Marlborough Express - Weekend Express
‘Ordinary magic’ of resilience
We already have the skills within us to be resilient – it requires quite ‘ordinary processes’ and determination.
That’s the findings of resilience expert Dr Lucy Hone, the Director of New Zealand Institute of Wellbeing and Resilience (NZIWR).
Dr Hone was already completing a PhD on resilience when her 12-year-old daughter was killed in a car accident in 2014, and she found herself as a case study for the very thing she had been studying.
In many respects, it confirmed what she had researched: that we all have the capacity for resilience.
"Most people have it within them to be able to navigate traumatic events,’’ she said.
‘‘Actually adapting to tough losses really requires very ordinary magic ... It requires very ordinary processes and a determination to really intentionally monitor how you think, how you choose to think and how you choose to act.’’
Hone will be sharing some of these processing techniques when she visits Marlborough next month to help launch PEPTALK, a magazine dedicated to enhancing mental wellbeing in New Zealand, edited by wellbeing campaigner Nadine Hickman.
Like Hickman, much of Hone’s work focuses on promoting wellbeing in schools. She has been working in Christchurch schools for the past six years, through partnerships between Grow Waitaha and NZIWR, which supports teachers in wellbeing and resilience education.
Her TED Talk in Christchurch last year on the three secrets of resilient people has been viewed nearly 500,000 times. She has also written a column for the Sunday Star Times on the experience of losing her daughter.
She said it was crucial to equip kids with the tools to develop their own resilience. While we often think of resilience as a response to huge and traumatic events, Hone said it can be harnessed for every day stresses, and can make us more proactive and adventurous in our lives.
And, it’s something we would all need at some point.
‘‘What the research shows, what we have learnt from our own experience shows that adversity doesn’t discriminate,’’ Hone said.
‘‘Sadly terrible and stressful things happen to us all and so it’s more important now than ever that schools help equip our young people deal with the stresses and strains of living in the decade of 2020.’’
The only way to ensure equity in resilience education is to teach resilience in schools, she said.
‘‘If we want to take a massmarket, universal approach to helping people understanding the ... dynamic processes that go into wellbeing and resilience then we have to do that work in schools.’’
‘‘Because it’s the only place that everybody goes, and schools are set up for learning.’’
Hone will be speaking on March 19 at the ASB theatre. She will be joined by young Marlborough inspirations George Glover (via video) who swam the length of the Marlborough Sounds last month to raise awareness and money for mental health, and Tommy Hyland, who recently rode around New Zealand for mental health awareness.
Tickets can be purchased through Ticketek.