Psychology Snippets: The Resilience Donut
What doesn't kill me makes me stranger.... no stronger..... uhm.... depends on who you ask.
I first heard about the Resilience Donut about 4 or 5 years ago. I don't think I posted about it a former blog life. I certainly haven't here yet. I'm quite happy to post about it now.
Contrary to initial belief, the Resilience Donut is not one of those bum donuts that people sit on or some kind of super icy treat that gives you instant sugar boost for 15 minutes. In fact, the Resilience Donut rather refers to a resilience model or tool developed by Lyn Worsley, a woman with experience as a clinical psychologist.
Back in the day when I first heard of it, the Resilience Donut was being shared as this great resilience building tool at one of the schools my children were attending. They were even offering seminars at the time at $40 as head. It's great training, if you can attend. The Resilience training is now acknowledged throughout the lifespan as relevant. These days, people have realised that while resilience building is both important and fantastic for children, adults need it too.
As someone who knows the difference between being a child without these key areas and now an adult who does have them, I'm all for saying 'This makes a lot of sense to me.'
Not sure if resilience training is for you, your workplace or for you kids? I don't blame you. I can't say I've seen any more programs run locally. It's getting pretty popular. You have to request them and you won't be getting them cheap. Instead, how's about a taste of what it's all about and then you can consider if resilience training is something you still need, if you want to just buy the book or if the principals make enough sense to you that you can actually work on it without waiting for a seminar to come around.
The Australian websites are fantastic for further reading. I'll include those links at the bottom.
Again, I'll make you read the rest of my post first.
The Resilience Donut isn't just a bunch of pretty colours. Above is featured the representing areas. Below is an excerpt from one of the websites.
Quite simply, the Resilience Doughnut looks just like a doughnut and has two parts:
1. The hole in the middle represents the INTERNAL beliefs a person has of themselves:
their awareness of those who support them (who I have).
how they view themselves (who I am)
the degree of confidence they have in their own abilities (what I can do)
Research indicates that young people who have strong positive beliefs in each of these three areas are more likely to be resilient.
2. The outside of the doughnut is comprised of seven sections and each section represents an EXTERNAL FACTOR that is part of a person’s life.
The seven factors are:
The Parent Factor: characteristics of strong and effective parenting
The Skill Factor: evidence of self-competence
The Family and Identity Factor: where family identity and connectedness is evident
The Education Factor: experience of connections and relationships during the learning process
The Peer Factor: where social and moral development is enhanced through interactions with peers
The Community Factor: where the morals and values of the local community are transferred and the young person is supported
The Money Factor: where the young person develops the ability to give as well as take from society through employment and purposeful spending
These seven factors each have the potential to enhance the positive INTERNAL beliefs within the person and thus help the individual to develop resilience. Interestingly, research shows most of the resilient individuals had only some, and not all, of these seven factors working well in their life and it seems that an ability to focus on the factors that are STRONG is a key aspect of a resilient individual.
(end excerpt)
So I guess the key concepts are about supporting or developing strong and positive external factors that support individual internal beliefs (or individual identity) which will promote or enable the ability of resilience. Makes sense doesn't it? What does that look like on a day to day basis, though? Well, I think that is individual too.
So, now that you have got to the end of my post, here's the links, as promised.
I hope you find the reading very worthwhile.
-Mez
The two best Australian Websites for Lyn Worsley's donut and resilience work.