Resilience - Education, Personality Development

Why You Need a Resilience Strategy Now

ridodirected@gmail.com (RIDO) — Sat, 10 May 2014 02:58:00 +0000

by Andrew Winston | 8:00 AM May 9, 2014
Article from http://blogs.hbr.org/

This past winter was a rough one for big swaths of the United States, with both unusual cold snaps and disruptive snowstorms. General Mills’ CEO recently blamed the winter for less-than-expected earnings, saying that “severe winter weather…disrupted plant operations and logistics…We lost 62 days of production…which hasn’t happened in decades. That would be the result of people not being able to get into work safely or not having inputs arrive.”

It wasn’t just one company, though; the whole economy was slowed by the extremes and volatility we faced.

The disruption to operations and supply chains is real and costly, and all signs point to increasing threats as weather gets more volatile, driven in large part by climate change. The science is getting clearer that we’ll see more extreme hurricanes, droughts, floods, and even snowstorms – more moisture in the atmosphere means bigger downfalls of all kinds.

The latest report to confirm these issues are not some theoretical model to debate, but reality today, came on Tuesday from the quadrennial U.S. National Climate Assessment. The 840-page tome did not bury the lede and declared in the first sentence, “Climate change, once considered an issue for a distant future, has moved firmly into the present.”

Of course, all weather isn’t necessarily tied directly to climate change – like with the recent tornadoes that swept through the American Midwest – but no matter what you believe the cause, extreme weather will play an increasing role in our lives and economies. Nobody can predict exactly what might go wrong, but we can say with near 100% confidence that something will.

So let’s consider what a company can do in a world that’s volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous – that’s “VUCA” for short, a military term that’s been adopted by business. Here’s a review of the five core components of resilient systems, which I pulled together for my new book, The Big Pivot, based in part on two other important works: Nassim Taleb’s Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder and Resilience: Why Things Bounce Back, by Andrew Zolli and Ann Marie Healy.

1. Diversity. A company is clearly more at risk if it has just one major product, service, technology, key supplier, or other core element. In the 2011 Thailand floods, both hard drive makers and auto giants realized that having a sole key component made in one place made for a fragile system (Toyota took a $1.5 billion hit to earnings). While companies don’t often share the details of their supply chain strategy publicly, you can bet these companies have built more diverse options for sourcing key inputs.

2. Redundancy and buffers. Taleb uses the natural world as a model for this principle: “Layers of redundancy are the central risk management property of natural systems,” he writes, pointing out how many of our biological systems have doubles (like lungs) or backups. Our business systems need leeway for extremes as well. A few days ago, for example, the Obama Administration announced a plan to stockpile a million barrels of gasoline in the northeast specifically to avoid the shortages that plagued New England after Hurricane Sandy.

This is all smart strategy, but the challenge for business specifically is that companies don’t like keeping two of anything – that’s not lean or (seemingly) efficient. It’s a fine line for sure, but having multiple pathways to get key inputs, for example, might have saved General Mills – and the hard drive and car companies – lots of money. It might have actually generated increased revenue as well, if it meant operating while competitors couldn’t. As Taleb says, “redundancy seems like a waste if nothing unusual happens. Except that something unusual happens – usually.”

3. A love/hate relationship with risk. It’s a paradoxical idea, but one way to build resilience, or antifragility, is to keep the vast majority of the business as safe as possible, but then take big risks – ones that may pay off 10-fold or more – with a smaller part of the business.

Think of the famous idea from Clayton Christensen of trying to disrupt or cannibalize your own business before someone else does. Imagine setting up a skunk works to identify major risks to the business stemming from resource constraints or climate change – and then lean into those risks and come up with products and services that avoid them and challenge the core business (for example, a car company investing in car sharing programs which consumers use to save money, but also reduce material and energy use dramatically).

4. Fast feedback and failure. If you’re going to take some risks to, ironically, make us less risky, you need to drop what isn’t working quickly. To be more responsive, companies need better data on resource use and climate risks up and down the value chain. So invest in capturing information and building real-time systems.

5. Modular and distributed design. If some part of a system fails, it would be great if it didn’t bring down the rest of it. A tree branch hit a power line in Ohio in August 2003, causing cascading failures across a highly connected U.S. grid, and 50 million people in the northeast lost power (including me, my wife, and our 11 day-old child in Connecticut – we were not in a resilient mood).

These principles alone may not make for resilience in a hotter, scarcer, more open world, but they go a long way. And they point toward one key pathway for managing – and even thriving – in a VUCA world: renewables.

Companies (and homes) that generate their own onsite energy will be able to literally weather storms better than competitors. Not all the technologies we need to do this well are in place – like building-scale energy storage at a reasonable cost – but we’re getting there. And during the day, companies with their own solar panels can operate after the storm has passed, even if the grid is down.

Nobody can prepare for every possible outcome. Randomness, of course, is a prime element of our new business reality. But we can build systems that are better prepared than they are now. And, sure, it’s a challenge to value resilience: How much is your business damaged by a breakdown in your supply chain, or a threat to your ability to operate? How much will it cost all of us if we let the drivers of deep volatility, like climate change, go unchecked?

It’s not easy to say, but let’s avoid finding out.

Andrew Winston | 8:00 AM May 9, 2014
Article from http://blogs.hbr.org/

Strength, Resilience and Selflessness: A Mother's Love is Universal

ridodirected@gmail.com (RIDO) — Sat, 03 May 2014 04:09:00 +0000

Haroon Mokhtarzada Become a fan
Co-creator and CEO, Webs.com
Posted from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/haroon-mokhtarzada/
03/10/2014 9:00 am EDT Updated: 03/10/2014 2:59 pm EDT

This post is part of the Global Moms Relay. Every time you share this post, Johnson & Johnson will donate $1 (per action) to help improve the health and well-being of moms and kids worldwide through MAMA, Shot@Life, and Girl Up. Scroll to the bottom to find out more.

Three years after the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, my parents decided we needed to leave the country. It would look suspicious for our entire family to leave together, so my mother, pregnant, and with three young children in tow, had to get us out by herself. After that complete reset on life, we settled in the Washington, D.C. area where my mother worked tirelessly to ensure we were well-educated and equipped to take advantage of life's opportunities.

As I think about my childhood, the single theme that comes back over and over again is how my mother sacrificed whatever she could to carve out the best possible life for her children. From advocating for us within the school system, to working an extra job to pay for my piano lessons, my mother was devoted to helping her children succeed. Her life was not about her, it was about us.

I met Annet Samaya during a recent United Nations Foundation learning trip to Uganda. Annet lives on Bussi Island in the Lake Victoria Basin, one of the most vulnerable regions in Uganda. Like other families on Bussi, Annet's family relies on the land and had been living in very difficult conditions. With assistance and training from the Hope Project, Annet had learned sustainable agricultural practices and developed her land to such a point that it now yields more than enough to support her family. When I asked how she spends her surplus she replied that she sends her two oldest children to a good boarding school so that they may have more opportunities in the future.

Given the chance, Annet chose to invest in her children and pay it forward to the next generation. This maternal instinct appears to be universal. Across the globe we find mothers who spend what they have to invest in their children's futures. It's for this reason that the United Nations is so focused on empowering women and girls, not as a class of vulnerable people who need help, but because they form the core of many sustainable solutions to world's most pressing issues.

Meeting Annet was a humble reminder of my own mother's sacrifices for me and my siblings. Strength, resilience and selflessness. These are the traits that I have come to associate with mothers who spend their lives giving of themselves for the next generation. So today I'm privileged to celebrate the more than 2 billion mothers around the world, and I'm proud to honor the mothers in my life -- from my selfless wife who is an amazing mother to our three beautiful little girls, to my own mother without whom I would be nothing of what I am today.

Haroon Mokhtarzada Become a fan
Co-creator and CEO, Webs.com
Posted from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/haroon-mokhtarzada/
03/10/2014 9:00 am EDT Updated: 03/10/2014 2:59 pm EDT

The resilience of optimism

ridodirected@gmail.com (RIDO) — Mon, 21 Apr 2014 04:16:00 +0000

By Kevin Cullen
Globe staff April 15, 2014
Posted from http://www.bostonglobe.com/

For the last few weeks, as this terrible anniversary approached, I was alternately haunted and comforted by two strikingly different images, and they played like videos in my brain, just before sleep, complete with deafening sound and visceral smell.

In one of them, the bombs go off and a pair of firefighters from Engine 33 and Ladder 15, Frankie Flynn and Mike Kennedy, bolt from the firehouse, like sprinters out of the starting blocks, and they are running, chugging, side by side, down Boylston Street.

They come upon people lying on the sidewalk outside the Forum.

Lingzi Lu, a student from China who loved everything about Boston, is lying there, dead. Eight-year-old Martin Richard from Dorchester is lying there, dead. His little sister Jane is sitting on the sidewalk, stunned, her hair singed, looking down at where her left leg used to be. Their mother Denise has blood seeping from her eye, their father Bill’s legs are shredded by shrapnel, their brother Henry’s soul is shredded by loss. Severed limbs lay scattered. Rivulets of blood meander into the cracks on the sidewalk.

As smoke lifts and eerie silence gives way to moans of pain and cries of anguish, Frankie Flynn and Mike Kennedy and a score of other firefighters, police officers, EMTs, and passersby go to work, tying off gushing legs, reassuring the wounded, saving lives.

Today, as we mark an anniversary neither of them looked forward to, Frankie Flynn and Mike Kennedy are dead. Frankie, lost to cancer, dead 30 days after his diagnosis. Mike, lost to duty with his lieutenant, Eddie Walsh, dead in a fire on Beacon Street last month, just a few blocks from where two bombs exploded on Patriots Day and changed everything.

And just when that image begins to consume me, when my eyes burn in the dark, the other image appears. It is Jane Richard. She is smiling, leaning on her crutches. She is wearing a purple Under Armour shirt and shorts, and she has just been fitted with her Cheetah leg, her prosthesis, and then Jane Richard is step dancing to an Irish reel again, and in that moment the dark gives way to the light.

We have been in commemoration mode for weeks now, and there’s still another week to go until the Marathon, and I still can’t figure out if this is good, bad, or just plain necessary.

Is it too much? Too little? Is there a right way to recognize a terrible wound, a wound that is as psychic as physical?

To get some perspective, I asked an outsider, someone trained in trauma, about what happened to us over the last 365 days. His name is Dr. Michael Barnes, and he is the clinical program director at the Center for Dependency, Addiction, and Rehabilitation (CeDAR) at the Anschutz Medical Campus at the University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora, Colo.

After a former student opened fire in a crowded movie theater in Aurora two years ago, killing 12 people, it was Barnes who went to explain what had happened to students at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, some of whom knew the shooter.

Barnes said that, like the cinema shooting, the Marathon bombings produced several different kinds of trauma. Those wounded suffered primary trauma. The loved ones of those killed and wounded suffered secondary trauma, as did the first responders. The wider community, the rest of us, experienced a trauma called compassion fatigue, overwhelmed by the images and stories we have all seen and heard.

“When we’re being traumatized, the part of our brain that truly remembers goes to sleep,” Barnes explained. “It’s sensory information that triggers memory — smell, taste.”

And sight.

Barnes said Boston is experiencing cyclical trauma this week.

“I call it CNN syndrome,” he said. “There’s a repetition of video, of images.”

Many first responders were willing to seek help. Dan Linskey, superintendent in chief of the Boston Police Department when the bombings took place, went around the city, hugging his officers and, in some cases, ordering them to see a counselor.

But there was a different kind of therapy taking place, and we weren’t even aware. The compassion with which the wider community responded — from ordinary civilians like Rob Wheeler, a college kid who peeled the shirt off his back to save the life of a man bleeding out on the sidewalk, to the massive fund-raising to take care of survivors — is why the dark images are giving way to light. Reading or hearing about selfless acts by kids who raised money with lemonade stands or those running to help the bombing survivors and other charities is literally making us better.

“Optimism,” Barnes said, “is at the center of resilience.”

And so we feed off the survivors, witnessing their inexorable path toward normalcy. We rejoice when Adrianne Haslet-Davis dances on stage, when Paul Norden gets engaged, when Jane Richard gets her Cheetah leg.

“Resilience is about connectedness,” Barnes said.

Whether we realize it or not, we are connected to those so badly hurt last year, to those who helped and are helping them, and it is seeing them get back to what they love and who they love that has healed so many.

And so, to answer the question, all these stories about survivors and people running to honor Martin Richard and Lingzi Lu and Krystle Campbell and Sean Collier, it isn’t too much. It is part of the healing process. It is part of the normalization process.

It’s normal. We’re getting back to normal.

Last week, two priests named Sean Connor and John Unni stood on a back porch in West Quincy, talking to a pair of young Marines.

Father Sean is the priest who comforted the Richard family after the bombings. Father John is the priest who comforted the families of Mike Kennedy and Eddie Walsh at their funerals.

On this day, the two priests blessed Sean Finn and Dan Keeler Jr., who are shipping out to Afghanistan, to do a job not enough people in this country appreciate.

It is just coincidence, or maybe it isn’t, that those young Marines are the sons of men who keep the city safe every day. Keeler’s father, a Boston police sergeant detective, saved untold lives last year on Patriots Day, keeping the ring road open so the ambulances could ferry the wounded to the hospitals. Finn’s father is a deputy fire chief, one of the best firefighters in the city. He saved untold lives a few weeks ago when he ordered everyone out of that burning building on Beacon Street.

After Father Sean and Father John blessed the two young Marines, praying that they will be safe in the year they spend in one of the most dangerous corners of the world, they said their goodbyes to the Finn and Keeler families.

Sue Finn, the young Marine’s mother, has a tradition that any guest invited into her house must dance in her kitchen before he or she leaves. It is a reminder that life is too short, too priceless, to not dance, to not express joy, and with Sue Finn there are no exceptions. Not even for priests. So Father Sean and Father John dutifully obeyed, dancing a jig that would have made an Irish step dancer named Jane Richard smile.

And so on this day, when we pause to remember the boom and the smoke and the screams on Boylston Street, we also should, like Sue Finn, like Jane Richard, like Father Sean and Father John, remember that life is too precious and too short not to dance.

Kevin Cullen is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at cullen@globe.com.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/04/14/the-resilience-optimism/7PKaez3hv9AUWMps0UrQtL/story.html

6 Steps Toward Resilience & Greater Happiness

ridodirected@gmail.com (RIDO) — Fri, 24 May 2013 04:16:00 +0000

By THERESE J. BORCHARD
Associate Editor
Article from http://psychcentral.com/blog/

The opposite of depression is not happiness, according to Peter Kramer, author of “Against Depression” and “Listening to Prozac,” it is resilience: the ability to cope with life’s frustrations without falling apart.

Proper treatment doesn’t suppress emotions or dull a person’s ability to feel things deeply. It builds a protective layer — an emotional resilience — to safeguard a depressive from becoming overwhelmed and disabled by the difficulties of daily life.

However, the tools found in happiness research are those I practice in my recovery from depression and anxiety, even though, theoretically, I can be happy and depressed at the same time. I came up with my own recovery program that coincides with the steps toward happiness published in positive psychology studies.

1. Sleep

Sleep is crucial to sanity because sleep disturbances can contribute to, aggravate, and even cause mood disorders and a host of other illnesses. The link between sleep deprivation and psychosis was documented in a 2007 study at Harvard Medical School and the University of California at Berkeley. Using MRI scans, they found that sleep deprivation causes a person to become irrational because the brain can’t put an emotional event in proper prospective and is incapable of making an appropriate response. Chronic sleep deprivation, especially, is bad news. It often affects memory and concentration. And, according to one recent study, it can cause a decline in cognitive performance similar to the intoxicated brain.

2. Diet

My mouth and brain are in constant negotiation with each other because while one loves white bread, pasta, and chocolate, the other throws a hissy fit whenever they enter my blood stream. My diet has always been an important part of my recovery from depression, but two years ago — after working with the naturopath and reading Kathleen DesMaison’s “Potatoes Not Prozac” — I could more competently trace the path from my stomach to my limbic system. Moreover, I recognized with new clarity how directly everything that I put in my mouth affects my mood.

