Resilience

Many years ago, I was meeting with the CEO of a large company trying to sell him on the idea of providing health education and prevention programs for his employees. He liked the idea and, indeed, thought that providing this program to his employees would be a good idea. I pointed out that I thought [...]

Storytelling as an effective tool in teaching the skills and the attitudes that build and maintain resilience. These are often family stories. Reaching Home contains a number of mine. One of my family stories that I have heard throughout my life but did not include in Reaching Home was the story of Felix “Bush” Breazeale. [...]

If you have been watching TV lately, you have seen a number of ads that blame the other party or a specific politician for some of the problems or maybe for all the problems that we are experiencing in this society. Once again, the politics of fear seem to be leading the charge for both [...]

Emotions often act as a filter on our thinking. Anyone who has been in love knows that we often do not think very clearly about the person that we are in love with. We may minimize or deny the differences that we have with them. And when it comes to such emotions as anger and [...]

I recently had the opportunity to conduct a resilience workshop with staff from 15 different social services agencies in the Portland area. The program focused on the skills and attitudes of resilience and how these could be integrated into the work that these individuals do with their clients each day. As the participants told stories [...]

In a capitalistic society such as ours, the answer is pretty easy. Money. We tend to reward those who make it with more money and tend to penalize those who don’t with less money. And the rewards and punishments tend to come fairly quickly. Unprofitable stocks get sold and often, but not always, CEOs of [...]

I recently saw the news in the Portland Forecaster that the Westboro Baptist Church, a group that, according to the Forecaster, “openly hates homosexuals, Jews, Catholics and America,” plans to visit Portland to protest a local high school’s theater production (the local high school is Waynflete) of the “Laramie Project.” The focus of the play [...]

A resilient medical system is one that can catch and prevent errors from occurring. Unfortunately, current studies suggest that a correct diagnosis is either missed or delayed in 5% to 14% of urgent hospital admissions. Autopsies suggest that diagnostic error rates are between 10% and 20%. These statistics come from research by Ian Scott, M.D., [...]

Most people are aware of the devastating earthquake that hit Haiti a few weeks ago. But few of you may be aware that there will be an international workshop on rebuilding sustainable communities in Haiti on April 9th, 2010, that is being sponsored by the Center for Rebuilding Sustainable Communities After Disasters. The Center is [...]

A few days ago, I found an obituary that had been given to me by one of the Maine Resilience coaches, Tony Strodel. The obituary had been given to Tony by a friend of his and was the obituary of the friend’s brother. The obituary began by saying that Donald Wallace had been told throughout [...]