Get Back Up Again!

In this week's episode we look briefly  at how resilency and how to nuture it adults and children alike.   

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Hello there friends, both old and new. Welcome to the strive seek find podcast, I'm your host chance went home to bite sized lifestyle advice from a fellow traveler on the road to a better life. Brought to you by someone who is a longtime educator, writer, parent, and an outdoor enthusiast, who may just may like a good DRAM because our future is set not just through our choices, but by our willingness to explore and find a better way. In the immortal words of the fool of famous philosophers, Chumbawamba I get knocked down, I get up again, there ain't nothing gonna keep me down. A catchy tune in ear worm of sorts. And honestly, I don't remember a bit about the song. But that refrain, and something about whiskey drinks. take that for what it's worth. But what it brought to mind is the world we're living in now, a world where resiliency is often replaced by a, I'm taking my ball and going home mentality. Has anyone else noticed this? adults, kids, everyone showing the signs, or maybe I'm wrong. Now let's get started. Now, let's start with the disclaimer. World's not okay. It's getting better all the time. But it seems to be more filled with harried stress harassed people who don't know how to deal with things anymore. So in turn, many people turn to two basic responses, behaving badly, or quitting. Both of which I see as the opposite of being resilient. And just like being resilient, these responses tend to be learned behaviors that have been reinforced over time to create what you see as an end result. So that guy that you know, that constantly screams that people in restaurants, trying to get better service has had that behavior reinforced and honestly believes that's the way to go about his business. Let's start with kids. Kids are always learning a lot of neuroplasticity, they have room to grow. It's amazing what they can learn in a year. And as you get older and feel a little more foggy, you get a little envious of it. But as you go through and see how they handle sports in life, how many times has a kid told you, they couldn't do something because they either weren't good at it, or hit their fear of not being good at it by giving up quitting, never starting throwing a fit one of the variety or another. I know at times, I've seen it with my own kids. And I've seen it with other people's kids. And it's because they haven't necessarily been placed in a situation where they have had to learn any thing different than what they're doing. I can remember being told growing up. The only thing that quitting teaches you is how to quit making it that much easier for you to continue down that path. And so much harder to stick with things in life. You put a task in front of someone, it gets hard the first time, people get frustrated, kids get frustrated. And they want to fold. And the secret people don't often share with you is kids who often struggle to be resilient. Our kids something comes easy to so they've never been tested in that arena. And you can see this as kids move between levels of sport, whether it's from the peewee level into middle school, middle school, to high school, high school, to college, the really big jump, they may be talented enough to compete. They've just never been tested. And the frustration gets to them sometimes. Not all the time. But there are kids who walk away, despite all that talent, because they don't know how to be resilient and to compete at that moment. And on the other side of the related coin in academics. You've been good at math your entire life and run into a concept that doesn't click and suddenly self doubt and the urge to run back to your comfort zone rather than moves forward. On some basic level, it makes sense. Once you've tasted six says, you want to continue to taste it. And if you do not feel like you can be successful, it's easier to be bad than to feel dumb. And over the last few years, kids are coming in more stressed, less resilient, blame what you will. Working towards what we call productive struggle is critical to growing this characteristic of resiliency in our young people. For example, a long time ago, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and I was still coaching wrestling, we would put kids in situations such as being on bottom and behind by three with 30 seconds left and have to try to wrestle their way out of it. The idea is to teach them the situation. So it wasn't overwhelming when the stress was on. They knew how to react, they knew what moves to make where they learned. Because you learn through those moments of struggle. Or in football, it was the same thing. Simulated penalties during the two minute drill to make the team work through obstacles together, before the game was truly on the line. In the classroom, it's exactly the same. put kids in situations where they aren't completely comfortable with the turtle tools, excuse me, to learn what they need to do. And an understanding that failure is not an end. It's the beginning of learning. Because in any part of life, you have more of an opportunity to learn from failing to reach a goal than Easily Overcoming something that you should have been able to do with your eyes closed. So no easy answers. The only way to get through this is to learn it. And now a word from this week's sponsor. I asked my dad how I could help his podcast and he said I could make a commercial. Let's help get the word out. share this podcast with your friends. This is super important. We all get busy. Just a simple share helps keep people in the loop. One way you can do this is tagging on the show or using the keep seeking hashtag when you're talking about the show. You can also leave a review on Apple podcasts or pod chaser reviews help people find the pod. Finally, he's got to buy me a coffee setup. Keep him in research materials and new microphone so you can keep improving strive seek find the link is in the show notes. Thanks for listening to strive seek find. Thanks again, Erica. Coming next week, her sister. And let's get back to it. What about adults? Are we in the same boat? Absolutely. Difference is we tend not to deal with it nearly as well. We expect to know what we're doing to be experts in our fields. And when that's not the case, things tend to get a little messy. Adults, when challenged tend to fall in the same patterns. Only it feels more normalized as you get older. in a tough situation, it takes a lot of time and effort to battle through it. As adults, we look for the same shortcuts kids do. And sadly, if you look around you, the shortcuts seem to be on the rise. Frustrated with the decision, we should have been taught to think through it, try to understand and find a way for it less resiliently hide how you're feeling until you've resigned and blow everyone up going out the door. And with stress seemingly at everyone's frontal lobes, screaming your way into getting something seems to be all too prevalent. Making not about who's or what's right. But about who's loudest whether it's in the grocery store or the city council meeting or online. There's always been some of this, there's always people wired this way. But it's on the rise, or seems to be say this specifically. Sadly, because it seems to be more normalized. The only way we can help people grow is not allowing this create situations where the discussions happen, rather than where the loudest wins. And I realize I'm grossly oversimplifying this end of things. But my examples tend to be a way too specific in this case. Ultimately, like it or not, to build resiliency. We need to put ourselves in situations where we're not comfortable in order to teach ourselves to work through it. Comfort is the enemy of growth. And if we want to be the best we can be, for our culture to be the strongest it can be. We owe it to ourselves to seek out a bit of discomfort and to learn. And something that struck me as I'm finishing this. How much can we blame social media for this? After all, everyone's 10 feet tall on the internet, with a life filled with wonder, has this illusion of an easy way helped create a mind sense of entitlement meant over resilience? I'm not sure, but I'm curious what you think. Has our resilience been reduced? Is there a way to fix the problem? Let me know. Join the conversation over on the Facebook group. Hit me up on email, or on Twitter. The links are in the show notes. Well, friends, that's it for this week's edition of strife seek find. Thank you again for listening. If you'd like to join the discussion, or have ideas for future episodes, hop on over to the strife seek find podcast group on Facebook. Alternatively, if Facebook's not your thing, you can find me on Instagram at strife seek find podcast on Twitter. As at chance Whitmore five. We're even on email. Links for all those are in the show notes below. Until next time, my friends, keep seeking your own brilliant future