Here are the bad boys: nicotine, caffeine, alcohol, sugar, white flour, and processed food — you know, what you live on. Here are the good guys: protein; complex starches (whole grains, beans, potatoes); vegetables; vitamins (vitamin B-complex, vitamins C, D, and E, and a multivitamin); minerals (magnesium, calcium, and zinc); and omega-3 fatty acids. I’m religious about stocking up on omega-3 capsules because leading physicians at Harvard Medical School confirmed the positive effects of this natural, anti-inflammatory molecule on emotional health.

3. Exercise

Dr. James A. Blumenthal, a professor of medical psychology at Duke University, led a recent study in which he and his team discovered that, among the 202 depressed people randomly assigned to various treatments, three sessions of vigorous aerobic exercise were approximately as effective at treating depression as daily doses of Zoloft, when the treatment effects were measured after four months. A separate study showed that the depressives who improved with exercise were less likely to relapse after 10 months than those treated successfully with antidepressants, and the participants who continued to exercise beyond four months were half as likely to relapse months later compared to those who did not exercise.

Even as little as 20 minutes a week of physical activity can boost mental health. In a new Scottish study, reported in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, 20,000 people were asked about their state of mind and how much physical activity they do in a week. The results showed that the more physical activity a person engaged in — including housework, gardening, walking, and sports — the lower their risk of distress and anxiety.

Exercise relieves depression in several ways. First, cardiovascular workouts stimulate brain chemicals that foster growth of nerve cells. Second, exercise increases the activity of serotonin and/or norepinephrine. Third, a raised heart rate releases endorphins and a hormone known as ANP, which reduces pain, induces euphoria, and helps control the brain’s response to stress and anxiety. Other added benefits include improved sleep patterns, exposure to natural daylight (if you’re exercising outside), weight loss or maintenance, and psychological aids.

4. Relationships and Community

We are social creatures and are happiest when we are in relationship. One of the clearest findings in happiness research is that we need each other in order to thrive and be happy, that loving relationships are crucial to our well-being. Relationships create a space of safety where we can learn and explore. Belonging to a group or a community gives people a sense of identity. Studies indicate that social involvement can promote health, contribute toward faster recovery from trauma and illness, and lower the risk of stress-related health problems and mental illness.

Plenty of evidence indicates that support groups aid the recovery of persons struggling with depression and decrease rates of relapse. The New England Journal of Medicine published a study in December 2001 in which 158 women with metastatic breast cancer were assigned to a supportive-expressive therapy. These women showed greater improvement in psychological symptoms and reported less pain than the women with breast cancer who were assigned to the control group with no supportive therapy.

Another study in 2002, published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, followed a group of more than 100 persons with severe depression who joined online depression support groups. More than 95 percent of them said that their participation in the online support groups helped their symptoms. The online groups here on Psych Central are a great resource where you can find support from people going through similar struggles.

5. Purpose

The father of positive psychology, Martin Seligman, explains in his book, “Authentic Happiness,” that a critical element to happiness exists in using your signature strengths in the service of something you believe is larger than you. After collecting exhaustive questionnaires he found that the most satisfied people were those that had found a way to use their unique combination of strengths and talents to make a difference. Dan Baker, Ph.D., director of the Life Enhancement Program at Canyon Ranch, believes that a sense of purpose — committing oneself to a noble mission — and acts of altruism are strong antidotes to depression. And then there’s Gandhi, who wrote: “the best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”

6. Gratitude

Gratitude doesn’t come easily to me. When my girlfriend sees a half-full glass of fresh milk, I see a half-empty glass of cholesterol-rising, cardiac-arresting agents. And when the kids’ school is called off because some road somewhere in our county apparently accumulated a half of an inch of snow, she thanks God for an opportunity to build snowmen with she kids. I have a conversation with God, too, but it’s much different.

However, I train myself to say thank you more often than is natural for me because I know that gratitude is like broccoli — good for your health in more than one way. According to psychologists like Sonja Lyubomirsky at the University of California Riverside, keeping a gratitude journal — where you record once a week all the things you have to be grateful for — and other gratitude exercises can increase your energy, and relieve pain and fatigue.

THERESE J. BORCHARD
Associate Editor
Article from http://psychcentral.com/blog/

Video: Building Resilience

ridodirected@gmail.com (RIDO) — Fri, 17 May 2013 10:26:00 +0000

By JOHN M. GROHOL, PSY.D.
Article from http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/

We all know that having resilience in life is tied directly to one’s happiness. In general, the more resilient a person is — that is, the more easily they can bounce back from life’s downs — the happier a life they will lead.

So the question then becomes, How does one build resilience? Can we nurture it like we nurture our creativity or intimacy?

In this video, Psych Central’s Ask the Therapists Daniel J. Tomasulo, Ph.D. & Marie Hartwell-Walker, Ed.D. discuss the issue of how does a person make their relationship work. What goes into making a relationship successful? Find out by watching the segment below:

The 4 tips offered by Dr. Marie in the video to help build resilience are:

What’s going right with your day?

Act more positive than you feel

Acting kind

Dress as though you’re successful

Dr. Dan adds one more:

Challenge your thoughts — “Is there another way to look at this?”

Dr. Marie and Dr. Dan host many videos on relationship and mental health topics here on our blog and you can check them out on our YouTube channel. Want to learn more about Dr. Marie and Dr. Dan?

JOHN M. GROHOL, PSY.D.
Article from http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/

Being spiritually resilient

ridodirected@gmail.com (RIDO) — Wed, 15 May 2013 11:42:00 +0000

Ronan Scully
Article from http://galwayindependent.com/

Spirituality can help you feel connected to something bigger than yourself and build resilience at the same time. Your spirituality can involve whatever beliefs and values give you a sense of purpose. For many, it may be a relationship with God and certain religious practises. For others, spirituality plays out in non-religious ways, such as through a focus on family or nature. However you express it, spirituality can promote healthy connections with others, healthy lifestyle choices and the strength to endure hard times. Whether expressed through prayer, meditation, or in other ways, being spiritual is important to building resilience.

At times in our life we can find ourselves mentally and physically stretched to the limit. We feel our life is like a tight ball of stress and worry. How can we go about regaining our true shape or true strength? For me, being spiritually resilient is the answer. Being spiritually resilient gives me the capacity to be flexible, adaptable and face up to the worries and stresses in my life. Been a spiritual person has helped me to face and overcome problems with courage and determination, and it has given balance to my life.

I’ve seen it help others, too. Spirituality helps people endure unbelievable suffering and live to tell the tale! It's what lifts people up. It's what makes us strive. It's the mysterious strength we all have - the ability to endure anything, dream anything and accomplish great things. And we need that spirit now more than ever as we face into many worries, stresses and unknowns in our future.

Put the glass down

A psychologist walked around a room while teaching stress management to an audience. As she raised a glass of water, everyone expected they'd be asked the 'half empty or half full' question. Instead, with a smile on her face, she inquired: "How heavy is this glass of water?" Answers called out ranged from 8oz to 20oz.

She replied, "The absolute weight doesn't matter. It depends on how long I hold it. If I hold it for a minute, it's not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I'll have an ache in my arm. If I hold it for a day, my arm will feel numb and paralyzed. In each case, the weight of the glass doesn't change, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes."

She continued, "The stresses and worries in life are like that glass of water. Think about them for a while and nothing happens. Think about them a bit longer and they begin to hurt. And if you think about them all day long, you will feel paralyzed – incapable of doing anything."

It’s important to remember to let go of your stresses. As early in the evening as you can, put all your burdens down. Don't carry them through the evening and into the night. Remember to put the glass down!

Thought for the week

As your thought for the week, remember to put the glass down!

If you enjoy reading my column each week then you will be glad to know that I am launching my new book, 'TIME OUT' in the Hotel Meyrick Hotel on Thursday 23 May at 7pm. Everyone is invited.

Ronan Scully

Article from http://galwayindependent.com/

How to encourage staff resilience in times of financial difficulty

ridodirected@gmail.com (RIDO) — Mon, 13 May 2013 12:50:00 +0000

Practical tips for voluntary sector leaders who want to improve the effectiveness and motivation of their colleagues

Jessica Pryce-Jones
Guardian Professional, Monday 13 May 2013 07.00 BST
Article from http://www.guardian.co.uk/voluntary-sector-network/

How can you keep employees motivated in difficult financial times? Photograph: Alamy

The effect of the recession on organisations in the voluntary sector has been well documented over the past few years. As donations have dropped by as much as 20%, costs have risen and demands for services have increased. In short, charities are struggling to deliver more with fewer resources.

But what receives less attention is the effect of this working environment on employees in the charity sector.

"Resilience" can be defined as the level of grit that you have available to handle situations that need more drive, focus and resolution than usual. Resilient employees continue to complete tasks steadily and achieve their goals even when, for example, budgets are cut, or the demands upon them suddenly increase. While it is in difficult times that resilience is harder to maintain, it's also when it is most important.

Our research among over 30,000 leaders shows quite clearly that resilience is linked most strongly to feelings of efficiency and effectiveness; the more effective you feel, the better placed you are to continue to deliver in tough circumstances.

Motivation is also part of the answer to resilience; employees that lack motivation will be unable to respond effectively to a challenging working environment.

Maintaining resilience

So in practical terms, how can leaders in the voluntary sector help to improve feelings of effectiveness and motivation and thereby maximise resilience in their organisations?

• Proactive coping – Proactive coping is having the means in place to deal with stressful situations when they arise unexpectedly. On an organisational level, this comes from having the built-in systems to react. Employees should be involved in the development of these strategies, for example, by identifying eventualities that need to be planned for, what resources might be needed, and what contingencies the organisation should be aware of.

• Remember that challenges are not necessarily bad – The only way to develop resilience is to be challenged. The US sociologist Glen Elder found that children growing up in the Depression were much more resilient than people who faced their first testing time in life later on. It is important for employees to remember that previous scenarios where success has been achieved against the odds will help in the future.

• Focus on strengths – All too many job appraisals and performance-management systems concentrate on what's wrong rather than assessing what people are good at. This can be facilitated by asking employees to identify strengths of colleagues and assessing how these link to their roles, and help them to perform well.

• Make sure staff and management take breaks and stay healthy – Loehr and Schwartz, who have conducted extensive research into athletes, argue that balancing stress and recovery is critical. On a practical level they recommend that you take a break or change focus every 90 to 120 minutes. Health is also important. The more healthy a person is, the more resilient to stress they will be. Pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline, for example, claims that its Team Resilience Programme has reduced work-related mental illness by as much as 60%, has seen a 10%-16% cut in fatigue and frustration levels and a 21% increase in job satisfaction.

Conclusion

In difficult times, it is easy simply to try and browbeat management and employees into meeting difficult goals. Yet this rarely succeeds, and is never sustainable. Resilience and motivation are not "nice-to-have" – they are essential for charities trying to weather the recession effectively .

Jessica Pryce-Jones is joint founder and partner of the iOpener Institute for People and Performance.

Jessica Pryce-Jones
Guardian Professional, Monday 13 May 2013 07.00 BST
Article from http://www.guardian.co.uk/voluntary-sector-network/

The 5 Best Ways to Build Resiliency

ridodirected@gmail.com (RIDO) — Sat, 11 May 2013 08:35:00 +0000

Why do some people bounce back from adversity and misfortune? Why do others fall apart? Find out which character strengths make all the difference – and how you can develop them yourself.

By Jessie Sholl / September 2011

Article from http://experiencelife.com/article/the-5-best-ways-to-build-resiliency/

Victoria Ruvolo was driving home from a niece’s piano recital one wintery evening in 2004 when a large object smashed through her windshield, hitting with such force that it broke every bone in her face. The object turned out to be a frozen turkey. The thrower: a teenage boy named Ryan Cushing, out for a joyride with friends in a stolen car. Ruvolo’s passenger managed to grab the steering wheel, push Ruvolo’s foot off the gas pedal and steer them onto the shoulder. After being rushed to the hospital, Ruvolo remained in an induced coma for two weeks.

When it was safe to operate, the doctors began painstakingly putting Ruvolo back together. The then-44-year-old office manager from Long Island was left with three titanium plates in her left cheek, one plate in her right cheek, and a screen holding her left eye in place. Her family was told that she might have permanent brain damage and was unlikely to be capable of living on her own.

But that wasn’t a prediction Ruvolo was ready to accept. She had survived tragedies before. Two of her brothers died in separate incidents when she was a teenager. At age 35 she miscarried a much-longed-for child. Somehow, she had found the strength to come through those losses, and she was determined that she would make it through this one, too.

With a devastated face, and a questionable future ahead of her, Ruvolo had plenty of good reasons to sink into anger and depression. But she didn’t. Instead, even as she was still undergoing a series of reconstructive surgeries, she told herself, “This moping isn’t going to get me anywhere.” And she turned her focus to learning more about Ryan Cushing, the boy responsible for her ordeal. What could she learn about him that would help her understand the accident?

Ruvolo discovered that Cushing was in the midst of his own turmoil: His father had just left his mother for another woman. He had serious vision problems that left him unable to play sports or drive a car. Months later, when Ruvolo went to the troubled boy’s sentencing, she mystified many by working with the district attorney’s office to encourage a lenient sentence.

“I just couldn’t see how locking him up for 25 years was really going to help him,” says Ruvolo. The judge agreed, and Cushing was sentenced to six months in jail and five years of probation.

Ruvolo’s empathy toward Cushing wasn’t the only surprising post-incident event: Contrary to her grim prognosis, she was back at work within eight months, living on her own, and speaking regularly to at-risk youths about ways to improve their lives.

Looking back, Ruvolo realizes she showed similar resiliency after her brothers’ deaths and her miscarriage. But where does this kind of resiliency come from? And why don’t more of us have it?

That is a question that has kept researchers busy for decades. Why is it, they’ve wondered, that some people seem to bounce back from traumas with relative ease — even thriving after negative events — while others crack and crumble?

The answers are compelling. In his best-selling book, The Resiliency Advantage (Berrett-Koehler, 2005), the late Al Siebert, PhD, writes that “highly resilient people are flexible, adapt to new circumstances quickly, and thrive in constant change. Most important, they expect to bounce back and feel confident that they will. They have a knack for creating good luck out of circumstances that many others see as bad luck.”

Siebert also notes that resilient people are adept at seeing things from another person’s point of view — just as Ruvolo was able to do with Cushing. When we empathize with others, we feel less alone and less entrenched in pain. As a result, we recover faster.

Psychologists agree that some people seem to be born with more resilience than others. But they also assert that it’s possible for all of us to cultivate more of it. One key is adjusting how we think about adversity.

A long-term study of 99 Harvard men showed that the way people view negative life events (as fixed and unchangeable vs. temporary and subject to influence) predicted their physical health five — and even 35 — years later. But a boost to physical health isn’t this mindset’s only upside. Darcy Smith, PhD, a clinical social worker in Manhattan, explains: “Resilience refers to our capacity to deal with discomfort and adversity, but it’s not just a reactive skill set. The same characteristics that make us resilient are traits that enrich our lives.”

Want to bolster your own inherent resilience? Here, according to top researchers, are the five most powerful ways to go about it.

No. 1: Pump Up Your Positivity

“In our research program, we found that the daily repertoire of emotions of people who are highly resilient is remarkably different from those who are not,” says Barbara Fredrickson, PhD, the author of Positivity (Crown Archetype, 2009).

Resilient people are characterized by an ability to experience both negative and positive emotions even in difficult or painful situations, she says. They mourn losses and endure frustrations, but they also find redeeming potential or value in most challenges.

When not-so-resilient people face difficulties, Fredrickson notes, all of their emotions turn negative. If things are good, they feel good, but if things are bad, they feel horrid.

Resilient people, on the other hand, tend to find some silver lining in even the worst of circumstances. While they certainly see and acknowledge the bad, Fredrickson says, “they’ll find a way to also see the good. They’ll say, ‘Well at least I didn’t have this other problem.’”

