateful?

How do you feel when you let someone know you are grateful to him or her?

Introducing the gratitude journal

Provide students with a journal to record their daily thanks. Allow time each day when it suits you to focus attention on this task.

Gratitude journals help you focus on what’s going...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword by Dr John Kinniburgh
• Introduction
• 1. Gratitude, optimism and perspective
• 2. Character, values and integrity
• 3. Empathy and a sense of belonging
• 4. Problem solving
• 5. Managing emotions
• 6. Learning through mistakes, using a growth mindset
• 7. Persistence, motivation and self-efficacy
• 8. Goal setting
• Index