so resilience is the ability to bounce
back from stress I like to think of
resilience as growth through struggle
now he mentioned I’m a psychologist and
I actually really work as a therapist to
help teens and their families through
struggle that’s what my job is
in particular I work mostly with teens
who struggle with depression or who have
struggled with feeling suicidal so I
help people through some of the hardest
struggles in their lives and the thing
that’s continued to impress me is how
some of these teens and families come
through the hardest time so much
stronger than they were before they grow
to this different place through this
struggle and so that’s what I became
interested in is this understanding of
resilience
how do people grow through struggle and
how can we understand more about that so
there’s lots of struggles out there I
don’t think I have to name them for you
guys right what are some of the
love it okay awesome
I’m gonna try to summarize what I heard
you already I heard a lot of great ones
I heard depression school friends social
media Facebook Instagram being the first
like home making sure your family is
safe these are good anxiety all right
thank you guys you’ve been very helpful
I think you have a sense of what
struggle is so here’s the deal we we
can’t control that struggle comes into
our world right and I would actually
argue that we really don’t want to it’s
my hope that by continuing to study
struggle and to share with you guys how
to build resilience over time that you
guys can use that growth to build the
kind of lives that you want to have
through middle school and high school
college jobs and even beyond that so we
know that resilience is something called
a dynamic process so that means that
it’s ever-changing right so you go
through a struggle you deal with
something at school and while you’re
dealing with that hopefully you come out
a little bit stronger or more resilient
than you were before and then you use
that resilience to go through the next
struggle and hopefully you become even
more resilient than before and it just
keeps building and building and building
so psychologists love to study struggle
and I want to tell you a little bit of
something about what we’ve learned
there’s a psychologist named dr. mark
Siri and he and his team wanted to
really understand the relationship
between struggle or life adversity and
life satisfaction so he surveyed a large
group of adults about all the different
kinds of struggles they’d had over time
in their life and you guys could
probably guess some of the results so if
you look at the place that it says hi
with that tall blue line that was the
group of adults that said they had had a
lot of struggle in their life they had
had a lot of adversity a lot of the
kinds of things that you guys named okay
and I think not that surprisingly the
ones that had the highest amounts of
struggle really reported the lowest
amount of life satisfaction it’s kind of
like an overload at that point right it
felt like too much
the group that was more interesting to
me is that group that’s next to the zero
down there you see how those are the
people that report really very little
struggle or stress right they had very
little life adversary’ adversity some
people even have zero yet look at their
satisfaction it was just as low as the
people that had that overload with a lot
of struggle that’s surprising to any of
you guys it was to me because I think I
had always sort of grown up with this
belief that if I could just get rid of
the stress in my life or get rid of the
struggle then I would be happier anybody
ever had that thought before I just
weren’t stressed I’d be happy right but
it doesn’t really seem like that’s the
case in fact the people that were the
happiest or had the most life
satisfaction way up here were those
people in the middle that sort of had an
average amount of stress or an average
amount of struggle so it seems like
maybe some struggle is actually good for
us Brian that idea of resilience we got
to have a little struggle to be able to
grow now I wish I could tell you how to
find that exact average medium amount of
struggle so that you’ll have the most
satisfied life that you can have and I’m
gonna use my career to try to study that
but for now what I can tell you is that
maybe it’s useful for you to think about
how you can build some positive struggle
into your world I’m gonna tell you how I
did that so me and my friends started
something a couple of years back we call
it the woman’s adventure club we go
around town and we have a lot of
adventures I know that probably sounds
weird but it sounded really fun to us at
the time so what we do the members take
turns picking a different adventure and
the deal is that everybody has to be
willing to try it so I’ve done some
pretty cool things I learned how to make
cheese mozzarella thank you
I also learned how to blow glass has
anybody been glassblowing before yeah I
see a couple hands cool yeah so I ended
up with this really beautiful bowl at
home that I can remember that bye and
then sometimes my friends would pick
things that were sort of asked
dick has anybody heard of aerial silks
yeah okay let me explain what it is for
those that don’t know
so aerial silks is this class where they