She notes that this is different than succumbing to Pollyanna-ish denial. “The resilient person isn’t papering over the negative emotions, but instead letting them sit side by side with other feelings. So at the same time they’re feeling ‘I’m sad about that,’ they’re also prone to thinking, ‘but I’m grateful about this.’”

But what if this sort of well-balanced emotional response doesn’t come naturally to you? You can change that, says Fredrickson. But it will mean challenging your reflexive thoughts, and your self-talk.

“Thinking patterns trigger emotional patterns,” she explains. “So to change emotional patterns, sometimes what we need to do is curtail our negative thinking and stoke our positive thinking.

“Say you find yourself ruminating on negative thoughts,” she says. “For instance: I’ll never succeed in my career. Ask yourself, ‘What’s the evidence that I’ll never succeed?’ You might say, ‘Well, there’s this history of success and this history of failure.’ How does that add up to never? It’s a matter of getting really literal about the kinds of blanket statements we have in our self-talk.”

Because of built-in survival mechanisms, our brains are naturally wired to pay more attention to negative events than positive ones. But in reality, we experience positive events with much greater frequency. One key to building resiliency, says Fredrickson, lies in noticing and appreciating those positive experiences whenever and wherever they occur.

“What matters most is your positivity ratio,” she says. That ratio is a product of how you characterize the balance of positive and negative experiences in your daily life. Fredrickson’s research suggests that, at minimum, we need a 3-to-1 ratio of positive to negative experiences not just to build resilience, but also to thrive, be optimally productive and enjoy our lives.

“This means that for every heart-wrenching negative emotional experience you endure, you have to experience at least three heartfelt positive emotional experiences that uplift you. Three to one appears to be the tipping point, predicting whether people languish or flourish.

No 2: Live to Learn

The more you can leverage challenges as opportunities to grow and evolve, the more resilient you are likely to be. “Pain comes to all of us in life,” says David Sabine, PhD, a clinical psychologist in Wichita Falls, Texas. “What I see resilient people do is immediately look at the problem and say, ‘What’s the solution to that? What is this trying to teach me?’ Looking at pain as an opportunity to learn and problem-solve — and building the confidence and the habit of moving toward the pain instead of running from it — goes a long way in terms of building resiliency.”

Nancy Gruskin is an excellent example. In the spring of 2009, her husband, Stuart, was crossing a one-way, Midtown Manhattan street when he was struck by a bicyclist riding the wrong way. Stuart sustained a serious head injury in the accident. Three days later, he died. He was just 50 years old and the father of then-12-year-old twins.

For weeks Gruskin remained in an emotional fog, and understandably so. After a newspaper story was published about her experience, she received a flood of calls, emails and letters from people who’d been in similar, though less severe, situations. Hearing their stories ignited Gruskin to learn more about the issue. Diving into it gave her a sense of purpose and helped transform her pain. Eventually, it even empowered her to affect broad positive change: She partnered with Hunter College and started a foundation bearing her husband’s name that’s dedicated to developing safety awareness for pedestrians in urban areas. As a result of their hard work, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg signed a law into effect last February that requires the city to collect and keep data about bicycle-pedestrian accidents.

One strategy for cultivating a learner mindset is to use “question thinking,” a method of problem solving developed by psychotherapist and executive coach Marilee Adams, PhD. Question thinking encourages people to approach challenges and situations with “Learner Questions” — neutral, nonjudgmental questions such as “What is useful here?” or “What are my available choices?” — as opposed to “Judger Questions” like “What’s wrong?” or “Who’s to blame?”

Learner questions are empowering, and they promote more expansive thinking and acceptance. They also improve how you relate to others, and creating meaningful connections with others is yet another essential component of resilience. (For more on question thinking, read “Lines of Inquiry.”)

No. 3: Open Your Heart

Being of service to others is a powerful way of stoking resilience. “In studies, researchers found that serotonin [the neurotransmitter associated with feelings of happiness and well-being] is used more efficiently by people who have just engaged in an act of kindness,” says Sabine.

Acts of kindness, and the serotonin boosts that accompany them, have a cumulative effect. “Once you’ve added these things to your life in a consistent way, the benefits become exponential, so that in times of difficulty you’ve got this well of resiliency to draw upon,” says Sabine.

Acts of kindness can be formally organized, like regularly volunteering in a soup kitchen. Or, Sabine says, they can be “as simple as getting out there and finding people to smile at or speak an encouraging word to.”

It’s worth noting, though, that receiving and appreciating kindness from others may be just as important as offering it up, because gratitude turns out to be an important part of resiliency, according to clinical social worker Darcy Smith.

When adversity strikes, gratitude for the things that are going right in your life helps put tragedy in perspective. “I often recommend that people start a 30-day gratitude journal,” she says. “Or get a few of your friends together and start a gratitude blog. I did that about a year ago. Every day we each blog about three things we’re grateful for.”

Another strategy for building gratitude comes from Fredrickson. Called “un-adapting,” it involves consciously drawing attention to the positive things in your life that you may have started taking for granted.

“Our emotions typically respond to dramatic changes, but a lot of good things — a roof over your head, the ability to feed your children, a career you enjoy — are stable. As a result, they fade into the background. So what you can do is deliberately draw your attention to them.”

She cites a study in which researchers asked married couples to “un-adapt” by thinking of how they might not have met (if one had decided not to go to the grocery store that day or had turned down the blind date, for example). “Then the researchers compared the couples who imagined not meeting to a group of couples who instead were asked to tell the story of how they did meet,” continues Fredrickson. “Later, when quizzed about their satisfaction in the marriage, the people who thought about how they might not have met reported more satisfaction. Without un-adapting, the couples might have thought, ‘Well of course we met, we were destined to be together,’ which is a recipe for taking each other for granted.”

According to Fredrickson, when you take stock of how things might have been otherwise, instead of just how they are, you’re using strategic positive thinking to increase gratitude, which then builds resiliency.

No. 4: Take Care of Yourself

Good health — and a regular routine of healthy habits — are foundational to both mental and emotional resilience.

Just prior to the accident that crushed the bones in her face, Ruvolo had lost 60 excess pounds and substantially improved her fitness. “I was in the best physical condition I could possibly be in. I was all muscle,” she says. After she healed, doctors told Ruvolo that her excellent physical condition had certainly played a role in her almost-miraculous recuperation.

Daily habits count: When you’re caught up on sleep, eating well and keeping stress levels low, you’ll be less fragile and less likely to fall into unhealthy patterns following a serious setback or tragedy.

But our physical resilience also depends heavily on our baseline mental and emotional well-being. And one of the best ways to nurture that, says Carol Orsborn, PhD, author of The Art of Resilience: 100 Paths to Wisdom and Strength in an Uncertain World (Three Rivers Press, 1997), is to take regular mental breaks: “It could be something as formal as a regular meditation practice,” she says, “or it could simply be letting yourself daydream.”

Research shows that our brains are surprisingly active in moments when we appear to be doing little. PET and MRI images of the brain “at rest” show that, in fact, there is significant activity in the brain regions associated with decision-making, memories and the processing of emotionally significant events.

When active, this “default network,” uses up to 30 percent more caloric energy than other parts of the brain. Researchers surmise that energy is being used to process all the experiences and information we’ve taken in, and to develop new synaptic connections. In turn, those synaptic networks improve our ability to solve and respond to problems.

Mental breaks and relaxation also help keep stress chemicals at bay, reducing the likelihood of feeling, or becoming, overwhelmed and reactive.

Two other key self-care factors that help nurture resilience: Spending time outdoors and surrounding yourself with people you enjoy.

Research suggests that spending just 20 minutes outside in nice weather leads to “more expansive and open thinking,” writes Fredrickson — a pro-resiliency mindset. Other studies have shown that time in nature helps combat anxiety and depression, improves immunity, and lowers levels of inflammatory chemicals in the body.

A similarly convincing body of research shows that strong social connections increase our resilience in the face of illness. One 2006 study of nearly 3,000 nurses with breast cancer found that those with 10 or more friends were four times more likely to survive the disease than the nurses without close friends.

No. 5: Hang on to Humor

There’s a reason that the late Norman Cousins relied on Marx Brothers comedies as a primary treatment for his debilitating illness. It’s the same reason that some version of “gallows humor” and “comic relief” have probably been with us since the beginning of time: Laughing in the face of adversity can be profoundly pain relieving, for both the body and mind.

“Playful humor enhances survival for many reasons,” writes resiliency authority Al Siebert in The Survivor Personality (Perigee Books, 2010). For one thing, he notes, “Laughing reduces tension to more moderate levels.” And psychologically, choosing levity can be incredibly empowering. “Playing with a situation makes a person more powerful than sheer determination [does],” Siebert explains. “The person who toys with the situation creates an inner feeling of ‘This is my plaything; I am bigger than it . . . I won’t let it scare me.’”

Ruvolo credits a sense of humor with helping her rebound as well. And she thanks her mother for that: “My mom was big on laughter,” Ruvolo says. “She always said that you have to keep laughing. My mother lost two sons, and yes, she had a few problems, but she always laughed and she always told jokes. I truly believe that helps you to understand and to get through.”

Case in point: Ruvolo speaks once a month to troubled teens in a conflict resolution program. Toward the end of each session, she makes a joke about the frozen turkey that came through her windshield on a winter’s night and nearly killed her. “I tell the kids that now for the rest of my life I have to be known as the Turkey Lady. Thank God it was a turkey, and not a ham, because I would have been known as Miss Piggy.”

Jessie Sholl is the author of Dirty Secret: A Daughter Comes Clean About Her Mother’s Compulsive Hoarding (Simon & Schuster, 2010). She lives in New York City.

Jessie Sholl / September 2011

Article from http://experiencelife.com/article/the-5-best-ways-to-build-resiliency/

Balancing Resilience and Growth Within the Supply Chain

ridodirected@gmail.com (RIDO) — Thu, 09 May 2013 08:36:00 +0000

By Leon Kaye | May 8th, 2013
From http://www.triplepundit.com/2013/05/resilience-supply-chain/

A recent Deloitte study offers a concise overview of the challenges companies face within their supply chains and how they, in turn, can partner with their suppliers to solve current problems and prevent new ones. The challenge is huge for multinational companies and their vendors because the increased demands for transparency clashes with the reality that the supply chain for many a business is becoming more complex and opaque.

As energy prices become more volatile, commodities surge in price and manufacturers look for new markets in which to hire workers, it behooves companies even more to ensure their supply chains are more resilient and socially responsible. NGOs are scrutinizing supply chains across the globe in this age of social media that can turn the shenanigans of a wayward supplier into a massive global headache for a company. Add the recent tragedy in Bangladesh, which follows only a few months after another avoidable catastrophe, and the importance of a more collaborative and transparent supply chain becomes even more crucial.

So what are the “four steps to effective supplier collaboration,” according to Deloitte, and what are some examples of what leading companies are doing to confront these challenges head on?

Establish goals and expectations from the beginning

The authors of the Deloitte study remind us that engaging suppliers is about more than setting demands: companies must set clear goals and expectations for their vendors. And if a company does not have a lucid supply chain code of conduct, the organization is already way behind on its social responsibility agenda.

PUMA, for example, has worked with its suppliers on transparency and sustainability challenges as far back as 2006. And Ford Motor Co. was amongst the first multinational companies to declare human rights to be a central component within its supply chain code of conduct.

Identify “hot spots” and opportunities within the supply chain

How is your supply chain, as an ecosystem, performing? A life cycle assessment (LCA) is one tool to identify social and environmental hot spots within your supplier base. Finding a solution to such flare-ups within a firm’s supply chain could end up an expensive proposition, but they prevent even more costs and crises in the near future and even offer a chance for increased collaboration between a company and its suppliers.

Novozymes, the Danish enzyme manufacturer, has conducted life cycle assessments for almost a decade, and uses the data to identify impacts and potential savings within its customer base. As an important cog in leading firms’ supply chains (and, of course, having its own complicated supplier base), such as its largest customer Proctor & Gamble, Novozymes’ LCAs help the company understand the effects of all of its products from their origins as raw materials to how customers use them in their final products.

Evaluate and prioritize suppliers

When the number of your suppliers reaches into the hundreds or even the thousands, managers need an idea of how to gauge potential risks within the supply chain.

Within its food product lines, Unilever developed its Sustainability Stakeholder Rating Tool (SSRT), which the company’s managers can use to assess supply chain actions based on environmental, financial and social issues.

Execute the plan

Once expectations fall into place between a company and its suppliers, the execution of the plan will give everyone the data necessary to assess future risks, performance and potential for new innovations. Everyone should share how results are measured, and of course, share in the successes and benefits.

Nike is one company that transformed how it evaluated its supply chain performance. Last year, the company implemented a new manufacturing scorecard that placed sustainable practices “on equal footing” with conventional metrics such as costs, quality and delivery. Lean, however, does not have to be mean. Nike has worked with suppliers to engage their employees and even empower them because those on the shop floor actually have the best insight on how to optimize efficiency within factories.

The Deloitte report, done in collaboration with ASQ, is accessible here.

Based in Fresno, California, Leon Kaye is the editor of GreenGoPost.com and frequently writes about business sustainability strategy. Leon also contributes to Guardian Sustainable Business; his work has also appeared on Sustainable Brands, Inhabitat and Earth911. You can follow Leon and ask him questions on Twitter or Instagram (greengopost).

By Leon Kaye | May 8th, 2013
From http://www.triplepundit.com/2013/05/resilience-supply-chain/

Stress: The roots of resilience

ridodirected@gmail.com (RIDO) — Tue, 07 May 2013 03:17:00 +0000

Most people bounce back from trauma — but some never recover. Scientists are trying to work out what underlies the difference.

Virginia Hughes

10 October 2012

From http://www.nature.com/news/

Elizabeth Ebaugh is finally comfortable visiting the bridge from which she was thrown 26 years ago.

On a chilly, January night in 1986, Elizabeth Ebaugh carried a bag of groceries across the quiet car park of a shopping plaza in the suburbs of Washington DC. She got into her car and tossed the bag onto the empty passenger seat. But as she tried to close the door, she found it blocked by a slight, unkempt man with a big knife. He forced her to slide over and took her place behind the wheel.

The man drove aimlessly along country roads, ranting about his girlfriend's infidelity and the time he had spent in jail. Ebaugh, a psychotherapist who was 30 years old at the time, used her training to try to calm the man and negotiate her freedom. But after several hours and a few stops, he took her to a motel, watched a pornographic film and raped her. Then he forced her back into the car.

She pleaded with him to let her go, and he said that he would. So when he stopped on a bridge at around 2 a.m. and told her to get out, she thought she was free. Then he motioned for her to jump. “That's the time where my system, I think, just lost it,” Ebaugh recalls. Succumbing to the terror and exhaustion of the night, she fainted.

Ebaugh awoke in freefall. The man had thrown her, limp and handcuffed, off the bridge four storeys above a river reservoir. When she hit the frigid water, she turned onto her back and started kicking. “At that point, there was no part of me that thought I wasn't going to make it,” she says.

Few people will experience psychological and physical abuse as terrible as the abuse Ebaugh endured that night. But extreme stress is not unusual. In the United States, an estimated 50–60% of people will experience a traumatic event at some point in their lives, whether through military combat, assault, a serious car accident or a natural disaster. Acute stress triggers an intense physiological response and cements an association in the brain's circuits between the event and fear. If this association lingers for more than a month, as it does for about 8% of trauma victims, it is considered to be post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The three main criteria for diagnosis are recurring and frightening memories, avoidance of any potential triggers for such memories and a heightened state of arousal.

Ebaugh experienced these symptoms in the months after her attack and was diagnosed with PTSD. But with the help of friends, psychologists and spiritual practices, she recovered. After about five years, she no longer met the criteria for the disorder. She opened her own private practice, married and had a son.

About two-thirds of people diagnosed with PTSD eventually recover. “The vast majority of people actually do OK in the face of horrendous stresses and traumas,” says Robert Ursano, director of the Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland. Ursano and other researchers want to know what underlies people's mental strength. “How does one understand the resilience of the human spirit?” he asks.

