Exploring Resilience via Lifes Burning Issues

Tag: consequences (Page 9 of 13)

Discover who you are – When it really counts

“Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they are supposed to help you discover who you are” Bernice Johson Reagon

This post is going to be broken up into a couple of parts, this first part is going to examine the situation of life challenges and how they can lead to a situation that paralyzes us and why.

Live Events

At some point in your life, you will be confronted with a major challenge that will bring you to a screeching halt and leave you in a situation where you feel paralyzed and unable to find a way to move forward.

An assault on your core values

These situations have the power to bring you to your knees (either physically or metaphorically) because they are either an assault on your core values or beliefs to such an extent that our very existence seems challenged, or they create a conflict between your core values and beliefs.

In either case, the situation demands decisions, and often decisions that you are unaccustomed to making or a choice between multiple options each of which may have uncertain or less than optimal outcomes. The need for these decisions can lead you into a psychological condition called decision paralysis or analysis paralysis.

What is decision or analysis paralysis?

There are a wide range of descriptions of decision or analysis paralysis but essentially it refers to a situation where your decision can be treated as over-complicated, with too many detailed options so that you cannot make a choice, rather than you trying something and changing if a major problem arises. You might be seeking the optimal or perfect solution upfront and fear making any decision which could lead to erroneous results, when on the way to a better solution.

The paralysis is caused by a number of common distortions in your thinking while you are contemplating a decision.

  • All or nothing thinking – thinking in terms of absolutes
  • Overgeneralization – using isolated examples to make wide generalizations
  • Creating a mental filter – focusing on usually negative or upsetting aspects while ignoring positives
  • Disqualifying positives – dismissing positives for arbitrary or ad hoc reasons
  • Jumping to conclusions – drawing (usually negative) conclusions from little or no evidence
  • Magnification – distorting aspects of the situation so that they do not correspond with objective reality by making them more significant than they really are
  • Minimization – distorting aspects of the situation so that they do not correspond with objective reality by making them less significant than they really are
  • Emotional Reasoning – making decisions based on intuition rather than objective rationale and evidence
  • “should” statements – statements about the way things should or ought to be that ignore the situational reality
  • Personalization – attributing personal blame or accountability for events over which you have no control

In the next part of this series we will continue to explore how you can really discover who you are when life throws crap at you, but for now

Can you identify any situations in your life where these thinking distortions have occurred? What did you do to overcome these distortions?  

Image by Gurdonark @flickr

Revisiting the start of it all

This is where it started

If you have been here a while you will have seen how I got started with this blog.  I have taken my personal experience of my son’s non-fatal drowning and taken it in a particular direction.

I spend a lot of time building the Samuel Morris Foundation working hard to ensure that children like Samuel get the best possible quality of life and working hard to prevent future drowning deaths and disabilities through education and awareness. I am also maintaining my career as a professional firefighter, and working on building this blog and my associated goals for it. This means that my wife is the one that takes most of the burden of caring for Samuel (I do as much as I can, but the reality is it is NOWHERE near the level of care that Jo-ann provides).

I’m really proud of the way that my wife has dealt with such a difficult experience, and really appreciate the energy that she puts into maintaining Samuel’s health and looking after our two girls (and me!).

While this blog has been a way to explore my thinking process and often the deep recesses of my mind, Jo-ann’s blog is a way of exploring the personal and family experience. She has taken up the blogging challenge to try and let people know what the family experience is really like after a member of a family is left severely disabled by a non-fatal drowning. You can find her blog HERE.

The vast majority of people have no idea what the consequences of non-fatal drowning are and just how prevalent these events are. So I would really appreciate it if you would drop by Jo-ann’s blog take a peak at what life is like in the background of this blog and encourage her to continue to share our story. After you have read her blog I would also encourage you to visit the Samuel Morris Foundation and make a donation to help us look after children like Samuel and stop our experience happening to other families.

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