have these really big huge pieces of
silk that hang down from the ceiling
they’re very thick yeah oh I’m good okay
good I’m reminding you good okay and so
what you do in the class is you learn
how to sort of wrap yourself up in these
silks and it’s like you’re doing
acrobatics in the or right if you’ve
heard of Cirque de Soleil they do that
or the singer pink uses it in her
concerts yeah all right I have to tell
you guys I am not the most athletic
person historically and I usually don’t
like to do things that I’m not very good
at does anybody else ever felt that way
before yeah kind of that I’m gonna stick
with what I know right so I was not very
excited about this particular adventure
club in fact I don’t think you guys are
really understanding how not athletic I
am I’m gonna tell you story about when I
was in seventh grade it is a really hard
story for me but I’m gonna share it
anyway
when I was in seventh grade we used to
wear these really big barrettes in our
hair okay so I grew up in the early 90s
in a small town in Texas and the
barrettes do y’all know what a hair
barrette is like a clip that you put in
your hair yeah okay
mine was big and it was gold and had all
these charms on it it’s kind of like a
charm bracelet for your hair I guess
yeah yeah it was it was quite the look
right so one day I was in PE class in
seventh grade and we were practicing
volleyball and so it was my turn to bump
the ball right you guys have done that
so I bumped it straight up and noticed
that I said straight up what happens
when something goes straight up
come straight back down yeah yeah yeah
right onto my barrette and heart charms
flew everywhere like all over the gym
it was super embarrassing you guys can
laugh that’s okay I laugh about it now
thank you for humoring me all right
you’re good so one I wouldn’t have dealt
with the left are so good back then but
two I was very thankful my best friend
autumn was there to help me pick up the
pieces so I think you guys now have a
bit of a better sense of how I felt
about going to this aerial silks class
for my adventure club I woke up that
morning I was super nervous I thought
about saying oh my gosh I’m sick I
thought about just John showing up and
kind of leaving my friends hanging I
thought about just meeting them for a
breakfast afterwards and asking how they
did it but then I thought myself kind of
thinking these things and I stopped and
I thought no you know what I’m gonna do
this I started this adventure club I
need to see it through my friends will
be there and maybe I won’t be as bad as
I thought maybe there’s a chance I could
try this right so I went and I was awful
you guys can see here yeah yeah yeah
notice my red face right and how red I
am okay so this is actually really hard
to do you have to be really strong you
have to have a lot of muscle strength
right and I really kind of don’t and you
know the instructor was so beautiful to
watch she would wrap herself up in the
silks and she would pose like this and I
wished that I looked like that but I did
not and she would be like five feet off
the ground right she would pull herself
up really high I would maybe be like one
inch off the ground but you know what I
did it I went I showed up I sweated I
turned red in the face at least I had on
cute leggings that day right but I
showed up and I tried and later on I was
kind of thinking about that like how did
that positive struggle potentially help
me and I really looked back and I think
it was the way I thought about it that
morning remember I told you I was trying
to talk myself out
that and then I said well wait maybe
there’s a chance maybe I should try
right so psychologists have actually
studied this idea of thinking about
struggle there’s a psychologist at
Stanford named Carol Dweck who studies
something called growth mindset growth
mindset is the understanding that
abilities and intelligence can change
over time with opportunity and hard work
how many of you have ever had the
thought I am terrible at math and that’s
never gonna change
yeah yeah yeah okay all of us probably
had a thought like that sometime right
so that thought that thought is an
example of something called fixed
mindset this style of thinking that you
don’t really think things can change no
matter what you do and you feel kind of
stuck right has anybody ever had the
thought I’m really bad at math but maybe
if I practice and do something I’ll be
able to change it a bit so people add
that thought to you okay that’s a pretty
common thought as well and that’s a
style of thinking called growth mindset
so that’s that thinking that you know
what I do have this ability right now
but if I work hard if I keep at it maybe
something can change so we actually do
know that the way you think is something
that’s really important and growing
through struggle a couple of other
things I want to make sure you guys know
about resilience today so one we know
that friendships and knowing who your
people are is so important when it comes
to resilience by your people I mean your
family the ones you were born into and
the one you make over time your friends
your teachers the people in your role
that you can really depend on one we
know you have to spend time with them