Since the 1970s, scientists have learned that several psychosocial factors — such as strong social networks, recalling and confronting fears and an optimistic outlook — help people to recover. But today, scientists in the field are searching for the biological factors involved. Some have found specific genetic variants in humans and in animals that influence an individual's odds of developing PTSD. Other groups are investigating how the body and brain change during the recovery process and why psychological interventions do not always work. The hope is that this research might lead to therapies that enhance resilience.

A natural response

Although no one can fully understand what was going on in Ebaugh's mind during her attack, scientists have some idea of what was happening to her body. As soon as Ebaugh saw her attacker and his knife, her brain's pituitary gland sent signals to her adrenal glands, atop the kidneys, to start pumping out the stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol. In turn, her pulse quickened, her blood pressure rose and beads of sweat formed on her skin. Her senses sharpened and her neural circuits formed strong memories, so that if she ever encountered this threat in the future, she would remember the fear and flee.

The repercussions were profound. For the first week after the abduction, “I felt like a newborn baby”, Ebaugh says, “like I had to be held, or at least be in the presence of somebody”. She shivered constantly, was easily startled and felt only fear. She could not go near the grocery store.

Nearly every trauma victim experiences PTSD symptoms to some degree. Many people who are diagnosed with the disorder go on to have severe depression, substance-abuse problems or suicidal thoughts. PTSD can take a horrific toll. Between 2005 and 2009, as a growing number of soldiers faced multiple deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, suicide rates in the US Army and Marines nearly doubled.

Over the past two decades, researchers have used various kinds of imaging techniques to peer inside the brains of trauma victims. These studies report that in people with PTSD, two areas of the brain that are sensitive to stress shrink: the hippocampus, a deep region in the limbic system important for memory, and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a part of the prefrontal cortex that is involved in reasoning and decision-making. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which tracks blood flow in the brain, has revealed that when people who have PTSD are reminded of the trauma, they tend to have an underactive prefrontal cortex and an overactive amygdala, another limbic brain region, which processes fear and emotion (see 'The signature of stress').

People who experience trauma but do not develop PTSD, on the other hand, show more activity in the prefrontal cortex. In August1, Kerry Ressler, a neuroscientist at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, and his colleagues showed that these resilient individuals have stronger physical connections between the ACC and the hippocampus. This suggests that resilience depends partly on communication between the reasoning circuitry in the cortex and the emotional circuitry of the limbic system. “It's as if [resilient people] can have a very healthy response to negative stimuli,” says Dennis Charney, a psychiatrist at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, who has conducted several brain-imaging studies of rape victims, soldiers and other trauma survivors.

Environmental protection

After her abduction, Ebaugh began seeing a psychotherapist and several alternative-medicine practitioners. But more than anything else, she attributes her resilience to being surrounded by caring people — beginning within minutes of her escape.

After Ebaugh crawled up the rocky riverbank, a truck driver picked her up, took her to a nearby convenience store and bought her a cup of hot tea. Police, when they arrived, were sympathetic and patient. The doctor at the hospital, she says, treated her like a daughter. A close friend took her in for a time. And her family offered reassurance and emotional support. “For the first month, I almost had to tell people to stop coming because I was so surrounded by friends and community,” she says.

Studies of many kinds of trauma have shown that social support is a strong buffer against PTSD and other psychological problems. James Coan, a psychologist at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, has done a series of experiments in which women lie in an fMRI scanner and see 'threat cues' on a screen. They are told that between 4 and 10 seconds later, they may receive a small electric shock on the ankle. The cue triggers sensory arousal and activates brain regions associated with fear and anxiety, but when the women hold the hands of their husbands2 or friends3, these responses diminish.

Social interactions are complex and involve many brain circuits and chemicals; no one knows exactly why they provide relief. Being touched by someone is thought to stimulate the release of natural opioids, such as endorphins, in the brain. The ACC is packed with opioid receptors, suggesting that touch could influence its response to stress.

Other clues come from the hormone oxytocin, which courses through the brain during social interaction and has been shown to boost trust and reduce anxiety. In one imaging study4, participants viewed frightening images after receiving nasal sprays of either oxytocin or a placebo. Those who sniffed oxytocin showed reduced activation in the amygdala and weaker connections between the amygdala and the brainstem, which control some stress responses, such as heart rate. The oxytocin surge that comes from being around other people could, like endorphins, help to reduce the stress response.

Past social interactions may also affect how a person responds to trauma. Chronic neglect and abuse unquestionably lead to a host of psychological problems and a greater risk of PTSD. Ressler, however, points to a factor that is well recognized but poorly understood: 'stress inoculation'. Researchers have found that rodents5 and monkeys6, at least, are more resilient later in life if they experience isolated stress events, such as a shock or a brief separation from their mothers, early in infancy.

Ebaugh says that early stress — and the confidence she gained in conquering it — helped her to recover from her traumatic abduction. She was born with a condition that made her feet turn inwards. At age ten, she underwent surgery to rebuild her knees followed by a year of intensive rehabilitation. “It wasn't foreign to me to be hurt and have to walk the walk of being strong again,” she says. “It's like a muscle, I think, that gets built up.”

Resilient by nature

Although most people, like Ebaugh, recover from trauma, some never do. Some scientists are seeking explanations for such differences in the epigenome, the chemical modifications that help to switch genes on and off (see page 171). Others are looking in the genes themselves. Take, for example, FKBP5, a gene involved in hormonal feedback loops in the brain that drive the stress response. In 2008, Ressler and his colleagues showed that in low-income, inner-city residents who had been physically or sexually abused as children, certain variants in FKBP5 predisposed them to developing PTSD symptoms in adulthood. Other variants offered protection7.

The most talked-about biological marker of resilience is neuropeptide Y (NPY), a hormone released in the brain during stress. Unlike the stress hormones that put the body on high alert in response to trauma, NPY acts at receptors in several parts of the brain — including the amygdala, prefrontal cortex, hippocampus and brainstem — to help shut off the alarm. “In resiliency, these brake systems are turning out to be the most relevant,” says Renu Sah, a neuroscientist at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio.

Interest in NPY and resilience took off in 2000, partly because of a study of healthy US Army soldiers who participated in a survival course designed to simulate the conditions endured by prisoners of war, such as food and sleep deprivation, isolation and intense interrogations8. NPY levels went up in the soldiers' blood within hours of the interrogations. Special Forces soldiers who had trained to be resilient had significantly higher NPY levels than typical soldiers.

Researchers are now conducting animal experiments to study how NPY works. In one experiment, a team at the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis restrained a rat in a tight-fitting plastic pouch for 30 minutes, then released it into a box with another rat9. The restraint made the rat so anxious that it avoided interacting with the other animal for 90 minutes. But when rats were injected with NPY before the treatment, they interacted with cage-mates as if nothing had happened.

The work could lead to treatments. Charney's group at Mount Sinai is carrying out a phase II clinical trial of an NPY nasal spray for individuals with PTSD. Others are investigating small molecules that can cross the blood–brain barrier and block certain receptors that control NPY release.

Conflict resolution

The US military is leading the hunt for additional biological markers of resilience. Since 2008 — driven in part by soaring suicide rates among soldiers — the US Army has collaborated with the National Institute of Mental Health and several academic institutions on a US$65-million project called Army STARRS (the Study to Assess Risk and Resilience in Servicemembers). The project has many parts, including a retrospective look at de-identified medical and administrative records for 1.6 million soldiers, in search of early warnings of suicide, PTSD and other mental-health problems. STARRS scientists are also collecting data — such as blood samples, medical histories and cognitive testing results — on tens of thousands of current soldiers. The researchers expect to publish their first findings early next year.

The military also funds research into animal models of resilience. Most rodents will quickly learn to associate painful foot shocks with a certain cue, such as a tone or a specific cage. After they have learned the association, the rodents freeze on experiencing the cue, even without the shock. Several years ago, Abraham Palmer, a geneticist now at the University of Chicago in Illinois, made a line of resilient mice by selectively breeding mice that froze for abnormally short periods of time. After about four generations, he had mice that froze for about half the time of typical animals10. The effect was not due to a difference in pain sensitivity or general learning ability. This month, Luke Johnson, a neuroscientist at the Uniformed Services University, will present data at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana, showing that these mice have uncommonly low activity in the amygdala and hippocampus, consistent with human studies of PTSD resilience. They also have low levels of corticosterone, a stress hormone, in their urine.

“They have a quieter system, even at rest,” says Johnson. “It suggests that there are underlying biological traits that are associated with the capacity of the animal for fear memory.” In future experiments, Johnson plans to use the mice to study NPY and potential new therapies.

Ebaugh, who now specializes in therapy for trauma victims, agrees that drug-based treatments could aid in recovery. But some people may find relief elsewhere. Religious practices — especially those that emphasize altruism, community and having a purpose in life — have been found to help trauma victims to overcome PTSD. Ebaugh says that yoga, meditation, natural remedies and acupuncture worked for her.

Today, she buys groceries at the plaza where she was abducted, and she drives over the bridge she was thrown from as though it were any other road. She says that she has forgiven the man who abducted her. When she reflects on what he did, it's not with anger, sadness or fear. “It doesn't feel like it affects my life at all at this point, at least not in a negative way,” she says. “In a positive way, it's been a huge teacher.”

Virginia Hughes

10 October 2012

From http://www.nature.com/news/

Happier People Deal Better with Hardships

ridodirected@gmail.com (RIDO) — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 07:45:00 +0000

Philip Moeller
U.S. News & World Report
April 12, 2012
Article from Chicago Tribune

It's not avoiding problems that matters, but how we handle them

Some people are much more resilient than others. They bounce back quickly from a hard day. They mourn but adjust to even a calamitous setback, such as the death of a loved one or a natural disaster. The questions of why this is so and whether people can learn how to better deal with life's slings and arrows are easy to pose but hard to answer.

George Bonanno, a psychologist at Columbia University, has spent his career studying how people respond to adversity, particularly how they grieve over the death of a spouse or other loved one. "There's a lot to be learned from how well we cope with adversities," he says. "Human beings can cope pretty well with really bad things."

Bonanno says a couple of strong research trends are emerging that speak to why some people fare better than others. One of them is that it's not only OK to be happy when you're sad; it's therapeutic. Positive emotion, even the momentary experience of feeling joy or happiness, can be part of the coping and recovery process for people reeling from a traumatic event.

"People are able to experience joy and happiness even when the crappiest things are happening," he says. "It's a good thing to know that that's possible, or even permissible" when you're grieving or in emotional pain. "Laugh as much as you can."

A second concept Bonanno and others have researched is the notion that there is no single "best" way to respond to adversity. Those with great resilience adjust their responses, often unknowingly, to their specific situation. They exhibit great situational flexibility.

"We're finding that people who deal best with adversity are people who have flexible responses," he says. "They have multiple coping strategies, which is part of what we think of as mental health."

This flexibility may mean expressing emotion as part of a grieving and recovery process, or even as a way of confronting a difficult challenge. "We normally don't think of anger as being something good, but it can be a very helpful thing."

Flexibility can also mean suppressing emotion. This may be the best way to handle an immediate emergency or, to cite an extreme example, deal with a battlefield attack. Bonanno calls it "coping ugly." "Some situations are dire and you just have to get through them," he says.

It is not clear how or even whether people can train themselves to become more flexible in dealing with serious life events. Bonanno says there are three traits of resilient people:

1. They are able to "read" situations well and figure out an appropriate response.

2. They have a repertoire of various coping behaviors and can select one tailored to a specific situation.

3. They can shift gears, or recalibrate themselves, in response to the specifics of an adverse event or situation.

Roxane Cohen Silver, a psychologist at the University of California at Irvine, says not only is there no single way people respond to negative life events, but the same person may respond differently at different times in his or her life.

It also turns out that experiencing some adversity strengthens coping skills and can produce an "inoculation" effect. People who have not experienced serious problems in their lives may be emotionally devastated when bad things finally happen to them. Likewise, she says, people who have had too hard a time are not able to cope well, either.

"I met a woman years ago whose son had won every race he entered as a young boy," Silver says by way of illustration. "He was very gifted and just never lost at anything. When he was about 30, he had something bad happen to him, and he completely fell apart. His mother told me that she wished at some point that he had come in second in a race. She was basically saying that he had never learned to deal with adversity, and had not developed the requisite social and coping skills."

Maren Westphal worked on research that helped form the basis for Bonnano's conclusions about resilience and flexibility. She now is an assistant professor of psychology at Arcadia University. "There is one big message coming out" of the research, she says, "and it's that resilience is not about one factor or one dominant personal trait, but that many different variables contribute to resilience. The other piece about resilience is that it is a process, an outcome that unfolds over time."

While it is hard to predict which people will deal well with adversity, some variables have emerged, Westphal says. One negative factor is excessively dwelling on a problem or loss. "People who ruminate more do worse," she says. "They keep on thinking and processing about adverse things that happen to them." Women generally ruminate more on events than men.

Another negative factor is a person's degree of neuroticism. Viewing events negatively all the time makes it harder to respond to a serious adversity in a healthy, flexible manner.

On the positive side, Westphal says, people with a high sense of their own skills and self-worth tend to fare well. Whether or not you really are capable doesn't matter so much as that you think you are capable, she says. Having this sense of "feeling up to it" is very healthful. So is self-enhancement--inflating your own worth to deal with adversity. "People who perceive themselves in more flattering ways show better adjustments," Westphal says, even if their attitude turns off people in their social network.

Not surprisingly, the psychology of a flexible response to adversity is mirrored by research about how our brains deal with stress. In evolutionary terms, humans' response to adversity can be linked back to the basic survival instincts of our earliest ancestors. The most successful early humans tended to be the ones who recognized and responded quickly to physical threats. If they hadn't, of course, they would not have survived and passed on these traits to others. These responses triggered physical changes and also fired up parts of the brain that regulated the production of body chemicals related to stress.

Today's threats still include physical dangers, of course, but are more likely to center on emotional stresses. The brain still perceives adverse events as a threat, however, and springs into action. Up to a point, this is a good thing, notes Richard Davidson, a brain researcher at the University of Wisconsin. However, some people's brains respond too well or for too extended a period of time.

"This can lead to deleterious consequences," says Davidson, who is also a professor of psychology and psychiatry. "It can lead to the production of stress hormones that exceed what is required to deal with a stressful situation." In his research using brain scans, Davidson has shown that resilient people's brains are particularly effective at regulating these types of "fight or flight" reflexes. It's their brain's flexibility that drives their behavioral flexibility.

The bottom line: Everyone suffers losses and serious reversals during their lives. Trying to avoid them would not be an effective strategy even if that was possible. Instead, the research suggests we should recognize that bad things are part of life. Experts recommend trying to learn from past problems without letting them overwhelm you. And as with so many other life events, a strong social network can offer an essential support system.

Article from Chicago Tribune

Rwanda: Resilience Vis-a-Vis Trauma

ridodirected@gmail.com (RIDO) — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 12:18:00 +0000

BY YVONNE KAYITESHONGA, 5 APRIL 2012

Article from All Africa

OPINION

How, after experiencing the threat of annihilation, can one not to be subjected to the death drive? The human race is universally recognised as vulnerable to living through extreme situations in a state of distress.

However in such situations, some people have not or will not develop significant psychological problems. Many people are resilient, which is defined as the ability to cope relatively well with adversity.

The individual's amazing ability to cope with adversity is based on a fascinating complexity of genetic, developmental and environmental factors.

Keza, a female survivor of the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda confirms this hypothesis. I met her in 2002 and she gave me her testimony. She overcame the confrontation with "the reality of death", as we shall see. Her name is Keza. She was aged 24 when she told me her story.

Keza is part of the category of individuals who have the ability to stay healthy though they have experienced events usually known to cause mental or somatic disorders. Until April 1994, Keza led a happy childhood in an ordinary family from the South of Rwanda and was the youngest in a family of four children, two girls and two boys. Her mother was a nurse and her father was a teacher. The memories of that time are perhaps not all positive but Keza remembers them with a touch of enchantment and nostalgia.

