On March 3, 2020, I stood on the stage of the Ciccone Theater on the campus of Bergen Community College in Paramus, New Jersey and delivered a TEDx talk entitled “A Compassionate Approach to Building Resilience.” Little did I know that later that week, the College would shut down to become a COVID-19 testing site. Students, faculty, and staff were no longer allowed on campus, so uploading all of the speakers’ talks given at that TEDx Bergen event would be delayed indefinitely.
In the midst of grappling with my own fear, despair, and a generalized feeling of anxiety brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, I began reflecting on what I had offered the audience about resilience. At first, I felt that my suggestions were insignificant and small in light of the enormity of this crisis. Then, I began to realize that any tool or practice we can use to cultivate our own resilience and help others build theirs, can be applied universally, to any situation that calls for coping with adversity and overcoming obstacles — even a global pandemic. After all, these resilience-building tools are based on research findings from the field of positive psychology and the science of happiness, and the principles are the same no matter what we are faced with.
As we continue to face uncertainty and struggle to craft new ways of living, I now believe that the insights that I shared in my TEDx talk are even more relevant than ever. Although we have never faced a global challenge quite like this one, I stand firm that we must take a compassionate approach to raising our children and teens cultivate this essential character strength. Especially now.
A compassionate approach to building resilience calls for strengthening our connections to positive emotions like hope, gratitude, kindness and love, rather than raising our kids to be “tough.”
Rather than toughening our kids up, resilience calls for a different type of strengthening. Although it may sound counterintuitive, research findings from the field of positive psychology and the science of happiness show that when we experience positive emotions like hope, joy, gratitude, kindness and love we are strengthening our ability to bounce back from difficulty. It’s as if we have built a strong foundation of positivity that supports us and allows us to be emotionally agile when we face challenges head on.
I’d like to offer you 5 basic evidence-based tools and practices from my talk, to help you create that compassionate foundation as you cultivate your own resilience and raise your children and teens to build theirs:
1. Practice empathy. Get to know who your kids really are. What they are drawn to? What are their strengths as well as their challenges? What lights them up? Let’s not assume they are “mini-me’s” just because they are our kids. I believe that understanding our kids is the first step to knowing how to teach them how they might handle challenging situations. And now, with most of us spending more time at home with our families, we have a unique opportunity to understand our children better.
2. Notice and nurture their strengths. When we show our kids that we recognize their character strengths, we are empowering them to know that they have what they need, right at their fingertips, to solve problems. The more we focus on their strengths, the more confident our kids will feel when they need to figure out how to get through difficult situation without us. Now’s a great time to spot our kids strengths and tell them when and how they are rising to the occasion.
3. Appreciate, celebrate and savor their “small wins.” As adults, we have learned by experience that what it takes to reach our large goals requires many small steps forward, and often some backward. Even when we think we’re losing ground, we are learning and moving ahead. Appreciating, and even celebrating and savoring the little accomplishments that ultimately add up to our greater successes, goes a long way in motivating our kids to keep going. When we show and tell our kids that we believe in them, we are helping them learn to believe in themselves.
4. Positively reframe challenges. No matter how difficult a situation we are facing, we can always help our families find the “silver linings” and turn challenges into opportunities for growth and learning. Many of us have expressed gratitude for not having our usual long commutes, or sitting in traffic, because we have been forced to work from home. Although it is a particularly stressful time to have our kids “under our feet,” having more time with our families can help to grow us closer and build stronger relationships.
5. Model self-compassion — When we acknowledge to our kids that everyone, even we as adults, struggle from time to time, we are modeling self-compassion and helping to build their resilience. Reminding them that we are all in this together, we are also showing them that difficult situations call for treating ourselves with the kindness we would show a good friend.
Regardless of the context in which we are raising and educating our kids — the “normal” one we no longer live in, or in the yet to be determined “new reality” — these tools allow us to build resilience with compassion and face whatever challenges we face now, and in the future.
Watch my Zoom talk on Resilience and Compassion for the Meyerson JCC Manhattan, July 9, 2020.