you have to get to know them you have to
sometimes ask them for help because
there’s always someone that can help and
all struggle is going to be easier if
you have your people helping you through
it whether it’s struggle you can’t
control or positive struggle that you
create to we know that one of the ways
that you can really grow through
struggle is by reflecting back on it
thinking back on what happened
in my example with my aerial silks class
adventure club I really had to think
back on that why was that so hard for me
why did I make that such a big deal
right that was meant to be fun but
thinking about how it made you feel what
it made you think how you dealt with it
what you did how you coped and then what
worked for you that you can take as a
lesson going forward so for me that day
I told you guys already I felt pretty
nervous right I also felt a little
ashamed it was kind of embarrassing to
be there at first and be so terrible at
something and I feel pretty proud of
myself that I’m willing to share this
picture with you guys now I also though
felt this sense of like joy and
accomplishment at really being able to
be there with my friends and do
something learn something different use
my body in a different way from the ways
I normally do so what I learned from
myself that day that really helped make
this one of those resilience building
activities is that I learned that if I’m
there with friends and I’m doing
something even if it’s a struggle
leaning on my friends laughing with them
asking for support rather than comparing
myself to them and feeling ashamed works
for me
the other thing that can help you build
resilience is really learning to look
ahead I like to think of struggle as
being kind of like a pothole in the road
right potholes are temporary you are
gonna move past them in some way even if
the roads closed there’s always a detour
and so learning how to kind of look
ahead and see if you see a struggle
coming and look at how you’re thinking
about it look at maybe what you can do
about that struggle right sometimes you
can just drive around the pothole of
struggle sometimes maybe you got to lay
a board down or you got to build a
bridge to drive over it sometimes you
might decide it’s better to just turn
down a different road and get there
another way and sometimes you’re gonna
miss seeing it ahead and you’re gonna
fall straight into it but there’s some
value in that too we know that if you
fall in a pothole of struggle you can
learn some things as you try to pull
yourself out maybe you build a ladder
maybe you stand on a box it’s a really
deep pothole or maybe you ask your
people you ask some of your friends some
of your support to help you out and
you’ve reach up that hand
so learning to look ahead to the
potholes reflecting back in your
rearview mirror on what you learned from
that opportunity again really focusing
on what you felt what you did how you
dealt with it and how you can use that
information in the future and then the
last thing I will say about resilience
is that I really encourage you to build
a bit of positive struggle into your
world try to figure out if there’s some
new things you can try that can really
kind of stretch you and then practice
that reflecting back and planning ahead
around that so that you can really hone
those skills that can make you more
resilient over time it’s my hope for you
that as you learn to grow through
struggle you’re able to build the kind
of life that you want to have at UT
Southwestern where I work we continue to
study resilience so we actually have a
study called resilience and adolescent
development or rad for short and in the
study we are asking people like you ages
10 to 24 to partner with us for 10 years
and during that 10 years we’re gonna do
a couple of important things one we’re
gonna ask people how they deal with
struggle we’re gonna ask about the kinds
of struggle that they come up with in
the 10 years both the more negative
unexpected struggle and some of the
positive struggle we’re gonna ask how
they think about it and we’re actually
going to learn what if it happens in
their brain remember I told you that
idea of growth mindset right that the
brain is changeable moldable we’re gonna
look at the brain through things like
MRI which is brain scans and EEG which
looks at your brain waves to try to
understand what resilience actually does
to the brain the thing I’m the most
excited about with that program is that
we’re then gonna take what we learn and
we’re giving it back to you guys so we
are actually already partnering with a
lot of local schools to do a program
called youth aware of mental health
which is a program done in the classroom
that really is help is hoping to get you
guys to talk a bit more about struggle
about the ways you deal with struggle
and grow through struggle and to figure
out how you guys can support each other
how you can be there for one another to
get through so obviously you can’t
control all the stress and struggle in
your world but
and I hope today that I left you just a
little bit more curious about how you
can take that struggle and really grow
and really kind of push yourself and
become more resilient over time and
maybe you can even start your own
adventure club – thank you [Applause]