When the Genocide began, Keza's family fled the killers in a state of panic and became dispersed. Keza is offered shelter by a neighboring family who agrees to hide her. She's 19 years old; she spends her days in the ceiling where meals are served to her in secret by her hosts. But she listens every night to reports of macabre exploits, of killings and torture inflicting on other Tutsi from the village. Some are her neighbours; others are friends or friends of her parents. She says she spent three months with the certainty that she might pass away at any time. She had a fear of death, "that word could not express," she said. It was not only her life which was in danger. She was also very afraid for her family, which she knew would not be the same when the Genocide eventually stopped.

The Genocide was over and she found her mother, sister and brother. She heard from her brother that their eldest brother was killed savagely, when he had come out of hiding. Her brother had also witnessed the scene which was beyond imagination in its horror. Of their father, who was killed, his feet hanging from a truck body and his head dragging on the ground. Keza said she suffered terribly upon hearing of the murder of her brother and, the punishment imposed on her beloved father.

Her mother and her entire family were so affected by this situation that Keza was worried that everyone in the family would go crazy from the grief. This was, in fact, the case for her brother, who continues today to be under the care of the mental health services.

Keza has indeed suffered from what she had experienced during and after the Genocide. She said she decided after having almost experienced death, her only concern was "how can I live my life fully? How can I help my family to continue living? ".

One can see this directly in Keza, in the activities she undertook after the Genocide, and in her manner of speaking of herself and discussing her history.

She returned to school the year that followed the events, she finished high school, pursued graduate studies and graduated as a medical laboratory technician in 2000. She engaged herself in the cause of Genocide survivors and other vulnerable groups, studied social work and then began offering care as a trauma counselor and providing psychosocial care for women living with HIV. She is the bread winner for her family. In 2005, she met the love of her life and they were married the same year. In 2006, she gave birth to a daughter.

Keza builds on the love of her beloved late father had for her. Indeed, this young woman tells me with an insight and an emotional equilibrium that I have rarely seen in adolescents who survived the Genocide, with the following words: "My father loved me very much, he was intelligent and honest, and I am as intelligent as him. I have to keep the legacy he left with me by behaving with dignity especially vis-à-vis men".

This memory of a loving and intelligent father, the personal psychological resources of Keza, her sense of altruism, the resources of her family and professional environment, all these became real life examples of resilience that make Keza live her life today.

The author is the Director of Mental Health at the Rwanda Biomedical Centre.

Article from All Africa

So happy together

ridodirected@gmail.com (RIDO) — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 11:37:00 +0000

GABRIELLA COSLOVICH AND BENJAMIN PREISS

03 Apr, 2012 03:00 AM

Article from Stock and Land

''Happiness is surely among the simplest of human emotions and the most spontaneous."

SO BEGINS David Malouf's gently meandering and deeply philosophical 2011 essay, The Happy Life, in which he contemplates why it is that in our comfortable, cosseted, and affluent Western society happiness still eludes so many of us. It's a big question with no easy answers and Malouf probes it in his typically thoughtful and engaging style.

In sharp contrast is a document that has gained notoriety in the past week, RMIT University's lumberingly titled "behavioural capability framework". It, too, is about happiness of sorts - it spells out in exhaustive detail how RMIT staff and academics should be enthusiastic about their jobs.

While it stops short of asking them to "whistle while they work", it does expect them to "accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative," to quote the famous Johnny Mercer tune. If only the "BCF" were that catchy. Instead, it's a product of the latest trend that's sweeping the business world - an emphasis on ''positivity'' in organisations.

But so far all RMIT's 12-page, dot-point cajolement to be happy at work has succeeded in doing is raising the ire of its academics, who resent being told to be "passionate", "positive" and "optimistic" at a time of budget cuts, increasing workloads and student numbers, and where casual workers do 40 per cent of the teaching. They also resent the implication they are not already committed to excellence and passionate about their work.

"It's a lot of HR claptrap … on the ground we just think that it's a complete joke. I'm glad it's being ridiculed … but the more serious thing about it is the money that's gone into it," says one RMIT academic, who does not want to be named.

RMIT paid external consultants Mercer $147,895 to create the BCF, a process which took a year and involved "focus groups" of RMIT staff and "stakeholders". In it, staff are urged to "leverage relationships with stakeholders", "think ahead of the curve", "contribute to areas of strategic importance", "implement initiatives", "facilitate a culture of commitment", and "champion the relentless pursuit of excellence".

Even RMIT's Human Resources executive director, Marcia Gough, agrees that the BCF, despite its emphasis on passion in the workplace, is not a particularly ''passionate'' document. ''No, that's not a word I would use to describe it,'' she says.

''I think it's a really useful document, it's an extremely useful document and will clarify a lot of things for staff.''

Bollocks, says Australia's chief warrior against weasel words, author Don Watson. ''It's just managerial trash and there's nothing more to be said about it, really,'' says Watson, to whom The Age emailed a copy of the BCF.

"If I were working in an organisation and this were put in front of me, I would seriously consider training for social work; I would just leave. It must be humiliating for staff to read this, unless the next generation has been raised on this stuff and they think it's OK.

"What's crazy about this is that RMIT is a very good institution. The question is, why would it bother. What possible advantage is gained by this?"

While RMIT has drawn flak for its all-too-easily ridiculed BCF, it is by no means the only Australian university or organisation that has caught the positivity bug. Fostering positivity in the workplace is a mushrooming management trend - one that has its roots, ironically, in academia, and that, like many fads, can be traced back to the United States.

About 10 years ago, the Centre for Positive Organisational Scholarship was established at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business. As explained on its website, the centre for POS is "devoted to energising and transforming organisations through research on the theory and practise of positive organising and leadership" and is "passionately dedicated to the development and dissemination of POS research".

Another man intent on spreading the good vibrations is Professor Martin Seligman, the much-hyped father of the "Positive Psychology" movement, and author of several books including the best-selling Authentic Happiness and the more recent Flourish, which spells out Seligman's new and improved theory of positivity.

His original theory of "Authentic Happiness" has been jettisoned in favour of the "Wellbeing theory", which, according to Flourish, has five elements: "positive emotion, engagement, meaning, positive relationships and accomplishment. A handy mnemonic is PERMA".

Seligman is the director of the Positive Psychology Centre at the University of Pennsylvania, which has been providing resilience training to US Army soldiers. He's also promoting resilience Down Under, as one of Adelaide's ''Thinkers in Residence'' this year and next.

According to the South Australian government's website, he ''will join forces with partners from government, business and community to drive action on wellbeing and resilience for the citizens of South Australia''. Among the South Australian citizens privy to Seligman's counsel are the students of St Peter's College, an Anglican boys' school in Adelaide, where the psychologist is spending part of his residency.

Dr Kim Cameron, a co-founder of the Centre for Positive Organisational Scholarship, and the author of Positive Leadership, says the positivity movement has been growing in US organisations for the past six to seven years, and in Asia, Europe and elsewhere, for the past five years - and that includes Australia.

"In Australia, the last five years have seen a major increase in positivity in organisations. At the University of Melbourne, a new centre is about to be created in the School of Education, and St Peter's College in Adelaide has incorporated amazing positive practices in their school with dramatic results," Cameron says, via email.

The service industries, such as retail, hospitality and banking, have long required employees to be genial and accommodating, and to punctuate interactions with the public with such insipid catchphrases as ''how's your day been so far?'', but now the concept of positivity is spreading even to universities and high schools, places where a healthy scepticism to platitudes would be expected.

Certainly, the positivity movement is not without controversy and has spawned sceptics as well as advocates. But laying scepticism aside for a moment, could there be merit in trying to encourage positivity at work, even among scholars who are trained to be doubting and inquiring?

Yes say the proponents of POS, an acronym you can expect to see more of. ''Rigour and interrogation are not inherently the opposite of adopting a positive approach to research and investigation,'' says Cameron. ''One can be an excellent scholar and still be positive.''

A paper written by Cameron and three of his peers, Effects of Positive Practices on Organisational Effectiveness, published in The Journal of Applied Behavioural Science in January last year, noted that "evidence exists that positive practices (e.g., respectful treatment, personal development) produce positive effects in employees (e.g., satisfaction, wellbeing), which produces positive individual behaviour (e.g., retention, engagement), which in turn, produces organisational effectiveness (e.g., profitability, productivity)".

More study is needed, though, before the last link in the chain - that is, that positivity is also good for profits and productivity - can be empirically confirmed.

Interestingly, the paper also notes that it's important to keep in mind that "some of the greatest triumphs, most noble virtues, and highest achievements result from the presence of negative occurrences".

"In fact, common human experience and abundant scientific evidence support the idea that negativity has an important place in producing positive outcomes," it says.

Experience and common sense tell us that whingers and malcontents can sap the energy and morale of a workplace and that, conversely, enthusiasm is contagious. A positive workplace is intrinsically better to work in than one infected by low morale. But can suppressing negative emotions be equally detrimental?

Workers in many fields are required to express emotions contrary to their true feelings to conform with workplace expectations. Psychologists have called this practice ''emotional labour''. Assistant Professor Catherine Leighton, from the University of Western Australia, has studied the subject for the past seven years. She says ''emotional labour'' can take a heavy toll on workers and lead to burnout, poor job satisfaction and a desire to quit.

Leighton says managers might reasonably expect their workers to display ''appropriate emotions'' in fields such as sales or nursing. ''You don't want your employees to get grumpy at customers.''

But in other fields, such as academia, staff might feel resentful if they're told to put on an emotional front. ''We need a little bit of flexibility in being ourselves and not a robot in the workplace.''

Organisational psychologist Peter Cotton says emotional labour can make workers very unhappy. Disturbed sleep and tension are some symptoms of emotional labour, he says.

''You're actually brooding and ruminating and not able to sleep because you're dreading going to work the next day.''

Cotton says building a more resilient workforce that can withstand pressure and stress has become one of the latest management trends. Resilience has become a ''buzz word'' and managers hope this corporate philosophy can help to reduce absenteeism, he says. Cotton believes it is possible to foster resilience but this requires a strong and genuine commitment from managers.

''People can learn to increase the level of positive emotion they experience but you have to build that up over time,'' he says. ''You don't do that in a whiz-bang one-day seminar.''

As a lecturer in RMIT's school of Media and Communication, Dr Philip Dearman is finely attuned to how language can be manipulated, and as part of his teaching he alerts students to the incursion of management speak and methods into everyday life. "And that's precisely what the BCF is an example of," he says.

But while he finds the language of the BCF "banal and ordinary", he thinks there's a bigger issue at play here, and it's the politics behind the code.

"This isn't a question of whether the language is accurate, or not, and this where I think I depart from the kind of language-focused analysis of Don Watson and his ilk. It's actually about the politics of the situation we're in, and how we go about negotiating our way through growing student numbers with no guarantee of more resources.

"The document is just one example of many forms of communication that signal an attempt to very deliberately anchor responsibility for outcomes - for student welfare, for learning outcomes, for research incomes and 'output', and so on - to the individual worker.

''And when you're in a situation where funding is short, where casual workers now undertake about 40 per cent of teaching roles, where working weeks average around 50 to 60 hours or more, where there's constant change in procedures, changes in IT interfaces, 'reforms' in policies and so on, then any moment where we become explicitly aware of the politics of individualising responsibility, can cause people to get pretty upset."

The BCF has been so divisive that RMIT University was forced to go to Fair Work Australia last month to stop the National Tertiary Education Union from telling its members that the code was in breach of the university's collective agreement and encouraging them not to sign it. Fair Work Australia ruled that RMIT had not breached its workplace agreement with staff by introducing the framework. The NTEU has appealed the decision.

NTEU Victorian secretary, Colin Long, says tight budgets mean university managers are under increasing pressure. But he believes they still need to earn their workers' respect and cannot demand loyalty through behavioural codes forged by external consultants.

''We don't think universities or any employer have the right to tell staff how to think and feel,'' he says. ''If they want the sort of allegiance and enthusiasm they're demanding through these measures they should earn it by being good employers.''

RMIT staff have also been concerned that the code could be used against them, but HR head Marcia Gough assures that "not one single sentence in the BCF can be used to terminate an employee".

She says the BCF was introduced in response to a 2010 employee survey that had an 88 per cent reply rate. The message was loud and clear, says Gough. Staff wanted more feedback on how they were performing and how to plan their careers more actively, and they also mentioned concerns about conduct.

But for Don Watson, the BCF just doesn't make sense and is yet another ''puerile'' and ''asinine'' case of management speak insinuating itself into everyday life.

"Why would you talk to educated, competent people in this way? I think the big test is, would you talk to your mother in this way? And no, you wouldn't, unless your mother's in HR."

Article from Stock and Land

Warrior and family resiliency depends on people, say top military advisors

ridodirected@gmail.com (RIDO) — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 12:29:00 +0000

Article from Defense Video and Imagery Distribution System

By Emily Greene

MHS Strategic Communications

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Warrior Resiliency Conference IV in Washington, D.C. started March 29 and is sponsored by the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury.

Rousing calls to action kicked off the Warrior Resiliency Conference IV in Washington, D.C. March 29. This year’s conference, sponsored by the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury, is entitled “Restoring Readiness: Individual, Unit, Community and Family.” Attended by members of both military medical and non-medical communities, the conversation revolved around building total force fitness.

Dr. Jonathan Woodson, assistant secretary of defense for health affairs and Navy Capt. Paul Hammer, director of DCoE set the tone by emphasizing the importance of resilience for the military community as a whole.

Hammer warned that the term “resilience” cannot be allowed to become simply a buzzword, because resilience is critical to the core values each service holds dear.

Woodson added that the military’s core values set the course for success. And, he said that the promise to “never leave a fallen comrade” applies at war and at home, and extends not only to wounded warriors, but to the service members, families and communities who comprise the defense community.

To fulfill that pledge, Navy Rear Adm. Margaret Kibben, chaplain of the Marine Corps and deputy chief of Navy chaplains said that medical and line leaders must look beyond programs and focus on individuals.

“It behooves us as caregivers to be aware of where people are in their journey,” Kibben said. “When we talk about a person’s spirit there is no box. As we seek resiliency, we need to remember that they are living it.”

Several speakers at the conference stressed that Total Force Fitness and troop readiness is more than a medical issue and that every member of the military, especially leaders, are charged with the care and support of the rest of the community. In response to this need, the conference featured a panel of the senior enlisted leadership of each service branch.

Sgt. Maj. of the Army Raymond Chandler III, sergeant major of the Marine Corps Micheal P. Barrett, Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy Rick D. West, Chief Master Sgt. Of the Air Force James Roy and Coast Guard Command Master Chief R. Shane Hooker, command master chief for the deputy commandant for mission support, and Marine Sgt. Maj. Bryan Battaglia, senior enlisted advisor to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, provided a realistic, intimate look at the lives and struggles of U.S. troops and their families. Each spoke of methods that have been translating the concepts of Total Force Fitness into action.

A common theme was the changing nature of the nation’s defense networks and the need to build synergy across the services, medically and otherwise. And, each panelist reaffirmed the commitment to care for service members and their families, “from cradle to grave.”

“The thing that makes our service go ‘zoom’ is our people,” West said. “It is important for us to take care of one another.”

In every instance the bounty of programs was acknowledged, along with the challenge to ensure they are well used, managed and shared.

“We’ve got enough programs,” Roy said. “We need action. We need a culture of taking care of each other.”

Hooker said it was also important that individuals care for themselves.

“The most important person in managing your own readiness if you,” he said.

Hooker also re-emphasized the importance of raising awareness of programs for assistance, decreasing the stigma of those undergoing stress and seeking help and increasing the life skills of service members and families.

In conclusion, Battaglia reminded conference attendees that the strength of the nation’s armed forces relies on the members who comprise it.

“The health and readiness of our total forces rests on our non-commissioned officers,” Battaglia said. “Stay fit, stay strong, stay resilient.”

