3 secrets of resilient people

So I'd like to start, if I may,
by asking you some questions.

If you've ever lost someone
you truly love,

ever had your heart broken,

ever struggled through
an acrimonious divorce,

or been the victim of infidelity,

please stand up.

If standing up isn't accessible to you,
you can put your hand up.

Please, stay standing,

and keep your hand up there.

If you've ever lived
through a natural disaster,

been bullied or been made redundant,

stand on up.

If you've ever had a miscarriage,

if you've ever had an abortion

or struggled through infertility,

please stand up.

Finally, if you, or anyone you love,

has had to cope
with mental illness, dementia,

some form of physical impairment,

or cope with suicide,

please stand up.

Look around you.

Adversity doesn't discriminate.

If you are alive,

you are going to have to,
or you've already had to,

deal with some tough times.

Thank you, everyone, take a seat.

I started studying
resilience research a decade ago,

at the University
of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

It was an amazing time to be there,

because the professors who trained me

had just picked up the contract
to train all 1.1 million American soldiers

to be as mentally fit
as they always have been physically fit.

As you can imagine,

you don't get a much more skeptical
discerning audience

than the American drill sergeants
returning from Afganistan.

So for someone like me,

whose main quest in life
is trying to work out

how we take the best
of scientific findings out of academia

and bring them to people
in their everyday lives,

it was a pretty inspiring place to be.

I finished my studies in America,

and I returned home here to Christchurch

to start my doctoral research.

I'd just begun that study

when the Christchurch earthquakes hit.

So I put my research on hold,

and I started working
with my home community

to help them through that terrible
post-quake period.

I worked with all sorts of organizations

from government departments
to building companies,

and all sorts of community groups,

teaching them the ways
of thinking and acting

that we know boost resilience.

I thought that was my calling.

My moment to put all
of that research to good use.

But sadly, I was wrong.

For my own true test came in 2014

on Queen's Birthday weekend.

We and two other families had decided

to go down to Lake Ohau
and bike the outs to ocean.

At the last minute,

my beautiful 12-year-old daughter Abi

decided to hop in the car
with her best friend, Ella, also 12,

and Ella's mom, Sally,
a dear, dear friend of mine.

On the way down,
as they traveled through Rakaia

on Thompsons Track,

a car sped through a stop sign,

crashing into them

and killing all three of them instantly.

In the blink of an eye,

I find myself flung
to the other side of the equation,

waking up with a whole new identity.

Instead of being the resilience expert,

suddenly, I'm the grieving mother.

Waking up not knowing who I am,

trying to wrap my head
around unthinkable news,

my world smashed to smithereens.

Suddenly, I'm the one on the end
of all this expert advice.

And I can tell you,

I didn't like what I heard one little bit.

In the days after Abi died,

we were told we were now
prime candidates for family estrangement.

That we were likely to get divorced

and we were at high risk
of mental illness.

"Wow," I remember thinking,

"Thanks for that, I though
my life was already pretty shit."

(Laughter)

Leaflets described
the five stages of grief:

anger, bargaining, denial,
depression, acceptance.

Victim support arrived at our door

and told us that we could expect
to write off the next five years to grief.

I know the leaflets
and the resources meant well.

But in all of that advice,

they left us feeling like victims.

Totally overwhelmed by the journey ahead,

and powerless to exert any influence
over our grieving whatsoever.

I didn't need to be told
how bad things were.

Believe me, I already knew
things were truly terrible.

What I needed most was hope.

I needed a journey
through all that anguish,

pain and longing.

Most of all,

I wanted to be an active participant
in my grief process.

So I decided to turn my back
on their advice

and decided instead to conduct
something of a self-experiment.

I'd done the research, I had the tools,

I wanted to know how useful
they would be to me now

in the face of such an enormous
mountain to climb.

Now, I have to confess at this point,

I didn't really know
that any of this was going to work.

Parental bereavement
is widely acknowledged

as the hardest of losses to bear.

But I can tell you now, five years on,

what I already knew from the research.

That you can rise up from adversity,

that there are strategies that work,

that it is utterly possible

to make yourself think
and act in certain ways

that help you navigate tough times.

There is a monumental body of research
on how to do this stuff.

Today, I'm just going to share
with you three strategies.

These are my go-to strategies
that I relied upon

and saved me in my darkest days.

They're three strategies
that underpin all of my work,

and they're pretty readily
available to us all,

anyone can learn them,

you can learn them right here today.

So number one,

resilient people get that shit happens.

They know that suffering is part of life.

This doesn't mean
they actually welcome it in,

they're not actually delusional.

Just that when the tough times come,

they seem to know

that suffering is part
of every human existence.

And knowing this stops you
from feeling discriminated against

when the tough times come.

Never once did I find myself thinking,

"Why me?"

In fact, I remember thinking,

"Why not me?

Terrible things happen to you,

just like they do everybody else.

That's your life now,

time to sink or swim."

The real tragedy

is that not enough of us
seem to know this any longer.