back from stress I like to think of
resilience as growth through struggle
now he mentioned I’m a psychologist and
I actually really work as a therapist to
help teens and their families through
struggle that’s what my job is
in particular I work mostly with teens
who struggle with depression or who have
struggled with feeling suicidal so I
help people through some of the hardest
struggles in their lives and the thing
that’s continued to impress me is how
some of these teens and families come
through the hardest time so much
stronger than they were before they grow
to this different place through this
struggle and so that’s what I became
interested in is this understanding of
resilience
how do people grow through struggle and
how can we understand more about that so
there’s lots of struggles out there I
don’t think I have to name them for you
guys right what are some of the
love it okay awesome
I’m gonna try to summarize what I heard
you already I heard a lot of great ones
I heard depression school friends social
media Facebook Instagram being the first
like home making sure your family is
safe these are good anxiety all right
thank you guys you’ve been very helpful
I think you have a sense of what
struggle is so here’s the deal we we
can’t control that struggle comes into
our world right and I would actually
argue that we really don’t want to it’s
my hope that by continuing to study
struggle and to share with you guys how
to build resilience over time that you
guys can use that growth to build the
kind of lives that you want to have
through middle school and high school
college jobs and even beyond that so we
know that resilience is something called
a dynamic process so that means that
it’s ever-changing right so you go
through a struggle you deal with
something at school and while you’re
dealing with that hopefully you come out
a little bit stronger or more resilient
than you were before and then you use
that resilience to go through the next
struggle and hopefully you become even
more resilient than before and it just
keeps building and building and building
so psychologists love to study struggle
and I want to tell you a little bit of
something about what we’ve learned
there’s a psychologist named dr. mark
Siri and he and his team wanted to
really understand the relationship
between struggle or life adversity and
life satisfaction so he surveyed a large
group of adults about all the different
kinds of struggles they’d had over time
in their life and you guys could
probably guess some of the results so if
you look at the place that it says hi
with that tall blue line that was the
group of adults that said they had had a
lot of struggle in their life they had
had a lot of adversity a lot of the
kinds of things that you guys named okay
and I think not that surprisingly the
ones that had the highest amounts of
struggle really reported the lowest
amount of life satisfaction it’s kind of
like an overload at that point right it
felt like too much
the group that was more interesting to
me is that group that’s next to the zero
down there you see how those are the
people that report really very little
struggle or stress right they had very
little life adversary’ adversity some
people even have zero yet look at their
satisfaction it was just as low as the
people that had that overload with a lot
of struggle that’s surprising to any of
you guys it was to me because I think I
had always sort of grown up with this
belief that if I could just get rid of
the stress in my life or get rid of the
struggle then I would be happier anybody
ever had that thought before I just
weren’t stressed I’d be happy right but
it doesn’t really seem like that’s the
case in fact the people that were the
happiest or had the most life
satisfaction way up here were those
people in the middle that sort of had an
average amount of stress or an average
amount of struggle so it seems like
maybe some struggle is actually good for
us Brian that idea of resilience we got
to have a little struggle to be able to
grow now I wish I could tell you how to
find that exact average medium amount of
struggle so that you’ll have the most
satisfied life that you can have and I’m
gonna use my career to try to study that
but for now what I can tell you is that
maybe it’s useful for you to think about
how you can build some positive struggle
into your world I’m gonna tell you how I
did that so me and my friends started
something a couple of years back we call
it the woman’s adventure club we go
around town and we have a lot of
adventures I know that probably sounds
weird but it sounded really fun to us at
the time so what we do the members take
turns picking a different adventure and
the deal is that everybody has to be
willing to try it so I’ve done some
pretty cool things I learned how to make
cheese mozzarella thank you
I also learned how to blow glass has
anybody been glassblowing before yeah I
see a couple hands cool yeah so I ended
up with this really beautiful bowl at
home that I can remember that bye and
then sometimes my friends would pick
things that were sort of asked
dick has anybody heard of aerial silks
yeah okay let me explain what it is for
those that don’t know
so aerial silks is this class where they
have these really big huge pieces of