Article from Defense Video and Imagery Distribution System

Putting All Our Eggs in the Digital Basket: Health Service Resilience in the Digital Age

ridodirected@gmail.com (RIDO) — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 10:38:00 +0000

Dr Layla McCayVisiting Scholar at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Posted: 03/29/2012 4:16 pm

Article from Huffington Post

Female hammerhead sharks in captivity can reproduce without the services of a gentleman shark, which is how they came to play a starring role at an intriguingly diverse conference I attended on "resilience" last week at the New America Foundation. The argument was that sharks do what any good business or health care provider ought to be doing: adapting to survive in changing and challenging environments. And we can learn from them.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Dr. Sheri Fink told us how two very different hospitals adapted to the challenge of patient overload, loss of infrastructure (particularly electricity), and general fear and chaos. In summary, the whizzy, shiny, high-tech hospital apparently struggled, while the low-tech downtrodden hospital rose to the occasion and saved more lives as a result. Of course there were all sorts of factors and interpretations, but it made me wonder: Is our increasing reliance on technology and efficiency crowding out our capacity for resilience in health service delivery?

I can imagine why the answer might be yes. As a newly-qualified physician I spent many hours brandishing a mercury sphygmomanometer (a delightful word, being disappointingly usurped by the more prosaic "blood pressure meter"). After a year as a pathologist, I returned to the wards to find that these devices had vanished -- they'd been banned due to the risk of mercury poisoning if they smashed. In their place was an array of electronic blood pressure monitors. I wondered whether physicians of the future will even know how to work the manual mercury version.

It's the same with defibrillators (the machines that deliver an electric shock to restart the heart). Back in my day (which wasn't very long ago), we scrutinized the squiggles that are the heart's electrical signals to decide whether to deliver an electric shock. In my latest life support refresher course, I found my hospital had bought machines that made the decisions automatically, and instructed me whether or not to shock in a smugly patronizing electronic voice. These machines are found in shopping malls and can be operated by anyone, not just health care professionals. My instructors assured me that research has found automated machines are more accurate at deciding when to shock than highly-trained physicians, but again, will this automation mean that in time physicians will eventually forget how to interpret the squiggles?

Maybe it will. When the whizzy hospital lost its electricity, it apparently lost its capacity to ventilate people, while the less-modern hospital hauled out its hand-ventilation devices and settled down for a long night of pumping oxygen into patients by hand. But that doesn't mean that manual devices are better: We don't necessarily need to fear progress and cling to the old, laborious ways, just in case. When our cars fail, we don't revert to the horse and cart. Society has created back-ups that are congruous with a more modern and efficient way of functioning. And that's what needs to happen in health care. Digital innovation can create efficiency, freeing highly-trained professionals to concentrate on vital, skilled activities that save lives, rather than spending their time performing tasks that have been rendered menial and can now be done quicker and better by a computer. But when our ways of providing health care fail or falter, we need to have a Plan B. If it's not reverting to manual, it needs to be better ways of keeping digital working: electricity generators that provide full coverage and work for long periods, backed-up and accessible data, full-time programmers and technicians on call and able to solve problems fast... And all that needs proper investment.

One of my favorite definitions of "resilience" from the event was "not putting all your eggs in one basket." By discarding our mercury sphygmomanometers, or not knowing how to override the defibrillator machine's decisions, are we starting to put all our health care eggs in the digital basket? Maybe. But if so, we need to be fully aware that we're doing it and design resilience into our health care systems, and particularly into our cherished cost- saving and efficiency plans. Because as the health care repercussions from Hurricane Katrina demonstrated, we just can't keep all our eggs in one basket. Any hammerhead shark will attest to that.

Follow Dr Layla McCay on Twitter: www.twitter.com/LaylaMcCay

Article from Huffington Post

She Shall Overcome

ridodirected@gmail.com (RIDO) — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 11:03:00 +0000

Article from The Indian Express

Animator Charu Khandal fights for life in a Mumbai hospital even as friends emphasise her resilience

IT takes immense strength and willpower to be bedridden with such near-fatal injuries and yet laugh and reassure your loved ones that you will soon be back on your two feet.” These are the moving words that a close friend uses to describe Charu Khandal, now better known as the animator of Ra.One, who sustained severe injuries in the wee hours on Sunday in an accident when a car rammed into the auto-rickshaw she was travelling in. “Charu has a strong will to live and that is what will help her survive,” said a friend, referring to her brief conversation with Khandal when she was out of coma for a while on Monday.

A Jaipur girl, Khandal is the eldest of four siblings and one with creative leanings in a family of academics. In 2007, she moved to Delhi where she studied animation at the Maya Academy of Advanced Cinematics. Following a good performance at the academy, she was transferred to its Mumbai office in 2009. Her stint with Shah Rukh Khan’s production house, Red Chillies Entertainment, began with Ra.One where she was hired as part of the film’s VFX team. Highly adventurous and curious, she would take off for trips to the outskirts of Mumbai almost every weekend. “We are both from Jaipur but it is in Mumbai that we met and bonded,” reminisces Nikhil Kashyap, a publicist friend who knows her for three years. What breaks his heart, he says, is that the 28-year-old may never be able to walk again.

Her fiance, Sagar Thacker, whom she met two years ago, confirms that they were planning to get engaged soon and the wedding was planned by this year-end. Too disturbed to talk further, he said he is by her side, hoping for her speedy recovery. Khandal’s treatment is on but the medical expenses remain a big concern for the family, added a friend. While some senior officials from Red Chillies have visited her in the hospital, the company, as part of their policy, has asked the employees to refrain from speaking to the media.

Article from the Indian Express

On Aging: Look at the Brighter Side

ridodirected@gmail.com (RIDO) — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 11:24:00 +0000

Published: March 25, 2012

Article from The New York Times

To the Editor:

Re “Age and Its Awful Discontents,” by Louis Begley (Sunday Review, March 18):

Mr. Begley’s bitter portrayal of aging is neither universal nor inevitable.

While aging is certainly accompanied by losses and disease, gerontology research, and my experience in geriatric medicine, shows that there can also be continued productivity, connectedness, emotional resilience, wisdom, and acceptance and gratitude for a life well lived.

And while there is an “atrophy of the future” in old age, causing Mr. Begley ambivalence about buying a new suit, this often leads to enjoyment from a heightened sense of carpe diem.

Old age should never be measured by the metrics of youth. An adaptive rather than a maladaptive response to old age and even frailty is possible. Personally, I hope one day to be 95, and in love with a beautiful woman my own age.

HOWARD FILLIT

New York, March 19, 2012

The writer, a geriatrician, is executive director and chief scientific officer of the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation.

To the Editor:

Considering the heroism and endurance that permitted the young Louis Begley and his mother to survive far greater ravages in Nazi-occupied Poland than aging in New York, it is rather sad to read that age has been projected so negatively for their late-life legacy.

Mr. Begley projects this reflection on his mother, but perhaps her view was not that: despite his list of her age-related infirmities, she may have retained the capacity for satisfaction in her own assessment of her life’s course, despite its hardships, and the pleasure of visits from her son and grandchildren.

DAVID HAMERMAN

Bronx, March 18, 2012

The writer is a geriatrician.

To the Editor:

The perception of Louis Begley that there is nothing good about aging misses the many joys available to those who live beyond the average life span.

I believe that aging easily beats the alternative of dying young, and provides those of us in our 70s, 80s and beyond with an opportunity to enjoy these senior years with grace and satisfaction. Our pace may no longer be as hurried, and our responsibilities not as demanding, yet our lives can easily be enhanced by our attitude and response to the challenges as we age.

I’m excited by the joys and opportunities I now have for travel, spending time with old friends and making new ones. My mother, who died at 91, while missing her deceased siblings and friends, was nevertheless happy and optimistic right up to her last couple of weeks of life.

I believe that each day is truly a gift to be shared and enjoyed, and that the joys of aging far exceed the bleak picture painted by Mr. Begley.

SEAN HOLLAND

Los Angeles, March 18, 2012

To the Editor:

Maybe Louis Begley’s mother had a hard time. But many of us older women raised our families and nursed sick husbands until they died. Now it’s our turn to do some of the things we’ve always wanted to do.

“The bitterness and anguish of ... old people who end their lives without a companion”? Not always. For some of us it’s a freedom we have never known in our adult lives.

ROBERTA W. LYON

Maitland, Fla., March 20, 2012

A version of this letter appeared in print on March 26, 2012, on page A26 of the New York edition with the headline: On Aging: Look at the Brighter Side.

Article from The New York Times

Building resilience

ridodirected@gmail.com (RIDO) — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 02:34:00 +0000

Mar 23, 2012, 03.05PM IST

Article from The Times of India

A recent incidence shocked the entire nation, where a 15-year-old school boy stabbed his teacher to death in Chennai. It was a well thought out action and the boy stabbed the lady a number of times in the classroom till she dropped dead. The reason for this ghastly action was that his teacher had sent out a written complain to his parents, pointing out the boy's recurring failure in her subject.

Instead of looking at the West for solutions, let us face the fact that times have changed. Today, the middle class family is willingly catering to the needs as well as demands of their children. Hence, they can no longer take 'no' for an answer. For an integrated solution, today, we need to look at emotional intelligence. In his book Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman states that emotional intelligence is nothing more than will power, resilience, delayed gratification and ability to bounce back after failure or even handling an insult, for example.

Today, we tend to over-react to the word 'punishment,' especially in the context of schools. Let us understand that life is a journey full of rewards and punishments. You do something good in life and you are rewarded, you do something wrong and you are punished. It is as simple as that.

If a child puts his hand into fire, he gets hurt (punishment). So he learns not to repeat it. Today, self-esteem is over hyped. Earlier, missionary schools gave out 'good conduct' and 'bad conduct' badges to students which were to be worn by the students for the whole week. Students took it in the right spirit and that is what is important to understand.

Nobody found it humiliating or demeaning; neither parents nor society. It prepared one to face insults, the ups and downs, and the realities of life.

Coming to the present context, getting bad report cards from a teacher cannot and should not trigger a murderous attack.

Let us examine the age factor as well. Can we keep treating a school student like a 'child' between three and 17 years and 11 months and then hand him over voting rights one fine morning when he is 18?

Hereafter, he is responsible for everything he does, whether it is violating a traffic rule or committing forgery for which he can be jailed. How in the heaven can we expect a sudden transformation from him when he has been protected all this while?

We need to treat children differently at different age groups and try to build in the resilience component and as they gradually mature.

It has to be done collectively by all stakeholders - parents, schools and most importantly, society. We need to rethink this problem and an old fashioned approach may be in order.

(The writer is an educationist)

Courtesy: Myeducationtimes.com

Article from the Times of India

Resilience of nature is inspiring

ridodirected@gmail.com (RIDO) — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 10:25:00 +0000

By RACHEL LOVEJOY

From the Urban Wilderness

Published: Wednesday, March 21, 2012 10:17 AM EDT

Article from Journal Tribune

No matter what we are doing or where we are – work, school, sitting in front of the television set or computer, or fast asleep – the woods are there, watching, waiting, ever-changing. Millions of tiny dramas go on unseen by most during any given time whose increments overlap each other toward infinity. Each movement of a leaf, each bird call slips as smoothly as a stitch into the fabric of life that holds such places in its embrace.

The change of seasons corresponds to our own inner rhythm as we emerge from winter’s restfulness into the exuberance of spring, then move on to summer’s headiness and fall’s denouement. And all the while, the woods live out their lives independently of us, heeding only the laws that nature has subliminally imparted to them, fertilizing, emerging, growing and maturing, from the lowliest weed to the stateliest oak. And it all goes on just a short distance removed from our own activities along pathways that run, if you will, parallel to ours but that might as well, in some cases, be happening a million miles away for all the notice we take of them.

To the untrained eye, a tree stands there, static and still, its only movement produced by that of wind, bird or squirrel. But deep within its very fibers, life moves along at a deafening pace as all the processes necessary to its survival take place in perfect sequence. What we see ultimately is the sum and total of dozens of different outcomes that dictate the shape and placement of the tree’s leaves, the texture of its bark, the shape of its crown and its potential to produce more of its own kind. All this is determined in its genetic code, and it all happens silently without any great fanfare. This energy is dispersed among all the members of a woodland community, to the extent that it becomes a great pulsing body of life that includes all vegetation and all warm and cold-blooded creatures that call it home.

The woods benefit us all, whether we live within their parameters or not. Beyond providing us with the raw materials from which most of our necessities are made, they bring an immeasurable amount of beauty to our lives. I’ve lost track of those moments when, leaving the bustling town or city, the sense of peace and serenity that only the woods have the power to provide moves over me, washing me clean of this world’s cares. I simply cannot imagine a life that does not provide me with that sort of exquisite escape.

The woods know things we don’t know, but most of all that, without them, nothing else could be. They know what it’s like to really touch the sky and to not have the option of going in out of the rain. They know the feeling of losing their outer covering each year and having to stand there braving winter’s winds, waiting for spring’s first balmy touch that will get their juices flowing once again. The woods are a testament to survival and resignation, and they have intimate relationships and wordless conversations with the many creatures, both winged and furred, that seek protection in their innumerable secret places.

Following disasters, the things we humans have built need rebuilding, often at great expense. Conversely, though it might take time, forests slowly rebuild themselves after some sort of trauma without any help from us or at any cost at all. A single tree has the power to remind me of this truth, one of many out there in the natural world. And what a lovely and inspiring way it has of doing it.

— Rachel Lovejoy, a freelance writer living in Springvale, who enjoys exploring the woods of southern Maine, can be reached via email at rachell1950@yahoo.com.

Article from Journal tribune

Life on the breadline: welcome to the world of Britain's working poor

ridodirected@gmail.com (RIDO) — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 23:41:00 +0000

The Rowleys are a hard-working married couple with two children. They do not earn enough to be in the 'squeezed middle' – the group that has attracted so much media coverage. They only just manage to put food on the table. In the first part of an occasional series, Yvonne Roberts takes Conservative MP Dan Poulter to Essex to see what life is like for this hidden demographic

Yvonne Roberts
Article from the guardian.co.uk
Saturday 17 March 2012 21.40 G

Richard and Crisy Rowley with their children Lucie, 5, and Rhys, 4, can barely make ends meet on low wages and falling benefits. Photograph: Andy Hall for the Observer

Richard, 28, and Christine (Crisy) Rowley, aged 27, have been married for five years and together for nine. They are buying their own home in Braintree, Essex, and they have aspirations. Richard hopes to become a carpenter; Crisy, who has a foundation degree in animal management, would like to train as a veterinary assistant when Lucie, five, and four-year-old Rhys are older.

"We've been told we have two bright children," Crisy says with pride. "We want to make sure they have a decent future and that begins with them growing up in a home with two parents in paid work, putting money on the table, going somewhere."

I first met the Rowleys six weeks ago with the Conservative MP Dr Dan Poulter. Poulter, an obstetrician who was elected to a neighbouring constituency in 2010, has agreed to take part in a unique experiment, organised by the Observer. He will make several visits to a family experiencing the sharpest point of the current economic downturn to see how Westminster policy affects ordinary people.

The Rowleys belong to a section of society not much mentioned in ministerial and media dispatches. They are neither the very wealthy affected by the 50p tax nor the "squeezed middle" expressing anxiety about child benefit and this week's budget; nor are the Rowleys representative of the long-term unemployed or one of the 120,000 "troubled families" in which the government is investing £448m over the next three years.

Instead, Crisy and Richard are one among thousands of couples who, without attracting much attention, live daily on a precarious and crumbling financial cliff edge. They are the working poor, frequently self-employed, paying dearly and disproportionately simply because they want to stay in jobs, no matter how low the pay. For months now, the Rowleys have been hanging on to their home and their dreams of a better future by a hair's breadth. They have done so by drawing on their own reserves of resilience; Crisy's financial acumen – "If I can't afford it, I can't afford the interest on the credit card either," she says flatly – and significant support from their own, equally cash-strapped families.

"A year ago, Richard could have gone on jobseeker's allowance and the family would have had more money in their pocket," says Amanda Storie, outreach worker at the Seesaw children's centre in Braintree, run by the charity 4Children. She has known the family for five years. "But both Richard and Crisy want to work. They are trying to do the right thing – but they are paying a high price."

From next month, "doing the right thing" could become even more difficult for more than 200,000 of the poorest working families. Changes to working tax credit mean that the Rowleys could be facing the most difficult two years of their lives until universal credit – a single, simplified benefit system – comes into force.

