The Three Essential Keys to Resilience

magic of the little ninja fighting for good resonated with the students. The students moved throughout the school and community, fulfilling purposeful kindness challenges and making a positive mark on those around them. They went to neighboring classrooms, their city’s senior center, the hospital, the local town hall, and animal shelters, spreading kindness. The students began to see themselves from a new, more positive perspective. Allie and her team committed themselves to the belief that the students’ behavior and the classroom environment would improve with time, consistency, and opportunities to practice kindness. Negative, unsafe behaviors decreased, and the cohesion of the classroom increased. By January, the students insisted that their kindness work continue. Throughout the rest of their time together, the class pulled together as a team, and that year became one of Allie’s most memorable and favorite years as a teacher. The experience reinforced her belief that despite difficult circumstances, it is always possible to feel empowered through our actions.

Developing resilience in the face of adversity is like the process of alloying metals (Encyclopedia Britannica, n.d.). Alloying is a specific process through which two or more metals are exposed to extreme heat and melted together in a precise combination to form a new, often stronger version of the metal. In this analogy, our challenges represent one metal, and our overall lived experience represents the other metal. Fusing the two experiences together allows us to develop perspective. Adversity allows us to forge ourselves like metals into more dynamic, stronger, more beautiful versions of who we are meant to be and enables us to create foundations for others and build a new future for ourselves.

So, what is the difference between resilient people and those who get bogged down by their challenges? Martin Seligman (2011), founder of positive psychology, states that there are three mindsets that predict resilience and the ability to bounce forward when it comes to adversity or a difficult set of circumstances. 1. Personalization (“It’s all my fault”): People who encounter difficult times may tell themselves that they are to blame for the hardships they endure. Instead, resilient individuals tend to recognize that challenges are part of life and not their fault. When we blame ourselves for the