We seem to live in an age

where we're entitled to a perfect life,

where shiny, happy photos
on Instagram are the norm,

when actually,

as you all demonstrated
at the start of my talk,

the very opposite is true.

Number two,

resilient people

are really good at choosing carefully
where they select their attention.

They have a habit of realistically
appraising situations,

and typically, managing to focus
on the things that they can change,

and somehow accept
the things that they can't.

This is a vital, learnable
skill for resilience.

As humans, we are really good

at noticing threats and weaknesses.

We are hardwired for that negative.

We're really, really good
at noticing them.

Negative emotions stick to us like Velcro,

whereas positive emotions and experiences
seems to bounce off like Teflon.

Being wired in this way
is actually really good for us,

and served us well
from an evolutionary perspective.

So imagine for a moment I'm a cavewoman,

and I'm coming out
of my cave in the morning,

and there's a saber-toothed
tiger on one side

and a beautiful rainbow on the other.

It kind of pays for my survival
for me to notice this tiger.

The problem is,

we now live in an era
where we are constantly bombarded

by threats all day long,

and our poor brains treat
every single one of those threats

as though they were a tiger.

Our threat focus, our stress response,

is permanently dialed up.

Resilient people
don't diminish the negative,

but they also have worked out a way

of tuning into the good.

One day, when doubts
were threatening to overwhelm me,

I distinctly remember thinking,

"No, you do not get
to get swallowed up by this.

You have to survive.

You've got so much to live for.

Choose life, not death.

Don't lose what you have

to what you have lost."

In psychology,
we call this benefit finding.

In my brave new world,

it involved trying to find things
to be grateful for.

At least our wee girl

hadn't died of some terrible,
long, drawn-out illness.

She died suddenly, instantly,

sparing us and her that pain.

We had a huge amount of social support
from family and friends

to help us through.

And most of all,

we still had two beautiful
boys to live for,

who needed us now,

and deserved to have as normal a life
as we could possibly give them.

Being able to switch the focus
of your attention

to also include the good

has been shown by science
to be a really powerful strategy.

So in 2005, Martin Seligman and colleagues
conducted an experiment.

And they asked people,
all they asked people to do,

was think of three good things
that had happened to them each day.

What they found, over the six months
course of this study,

was that those people
showed higher levels of gratitude,

higher levels of happiness

and less depression
over the course of the six-month study.

When you're going through grief,

you might need a reminder,

or you might need permission
to feel grateful.

In our kitchen, we've got
a bright pink neon poster

that reminds us to "accept" the good.

In the American army,

they framed it a little bit differently.

They talked to the army
about hunting the good stuff.

Find the language that works for you,

but whatever you do,

make an intentional,
deliberate, ongoing effort

to tune into what's good in your world.

Number three,

resilient people ask themselves,

"Is what I'm doing helping or harming me?"

This is a question that's used
a lot in good therapy.

And boy, is it powerful.

This was my go-to question

in the days after the girls died.

I would ask it again and again.

"Should I go to the trial
and see the driver?

Would that help me or would it harm me?"

Well, that was a no-brainer for me,

I chose to stay away.

But Trevor, my husband,
decided to meet with the driver

at a later time.

Late at night, I'd find myself sometimes
poring over old photos of Abi,

getting more and more upset.

I'd ask myself,

"Really? Is this helping you
or is it harming you?

Put away the photos,

go to bed for the night,

be kind to yourself."

This question can be applied
to so many different contexts.

Is the way I'm thinking and acting
helping or harming you,

in your bid to get that promotion,

to pass that exam,

to recover from a heart attack?

So many different ways.

I write a lot about resilience,

and over the years, this one strategy

has prompted more positive
feedback than any other.

I get scores of letters
and emails and things

from all over the place of people saying

what a huge impact
it's had on their lives.

Whether it is forgiving family
ancient transgressions, arguments

from Christmases past,

or whether it is just
trolling through social media,

whether it is asking yourself

whether you really need
that extra glass of wine.

Asking yourself whether what you're doing,
the way you're thinking,

the way you're acting

is helping or harming you,

puts you back in the driver's seat.

It gives you some control
over your decision-making.

Three strategies.

Pretty simple.

They're readily available to us all,

anytime, anywhere.

They don't require rocket science.

Resilience isn't some fixed trait.

It's not elusive,

that some people have
and some people don't.

It actually requires
very ordinary processes.

Just the willingness to give them a go.

I think we all have moments in life

where our life path splits

and the journey we thought
we were going down

veers off to some terrible direction

that we never anticipated,

and we certainly didn't want.

It happened to me.

It was awful beyond imagining.

If you ever find yourselves
in a situation where you think

"There's no way
I'm coming back from this,"

I urge you to lean into these strategies

and think again.

I won't pretend

that thinking this way is easy.

And it doesn't remove all the pain.

But if I've learned anything
over the last five years,

it is that thinking this way
really does help.

More than anything,

it has shown me that it is possible

to live and grieve at the same time.

And for that, I would be always grateful.

Thank you.

(Applause)