"A lot of people don't realise that in three weeks' time they could be losing up to £75 a week from an already low income," says Sue Royston of Citizens Advice. "They want to stay in work in the hope that, should the economy improve, they are in a better position to increase their hours. These people have already taken quite a drop. Now they will be hit again. How much further can they fall?"

Every weekday, Richard Rowley leaves the family's three-bedroom house at 7am and drives their £650 Honda, which is 12 years old, to work. Richard would like a permanent job but five applicants for every vacancy in Braintree means that he has had to become technically self-employed, working through an agency as a construction labourer. He returns from work just before 5pm.

Twenty minutes later, Crisy leaves for her cleaning job. She works two hours every weekday evening at minimum wage for £60.80 a week, half of which goes on petrol money. She comes home and not long after Richard goes to bed. The job took months to find; longer hours require an unaffordable childminder. "Our attitude is we'll do whatever we have to do to put food in the children's tummies and clothes on their backs," Crisy says.

"We've got an eight-year-old cooker and the boiler is older than me – everything else we've been given. But that's how it is at present," she adds robustly.

The first time I talked to Crisy and Richard, in January, he had been given two days notice that his agency job would end and he was looking for work. Agency workers have no holiday or sick pay, redundancy or pension rights. Since they are technically self-employed, they can be and frequently are paid much less than the minimum wage of £6.08p an hour. They may be in work one day and out the next through no fault of their own. A TUC commission on vulnerable workers in 2008 estimated that more than two million were affected.

Recently, there has been a significant increase in the numbers of self-employed workers (101,000 in the last quarter). The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development says that at least 20% of this increase can be attributed to "odd jobbers" – unskilled workers like Richard. The rise reveals "a generally weak market rather than a burst of entrepreneurial zeal", the institute points out drily.

Richard Rowley is a quietly spoken man, a lover of sports when he had the time and the money. He doesn't smoke or drink. He and Crisy met at college. He abandoned a degree in leisure management to follow his ambition of becoming a diver in the navy. An eardrum problem meant he had to switch skills.

Anything useful?

He smiles. "Mine warfare," he says. In six years, he travelled extensively, loved it, served in the Gulf and Bahrain and was about to be promoted when he suffered a breakdown. "I was told I had to do a second tour in the Gulf. I was lonely and I missed Crisy and the children. To get something out of a child you have to put something in. I'd come back from a tour when Rhys was 18 months old and he hadn't known who I was."

The couple say the navy provided excellent care . Once well, Richard left the service in 2010. "If I'd stayed in I'd be on £27,000 a year," he says.

Does he have regrets? "Big time." Richard has level one City & Guilds qualification in carpentry. Last month, his father took out a £700 loan to pay for Richard to take a two-week painting and decorating course. High unemployment is feeding a growing market in the expensive provision of instant skills.

"You see loads of ads asking a couple of grand for courses that last a few weeks," Richard says. "They say things like, 'I was a recruitment consultant and then I acquired a trade qualification. Now I'm earning £40,000 a year.' Well, it doesn't quite work like that," he adds ruefully. Richard would like a "proper" carpentry apprenticeship. "I've tried but nobody wants to take me on when they can have a 17-year-old for £2.60 an hour."

Last year, Richard took out an overdraft of £1,700 to buy the tools to set himself up as a painter and decorator. Now he relies on agency work. A week after we first spoke, in February, he began working again for £6.80 an hour. He brings home £170 a week net. In this job, he says, he likes the work and the people. "Rich was told it would only be for a couple of weeks but they are trying to keep him on," Crisy says. "People recognise he is a hard worker. He wants to provide for his family."

On Friday 2 March, prior to Poulter's next visit, Crisy tries to withdraw some of Richard's wage to pay for food for the weekend. An administrative error means that the money isn't in the couple's account. The overdraft is at £1, 691 – £9 short of the maximum and Crisy won't go over. Another problem is that Richard has received no jobseeker's allowance for the several weeks he was out of work. The Jobcentre Plus wants to see Rich but, if he takes time off work, he loses money.

"I know all the security questions but they won't talk to me," Crisy says. "Last time we went, they said, 'You go and sit over there, Mrs Rowley.' But it's me who's got all the figures in my head. I deal with the money. Why can't Jobcentre Plus treat us as a family?" She adds: "We have no Xboxes, no Sky, no catalogues, no credit cards. Until November, I could get the family's food for a week with £50. Now it's £70. It's the same chicken, pork and minced meat. The same frozen veg and cheap milk and bread. Our wages haven't gone up but everything else has – electricity, petrol, food. What do I do when I'm stuck? I call my mum."

Crisy's mother, a retired cook, provides food and clothes for the children from time to time. Crisy's father lent the couple £8,000 towards the deposit on the house, bought five years ago for £156,000. Now it is worth £140,000. Their interest-only mortgage payments are £416 a month. Richard's father also lent the couple £30,000 for the deposit and pays for Lucie's dancing lessons and Rhys's football club on a Saturday morning.

That first weekend in March, Crisy's mother brought food and clothes. "I hate to ask her for help because she's saved all her life for her own pension pot. Both families have been wonderful," Crisy says. The couple haven't missed a mortgage payment in five years. For the March payment, Crisy's mother lends them £300. Crisy can't think about April. "The bank said make a temporary token payment but I don't want to do that. Unless things get better, there is no 'temporary' for us."

That first March weekend is strained and difficult at home. The children, normally well behaved, pick up on their parents' stress. On Monday, Crisy and I go to see Rachel Scott, co-manager of Seesaw, and Amanda. The centre is three years old and has been rated "good" by Ofsted. It supports around 700 families, including 1,200 under-fives.

"I love this place," Crisy says. "It's been brilliant to me. That's why I volunteer to give something back." As Amanda, Rachel and Crisy talk, they explain how the Rowleys' current crisis has occurred three or four times over the past year because Richard has had 10 weeks without work.

"It's hard to see how to move Richard and Crisy forward," Amanda says gently. "It's not just the low levels of pay, it's sorting out benefits. We want children to see their parents doing better but it's a strain on marriages. The whole family support network is changing too," Amanda adds. "Grandparents who used to help out with childcare are working to top up their pensions or because they've secured loans against their houses that they now have to pay back.

"It needs someone at Jobcentre Plus to sit down for an hour and work out how best to help Crisy and Richard as a family," Amanda continues. "What courses could they go on, for instance, so they can improve their skills and qualifications?"

"I'd love to have gone for a job at Colchester zoo," Crisy adds. "But at £2.60 an hour? My heart says animals but my head says the children always come first."

In 1999, a Treasury report stated that, "the hypothesis that low-paid jobs act as a stepping stone to higher paid jobs is not supported by the data. Low paid jobs are more likely to act as a blind alley."

The Seesaw staff try to support parents to avoid those blind alleys. It offers numeracy and literacy skills, help with budgeting and job applications, and parents use the centre's phones to apply for jobs or to try to talk to Jobcentre Plus. "It's the little things that matter a lot on tight budgets," Rachel Scott says.

A core goal for the centre is to get parents moving up the ladder of opportunity rung by rung. The lack of economic growth, the absence of private sector jobs and the dearth of extra hours for part-timers means that the rungs are rapidly disintegrating, leaving an increasingly unbridgeable gap. The working poor are also expected to be exemplary and stay within the strict rules of austerity.

"I'm lucky," Crisy says. "My kids don't ask for a thing. They are happy if we take them to Frinton beach for the day. Nothing there except a green and a beach but they absolutely love it." However, Crisy has broken one of those rules. She has two dogs, acquired when Richard's work appeared permanent, rabbits and a guinea pig. Animal feed costs £15 a week. What is considered a normal part of family life is deemed an extravagance for those on the breadline. "I think they are entitled to one luxury," Amanda says stoutly. She turns to Crisy and adds, without irony: "Somehow we have to find a way so that both of you can afford to stay in work."

In a parents' group later in the week that Poulter and I attend, one mother talks of benefit cheats and "job snobs" who are "picky" about the work they will take. However, Anée, 17, helping her married sister with her child, bursts with ambition. She has 10 GCSEs and is desperate to find an apprenticeship in floristry or retail, so far without luck. She has just tried for a job as a cinema usher but was unsuccessful. Her boyfriend, a plumber, can't find work. Her father, an engineer, has recently been made redundant.

Anthony Everard has been a local Labour councillor for eight years and is working with Crisy to establish an allotment club. "Everywhere I go I see the sign 'Investors in People'," he says. "I wish that was true."

For many couples like the Rowleys, systems that on paper appear to be eminently reasonable – once you have little money – can prove obstructive, enormously time consuming and debilitating; a further tithe on the working poor. Poulter says he is shocked at the extent of financial exploitation.

The Rowleys, for instance, took out a loan with Creation Consumer Finance. Rhys had poor health as a baby; heating bills were high, so the couple borrowed to buy double-glazed windows. The repayment is £76 a month over five years. Crisy asks to negotiate a lower payment over a longer time. The response is rude and unhelpful. "I was told I had to pay or I would be fined with interest and fined again for a defaulting debit. That put the frighteners on me."

Creation Finance says it does all it can to help customers in difficulties. Indeed, it has a financial difficulties department. This reasonableness does not tally with the experience of the Consumer Credit Counselling Service, a charity. It has had "massive issues" for months with the company, says Uma Farrell of the service. "Creative Finance is aggressive and confrontational with its customers who are already stressed. It exacts excessive penalties and it won't work with us on constructive solutions."

The Rowleys also have trials dealing with Jobcentre Plus. According to the Department for Work and Pensions, a jobcentre will fund short vocational courses. Richard says he asked but was refused. It transpires that Richard is also entitled to "rapid reclaim", a benefit that eases family finances if a claimant dips in and out of work.

Last week, I met another Braintree resident, "Sue" (who doesn't want to be identified.) She is 32, married and, before she had her two children, she worked in insurance. Now , she too belongs to the working poor. She is a cleaner five nights a week. Her nightly hours have been cut by 30 minutes – the £15 is hugely missed. Sue's husband has a factory job. He brings home £1,100 a month.

"His money is gone in the first hour," Sue says. The couple have a loan, an overdraft and outstanding debts on nine credit cards. They are paying each card off at a £1 a month . They are also in arrears on their council tax, their mortgage and their energy bills. "I am not going to lose my home," Sue says, in tears. "I'm not."

In 2010, according to the housing charity Shelter, more than 36,000 homes were repossessed. The last three months of 2011 saw an 18% increase in homelessness over the same period in the previous year. Sue says: "I put my hand up. We spent when we didn't have it. Now we will pay for the rest of our lives – unless something changes."

Sue should be on antidepressants but can't afford the prescription. Her husband has toothache but can't pay the cost of the dentist. "If we were out of work, we'd get free school meals, dentistry, opticians, prescriptions, help with the council tax," Sue says in tears again. "We had so much going for us . Now, I sometimes can't even afford the petrol to get to work. It is so embarrassing."

According to the Consumer Credit Counselling Service, a "debt noose" is tightening around households with some families paying almost £200 a month in interest alone. The charity says UK households' determination to pay down their debts is slowing as disposable income is swallowed by high inflation, expensive petrol, utilities and housing costs and deteriorating employment conditions.

Last week the work and pensions secretary Iai n Duncan Smith launched the Social Justice Strategy paper. In it, he underlined the government's support of marriage and outlined the various ways he intends to tackle "the root causes of behaviour" that lead to intergenerational unemployment. However, many of the working poor are in a fraught situation, not because of their behaviour but because of the structural inadequacies of the system. The economy is not generating extra hours of work. In the six years to 2010, £150bn was spent on tax credits. They were essential for survival but they also provided a huge subsidy for employers, in many instances paying pitiful wages.

The cost of childcare, the low hourly rates and the anomalies in benefits are a vice squeezing the life out of the aspirations and hopes of people like Richard and Crisy. And worse is to come. Next month, the rules on working tax credit change. Now a couple need to work 16 hours between them to be eligible. From April a couple must work 24 hours. If Richard loses his job, then because Crisy is employed for 10 hours, the family will no longer be eligible for working tax credit. £3,870 will be cut from their annual income, already stretched tissue thin.

The shopworkers' union Usdaw reports that 78% of its members have already asked and been refused more hours of part-time work. Alison Garnham, chief executive of the Child Poverty Action Group says: "Six out of 10 children in poverty have a parent in work. The truth is that a child growing up in poverty is many times more likely to have a parent who's a cleaner or a care worker than one who's a gambler, an addict or workshy.

"From April, working couple families, the very families ministers say they want to help, face having the rug pulled from under their feet. We are testing families to destruction."

Ann Coffey, a Labour MP, has campaigned against the change. "It is bizarre that families who lose their entitlement in April will be given support again in two years' time when the excellent universal credit is introduced," she says. "In the meantime they face two years of hardship."

So what might make a difference to couples like Crisy and Richard?

The working poor merit greater consideration in the government's strategy for social justice. An agenda for them might include employment rights for agency workers; better vocational training and qualifications; eligibility for free school meals; free prescriptions, dentistry and opticians; more help with fuel bills, childcare and the council tax. And the changes to working tax credit in April should be cancelled.

"It is the only decent thing for the government to do," Sue Royston of Citizens Advice says.

"Rich and I are good together," says the remarkable Crisy. "What we need now is a little bit of luck."

THE ROWLEY BUDGET

Crisy works 10 hours a week as a cleaner, earning the minimum wage of £6.08p an hour or £243.20 a month, plus contracted extras that top it up to an annual total of £3,273.60.

Richard earns £6.80 an hour for a 42-hour week – £1,142.40 a month

If Richard is in work all year, the couple's combined salary is £16,627.20p. But in the last 12 months Richard has been out of work for a total of 10 weeks, costing them nearly £3,000 from an already strained budget.

MONTHLY OUTGOINGS

Interest-only mortgage: £416

Water: £32

Double-glazing loan: £76

Council tax: £129

Gas and electricity: £110

Car costs, excluding petrol: £45

Car insurance: £54

House insurance: £30

TV: £13

School meals: £38

Animal feed (vets' fees not included – paid from Crisy's Christmas present money from dad: £60

Phone: £56

Food: £280

Washing machine insurance: £10

Children's shoes and clothes/birthday Christmas presents: about £30

Petrol for Crisy's work: £120

Richard's accountant: £25

Interest on overdraft: £30

National Insurance: £10

Total: £1,564

COMING IN

Child benefit: £132

Richard's wage after tax: £680

Crisy's wage: £248.20

Working tax credit: £291

Child tax credit: £452

Richard's tax rebate: £75

Total: £1,878.20

No budget for emergencies, house repairs, car repair or clothes for Richard and Crisy. No credit card or catalogue debts. The couple last went out together two years ago. Richard is still owed some jobseeker's allowance payments for last year.

■ Some figures are approximate

Article from the guardian.co.uk

Fill children with skills they require to be resilient

ridodirected@gmail.com (RIDO) — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 10:18:00 +0000

7:02 PM, Mar. 8, 2012

Article from Tenessean

Resilience is the ability to bounce back from hardship. It is an important skill for handling stress.

Dr. Kenneth R. Ginsburg talks about the seven Cs of resilience in his book, Building Resilience in Children and Teens: Giving Kids Roots and Wings. He believes that children who have these seven Cs will be more likely to recover from adversity and avoid some of the negative outcomes that are a result of stress in childhood.

Here’s how he describes the seven Cs:

Competence — This is having the ability or skills to handle situations well. Children learn competence when they are taught how to do things and when they are given the chance to make decisions, regardless of the results (success or failure).

Confidence — When children have the skills to handle hard times, they develop the confidence to take risks and face challenges. Children develop confidence when parents encourage them by focusing on what they are doing right or well. Instead of saying, “You’re such a great kid,” say something like “I was really proud that you made friends with the new kid at school. You have a gift for making others feel welcome.”

Connections — Relationships to family and to groups outside the family give children more resources to draw on when they face difficult situations. Accept the emotions your children feel, but help them to learn how to express them properly. Practice problem-solving by having family meetings to talk through issues. Let your children become involved with groups outside the home such as clubs, religious groups, sports teams, arts classes and similar groups.