silk that hang down from the ceiling
they’re very thick yeah oh I’m good okay
good I’m reminding you good okay and so
what you do in the class is you learn
how to sort of wrap yourself up in these
silks and it’s like you’re doing
acrobatics in the or right if you’ve
heard of Cirque de Soleil they do that
or the singer pink uses it in her
concerts yeah all right I have to tell
you guys I am not the most athletic
person historically and I usually don’t
like to do things that I’m not very good
at does anybody else ever felt that way
before yeah kind of that I’m gonna stick
with what I know right so I was not very
excited about this particular adventure
club in fact I don’t think you guys are
really understanding how not athletic I
am I’m gonna tell you story about when I
was in seventh grade it is a really hard
story for me but I’m gonna share it
anyway
when I was in seventh grade we used to
wear these really big barrettes in our
hair okay so I grew up in the early 90s
in a small town in Texas and the
barrettes do y’all know what a hair
barrette is like a clip that you put in
your hair yeah okay
mine was big and it was gold and had all
these charms on it it’s kind of like a
charm bracelet for your hair I guess
yeah yeah it was it was quite the look
right so one day I was in PE class in
seventh grade and we were practicing
volleyball and so it was my turn to bump
the ball right you guys have done that
so I bumped it straight up and noticed
that I said straight up what happens
when something goes straight up
come straight back down yeah yeah yeah
right onto my barrette and heart charms
flew everywhere like all over the gym
it was super embarrassing you guys can
laugh that’s okay I laugh about it now
thank you for humoring me all right
you’re good so one I wouldn’t have dealt
with the left are so good back then but
two I was very thankful my best friend
autumn was there to help me pick up the
pieces so I think you guys now have a
bit of a better sense of how I felt
about going to this aerial silks class
for my adventure club I woke up that
morning I was super nervous I thought
about saying oh my gosh I’m sick I
thought about just John showing up and
kind of leaving my friends hanging I
thought about just meeting them for a
breakfast afterwards and asking how they
did it but then I thought myself kind of
thinking these things and I stopped and
I thought no you know what I’m gonna do
this I started this adventure club I
need to see it through my friends will
be there and maybe I won’t be as bad as
I thought maybe there’s a chance I could
try this right so I went and I was awful
you guys can see here yeah yeah yeah
notice my red face right and how red I
am okay so this is actually really hard
to do you have to be really strong you
have to have a lot of muscle strength
right and I really kind of don’t and you
know the instructor was so beautiful to
watch she would wrap herself up in the
silks and she would pose like this and I
wished that I looked like that but I did
not and she would be like five feet off
the ground right she would pull herself
up really high I would maybe be like one
inch off the ground but you know what I
did it I went I showed up I sweated I
turned red in the face at least I had on
cute leggings that day right but I
showed up and I tried and later on I was
kind of thinking about that like how did
that positive struggle potentially help
me and I really looked back and I think
it was the way I thought about it that
morning remember I told you I was trying
to talk myself out
that and then I said well wait maybe
there’s a chance maybe I should try
right so psychologists have actually
studied this idea of thinking about
struggle there’s a psychologist at
Stanford named Carol Dweck who studies
something called growth mindset growth
mindset is the understanding that
abilities and intelligence can change
over time with opportunity and hard work
how many of you have ever had the
thought I am terrible at math and that’s
never gonna change
yeah yeah yeah okay all of us probably
had a thought like that sometime right
so that thought that thought is an
example of something called fixed
mindset this style of thinking that you
don’t really think things can change no
matter what you do and you feel kind of
stuck right has anybody ever had the
thought I’m really bad at math but maybe
if I practice and do something I’ll be
able to change it a bit so people add
that thought to you okay that’s a pretty
common thought as well and that’s a
style of thinking called growth mindset
so that’s that thinking that you know
what I do have this ability right now
but if I work hard if I keep at it maybe
something can change so we actually do
know that the way you think is something
that’s really important and growing
through struggle a couple of other
things I want to make sure you guys know
about resilience today so one we know
that friendships and knowing who your
people are is so important when it comes
to resilience by your people I mean your
family the ones you were born into and
the one you make over time your friends
your teachers the people in your role
that you can really depend on one we
know you have to spend time with them
you have to get to know them you have to