Character — This highlights the core values your child holds regarding what is right and wrong. You can help your child learn to do what is right, even when that isn’t the popular thing to do. Teach your children how what they do affects others. Talk with your children about acceptance of others who are different. Treat others with respect.

Contribution — This is the ability to make a positive difference through one’s actions and choices. When children realize that they can make a difference in the lives of others, they feel very powerful. Make helping others a family affair. Rake an elderly neighbor’s yard, serve a meal at a local shelter, provide food or gifts to a family in need, or pick up litter in your neighborhood.

Coping — You can help your kids learn to cope by teaching them the difference between a true crisis and something that just feels like an emergency. Encourage kids to use play and fantasy to cope with stress. Teach them how to work step by step to solve problems. Use positive coping skills such as exercising, problem-solving, taking time to relax, or asking advice or help from someone you trust.

Control — Teach children that most of life is a direct result of our or someone else’s actions or choices. Help them know that they have the power to make choices that will result in the best outcomes. Instead of dwelling on the current problems, think about the future you want and concrete steps you can take to get there. See discipline as teaching or guiding instead of controlling. Give your children increased privileges as they show more responsibility.

For more information related to Family and Consumer Science issues, please contact Shelly Barnes at 615-444-9584 or sbarnes@utk.edu.

— Submitted by Shelly Barnes, the Wilson County Extension Office

Article from Tenessean

Momentary Mindfulness

ridodirected@gmail.com (RIDO) — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 13:01:00 +0000

Annie McKeeBestselling author, leadership advisor, cofounder of Teleos Leadership Institute

Posted: 03/13/2012 7:00 am

Article from The Huffington Post

For years I believed that the only way I could manage stress and stay spiritually grounded was to run three miles a day and meditate for an hour in the morning and an hour at night. That's about three hours a day -- more if you count getting dressed to run, showering, organizing the kids and the household so I could disappear to meditate. I've never had that much time to focus on personal activities -- not when my kids were young, and not now.

At best I can do one thing a day, and I'll almost always choose running. That's because I like to run more than I like to meditate. It's not easy to admit that, because a lot of people seem to think it's cool to talk about meditation -- whom your teacher is, how long you meditate every day, which meditation retreats you've signed up for. Actually, that's what really drove me away from the temples I frequented for a while, complete with "masters" who thought they were really quite special. I don't like that stuff. Gurus and guru-seekers bother me, and bragging about your meditation practice just seems wrong. It all turns me off, and then I even use that as an excuse not to meditate. I could find a million more reasons without much trouble.

But if I don't meditate, I don't get the physical, psychological and (for me) spiritual benefits that are very real. Every spiritual tradition on earth has some sort of reflective practice that slows us down and helps us to tune in to consciousness and god, however defined. Recent neuropsychology research on the effects of meditation on physiological processes shows us that it does, in fact, affect us positively. Meditation affects the brain, health, resilience, and our capacity for creativity, cognitive flexibility and learning.

In my work, I advise leaders to cultivate mindfulness practices as a way to manage stress. I advise them on how to sustain resonance by managing the Cycle of Sacrifice and Renewal -- developing self-awareness and the ability to manage emotions helps with the constant struggle to stay centered and healthy in the midst of our crazy lives. All of that can be helped by meditation. But two hours a day? Even 20 minutes a day is a challenge.

So what to do? I've found a way that works for me and it's easy. I call it momentary mindfulness. A long time ago, when I hadn't read anything about meditation and there wasn't any neuroscience to support it, I'd take the odd moment here or there during the day and just breathe. I'd try to focus on calm, positive feelings for a minute or two. I tried to notice fleeting emotions and stop to feel: happiness about a friend's loyalty, joy at the sight of a beautiful sky, even gratefulness that I have the capacity for deep emotions when I've cried over life's tragedies.

Over the now 40 years I've been practicing momentary mindfulness, I've found it to be useful and joyful. Here's what I do: Every so often during the day, I remind myself to tune in to myself, my environment, and others. I don't pick the moments ahead of time, or have any regular times of day. When the thought or mood strikes me, I meditate for 30 seconds, a minute or two. It might be when I'm getting ready to feed my dogs in the morning. Instead of rushing through the task, I slow down a bit, take a few deep breaths, and then call them. That tiny moment of mindfulness opens me up to their crazy, wonderful joy and I can actually feel how much they love me and I love them. I laugh at myself because I love them so much. I open my mind and my senses to the experience. I feel their joy as they bound into the kitchen. I really laugh. That in itself is worth the 30 seconds I spent in mindful meditation before I called them for breakfast. Moments of momentary mindfulness make experiences brighter, fuller. Life's most beautiful little moments, like when I play with my grandbaby Benjamin, come into focus and are amazing, not just good.

Momentary mindfulness helps with things that aren't much fun as well. Say I need to have a difficult conversation with a coworker. When I get scared about the conversation or angry about what I think they've done, I stop for a few seconds and meditate. Instead of hunkering down and avoiding my feelings I tune in to my emotions. I try my best to breathe deeply and take in the other person's experience. It helps. I'm better prepared for the conversation and more grounded. No matter how upset the other person is, I have a reservoir of empathy and compassion to draw on.

Momentary mindfulness is easy to fit into your to daily life. No one has to know you are doing it -- it takes seconds, and you don't even have to close your eyes. Momentary mindfulness is a private, quiet practice that will not take you away from life. It will add to your life.

Article from The Huffington Post

How well does your brain handle emotions?

ridodirected@gmail.com (RIDO) — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 12:43:00 +0000

03/09/2012 4:29 PM

Article from Boston.com

How do you react when your flight gets cancelled, when your boss chews you out for missing a deadline, or when you find out your ex is dating someone else? Do you lash out in anger, curl up into a fetal position, or take it in stride?

That depends on your own unique emotional style, a fingerprint or pattern of specific brain activity that determines how you feel and respond to life-altering events and inconsequential ones, too, such as a compliment on your looks or persistent honking from an impatient driver. While no single emotional style stands out as the ideal -- the Dalai Lama’s perhaps? -- you can refine how you feel and react if you think your style needs tweaking, according to a new book called the Emotional Life of Your Brain.

“Most people have a sense whether something is a real problem for them or not, when they really start to examine how they behave,” author Richard Davidson, a professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in an interview. While you may have a genetic propensity to exhibit road rage or a pessimistic outlook on life, you can also take advantage of new research suggesting that the brain has a certain amount of plasticity and can be trained to perceive things differently.

“That’s the hopeful message that’s in the book,” Davidson said. “If your emotional style is problematic, you can do things to change it.”

The book is filled with a variety of mental exercises that he says you can do to help strengthen certain neural connections in the brain associated with specific attributes you would like to adopt, whether it’s more optimism, better resilience to stress, or a strong sensitivity to context, meaning you display the proper level of emotion given the situation at hand. That’s, at least, the theory since the scientific evidence is still in the early stages.

“Just like we didn’t know about the importance of physical exercise until 50 years ago, I think mental exercise is on the verge of taking on the same kind of importance,” Davidson said.

Here’s what he recommends for shifting to a different emotional style.

1. If you’d like to shift from a pessimistic outlook to a more positive one, you need to strengthen connections between the brain’s prefrontal cortex, responsible for decision-making, and the ventral striatum, which senses pleasure and reward. Research suggests that “well-being therapy” can help sustain positive emotions. This includes writing down one positive characteristic of yourself and one positive characteristic of someone you regularly interact with, writing down a different trait each time. Also try expressing gratitude regularly by saying thank you more often, and taking the time to compliment others.

2. If you want to become more resilient to stress -- bouncing back quickly from life’s misfortunes -- you need to strengthen connections between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala, a region of the brain that processes emotions. Practicing 10 minutes a day of mindfulness meditation, where you train your mind to focus on the present moment, can help build resilience by teaching you to let go of anxiety-provoking thoughts. To practice mindfulness, sit comfortably, close your eyes, and breathe naturally for 10 minutes, focusing on the breath as it enters and exits your lungs. When thoughts pop into your head, acknowledge them and let them pass without judging yourself.

“This can be done in context of everyday life, practiced for a minute or two while sitting at your desk or in the subway,” said Davidson. “You’re intentionally taking responsibility for your own mind and cultivating change.”

3. If the amount of anxiety you feel when the dry cleaner stains your favorite shirt is akin to what you’d feel if you were on a hijacked plane, you’ll probably want to adjust your sensitivity to context. Those with this problem are at higher risk of suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, according to Davidson. A solution is to strengthen connections between the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus, a brain region involved in memory forming, by practicing relaxation techniques like slow deep breathing -- long inhales and exhales of the same length -- and specific “context training” exercises.

Davidson recommends identifying certain situations or people that make you unjustifiably anxious. If your college professor, say, is the source of your dread, make a list of specific cues or behaviors that upset you when you’re sitting in class. When you get home, bring to mind these images while engaging in slow breathing. Continue to do this until you feel comfortable and relaxed despite seeing your professor’s frowning face looking down at you.

Deborah Kotz can be reached at dkotz@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @debkotz2.

Article from Boston.com

Why You Need to Make Your Life More Automatic

ridodirected@gmail.com (RIDO) — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 02:25:00 +0000

TONY SCHWARTZ

Tony Schwartz is the president and CEO of The Energy Project and the author of Be Excellent at Anything. Become a fan of The Energy Project on Facebook and connect with Tony at Twitter.com/TonySchwartz and Twitter.com/Energy_Project.

9:48 AM Tuesday March 6, 2012

Article from Harvard Business Review Blog

Why is it that three prominent books published just during the past several months focused on the subject of willpower?

The first answer is that neuroscience has finally begun to open a window into the complex way our brains respond to temptation and what it takes to successfully exercise choice.

Second, a raft of recent studies have shown that the capacity for self-control — even more than genetic endowment or material advantage — fuels a range of positive outcomes in life, including more stable relationships, higher paying and more satisfying work, more resilience in the face of setbacks, better health, and greater happiness.

Finally, these books — Willpower, The Willpower Instinct, and The Power of Habit — are a response to an increasingly evident need. Demand in our lives is truly outpacing our capacity.

The sheer number of choices we must make each day — what foods to eat, what products to buy, what information merits our attention, what tasks to prioritize — can be overwhelming. As Roy Baumeister puts it in Willpower, "Self-regulation failure is the major social pathology of our time."

Each of these books provides compelling studies and fascinating stories that illustrate the challenges we face in exercising more self-control. All of them also come to the same paradoxical conclusion that I did two years ago in a book of my own, Be Excellent at Anything, and that I've often written about here.

Put simply, the more conscious willpower we have to exert each day, the less energy we have left over to resist our brain's primitive and powerful pull to instant gratification. According to one study, we spend at least one-quarter of each waking day just trying to resist our desires — often unsuccessfully.

Conversely, the more of our key behaviors we can put under the automatic and more efficient control of habit — by building something I call "Energy Rituals" — the more likely we are to accomplish the things that truly matter to us.

How different would your life be, after all, if you could get yourself to sleep 8 hours at night, exercise every day, eat healthy foods in the right portions, take time for reflection and renewal, remain calm and positive under stress, focus without interruption for sustained periods of time, and prioritize the work that matters most?

Right now, the vast majority of what we do each day occurs automatically. We're often triggered, as these authors make vividly clear, by subtle cues we're not even aware of — a smell, a visual image, a familiar sight. These cues prompt us to move away from any potential pain and discomfort, no matter how minimal, and toward immediate reward and gratification, no matter how fleeting.

The primary role of our prefrontal cortex is to bias the brain towards doing the "harder" thing. Unfortunately, our rational capacity is often overwhelmed by the power of our own most visceral and primitive desires.

We're often captive to our biochemistry. When the neurotransmitter dopamine is triggered, for example, what we feel is craving, not pleasure. This explains not just why we fall into a range of self-destructive addictions, but also why we don't take better care of ourselves and make wiser choices day in and day out.

The solution is to learn how to co-opt the more primitive habit-forming regions of our brains, so that rather than reinforcing our negative impulses, they become the soil in which we build positive rituals that serve our long term interests.

So how do you get started? The first step is simply to understand better what you are up against. That requires slowing down. Speed is the enemy of reflection, understanding and intentionality. When we slow down, we can begin to notice both what's driving us, and how to take back the wheel.

Eat slower, for example, and you not only begin to notice how rarely you savor the food you eat, but also how often you eat for reasons other than hunger and how rarely you notice when you've had enough.

To begin strengthening your capacity for self-observation, take two or three minutes at several designated times a day to breathe in to a count of three and out a count of six with your eyes closed. Notice the thoughts, feelings or sensations that arise, name them, and then let them pass. Return to the breath. You're training mindfulness.

We each have an infinite capacity for self-deception — endless ways that the awesome power of our desires cause our prefrontal cortex to defend the indefensible and rationalize behaviors that aren't serving us well. The first step to building willpower and self-control is recognizing how little we currently have.

You can't change what you don't notice.

Article from Harvard Business Review Blog

Responding Early and Building Resilience in the Sahel

ridodirected@gmail.com (RIDO) — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 09:41:00 +0000

Nancy LindborgHead of Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance, USAID

GET UPDATES FROM NANCY LINDBORG

Posted: 03/ 2/2012 11:17 am

Article from Huffington Post

In the village of Tougouri, in Burkina Faso, I stood with the four women squinting in the sun. They each held a digging tool. Between them, they had 31 children and no husbands. Safieta, wearing a bright yellow scarf, noted the rains were bad last year. No, she said, none of them were able to harvest much of the maize they had planted during the rainy season. I had just driven from Niger, through hours of flat and dusty land, and was in Tougouri to visit communities that were once again experiencing drought.

In the arid regions of East and West Africa, we are seeing droughts that used to come every ten years, now coming nearly every other year. A year after the worst drought in 60 years sent 13.3 million people in the Horn of Africa into crisis, we are now facing a rising threat of crisis in the Sahel -- an arid belt that stretches from Senegal through Niger and Burkina Faso to Chad.

When families are living on the edge of survival, the slightest shock can send them into crisis. For many women throughout the Sahel, as in the Horn of Africa, who are eking out a living on small farms or raising livestock, a failed rain means no food for their children. Years of repeated drought means they can't put away any reserves. Today, rising food prices, another failed rain, and conflict in Mali and Libya, means that between seven and ten million people are at risk of sliding into crisis as we enter the lean season of the months ahead.

I have spent the last year helping to lead the United States' response to the Horn of Africa drought. We began prepositioning stocks of food in the region as early as Sept 2010 and through the crisis we focused on expanding resilience programs that help rebuild assets, improved water infrastructure and increased the ability of families to buy food in the markets through voucher programs.

Through our early interventions, we were able to reach 4.6 million of the most vulnerable people, primarily women and children, with life-saving food. We know that it is critical to reach children in those first 1000 days with the right nutritional food when their brains and bodies are developing. We also helped an estimated 3.9 million people stay healthy with improved access to water, sanitation and critical medical help, especially vaccinations so crucial for protect children under five from infectious diseases that easily kill a child already weak from hunger.

As we focus on the rising crisis in the Sahel, we are committed to responding immediately and acting on the most important lessons learned from the Horn response. That is why last week I announced $33 million in humanitarian relief, bringing up the total U.S. Government commitment to $270 million in 2011 and 2012.

We know we can't stop droughts from happening, but we can and do commit ourselves to early action when we have early warning signs, with a focus on highly targeted programs that build resilience even as we meet urgent needs.

Back in the fields of Burkina Faso, Safieta proudly took me along the edge of her three plots filled with bright green onion sprouts. Seven years ago, USAID began a program in partnership with CRS to increase the resilience of villagers dependent upon rain fed crops. Two years ago, the program ended. Yet, Safieta and her fellow farmers are continuing to thrive on the proceeds of their dry season market gardens. "We chose onions, she noted, because if the water pump fails for a few days, they are strong enough to survive." Safieta is sending her children to school and still putting away a little for the unpredictable needs, she said. "I am resilient now," she laughed, "just like the onions."

Article from Huffington Post