sometimes ask them for help because
there’s always someone that can help and
all struggle is going to be easier if
you have your people helping you through
it whether it’s struggle you can’t
control or positive struggle that you
create to we know that one of the ways
that you can really grow through
struggle is by reflecting back on it
thinking back on what happened
in my example with my aerial silks class
adventure club I really had to think
back on that why was that so hard for me
why did I make that such a big deal
right that was meant to be fun but
thinking about how it made you feel what
it made you think how you dealt with it
what you did how you coped and then what
worked for you that you can take as a
lesson going forward so for me that day
I told you guys already I felt pretty
nervous right I also felt a little
ashamed it was kind of embarrassing to
be there at first and be so terrible at
something and I feel pretty proud of
myself that I’m willing to share this
picture with you guys now I also though
felt this sense of like joy and
accomplishment at really being able to
be there with my friends and do
something learn something different use
my body in a different way from the ways
I normally do so what I learned from
myself that day that really helped make
this one of those resilience building
activities is that I learned that if I’m
there with friends and I’m doing
something even if it’s a struggle
leaning on my friends laughing with them
asking for support rather than comparing
myself to them and feeling ashamed works
for me
the other thing that can help you build
resilience is really learning to look
ahead I like to think of struggle as
being kind of like a pothole in the road
right potholes are temporary you are
gonna move past them in some way even if
the roads closed there’s always a detour
and so learning how to kind of look
ahead and see if you see a struggle
coming and look at how you’re thinking
about it look at maybe what you can do
about that struggle right sometimes you
can just drive around the pothole of
struggle sometimes maybe you got to lay
a board down or you got to build a
bridge to drive over it sometimes you
might decide it’s better to just turn
down a different road and get there
another way and sometimes you’re gonna
miss seeing it ahead and you’re gonna
fall straight into it but there’s some
value in that too we know that if you
fall in a pothole of struggle you can
learn some things as you try to pull
yourself out maybe you build a ladder
maybe you stand on a box it’s a really
deep pothole or maybe you ask your
people you ask some of your friends some
of your support to help you out and
you’ve reach up that hand
so learning to look ahead to the
potholes reflecting back in your
rearview mirror on what you learned from
that opportunity again really focusing
on what you felt what you did how you
dealt with it and how you can use that
information in the future and then the
last thing I will say about resilience
is that I really encourage you to build
a bit of positive struggle into your
world try to figure out if there’s some
new things you can try that can really
kind of stretch you and then practice
that reflecting back and planning ahead
around that so that you can really hone
those skills that can make you more
resilient over time it’s my hope for you
that as you learn to grow through
struggle you’re able to build the kind
of life that you want to have at UT
Southwestern where I work we continue to
study resilience so we actually have a
study called resilience and adolescent
development or rad for short and in the
study we are asking people like you ages
10 to 24 to partner with us for 10 years
and during that 10 years we’re gonna do
a couple of important things one we’re
gonna ask people how they deal with
struggle we’re gonna ask about the kinds
of struggle that they come up with in
the 10 years both the more negative
unexpected struggle and some of the
positive struggle we’re gonna ask how
they think about it and we’re actually
going to learn what if it happens in
their brain remember I told you that
idea of growth mindset right that the
brain is changeable moldable we’re gonna
look at the brain through things like
MRI which is brain scans and EEG which
looks at your brain waves to try to
understand what resilience actually does
to the brain the thing I’m the most
excited about with that program is that
we’re then gonna take what we learn and
we’re giving it back to you guys so we
are actually already partnering with a
lot of local schools to do a program
called youth aware of mental health
which is a program done in the classroom
that really is help is hoping to get you
guys to talk a bit more about struggle
about the ways you deal with struggle
and grow through struggle and to figure
out how you guys can support each other
how you can be there for one another to
get through so obviously you can’t
control all the stress and struggle in
your world but
and I hope today that I left you just a
little bit more curious about how you
can take that struggle and really grow
and really kind of push yourself and
become more resilient over time and
maybe you can even start your own
adventure club – thank you [Applause]
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