Why Are Some Resilient?
Talk to three different people on the street about their childhoods, and you will likely hear stories of dysfunction from each one. Truth is, few people and even fewer families thrive in today’s world without some degree of heartache, struggle, and strife. More than half of children born to married parents today will be children of divorce before their 18th birthdays. Even among the almost 50% of marriages that remain intact, the statistics for infidelity, addiction, and abuse are alarming.
So, why do some overcome these struggles and succeed in life, and some spend their lives blaming the world for their problems and their poor choices.
Wayne and I watched a special the other night on CourtTV. A horrific murder suspect was identified through the use of forensics and criminal profiling. During the trial, the murderer tried to appeal to the jury when he blamed his choices on his past. He was abused and then abandoned by his parents at a young age; then, he was adopted and then abandoned by missionary parents. He claimed he was a victim as a child, and this was the reason for his anger and his violent behaviors.
Thankfully, they jury convicted him, despite his pleas and blaming everybody else for his problems. Given the society we live in, my guess is that more than half the jurors had also experienced issues of abandonment and/or abuse at some point in their lives. They were able to see that this man was responsible for his actions.
Stephen Covey, author of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, discusses the issue of response in his book. While we may not have control over the events in our lives, all of us have direct control over our response to these events. We can respond proactively, based on principles, or reactively, allowing the event itself to dictate how we will respond. It becomes our response, not the event itself, that determines the outcome of any situation.
Why do some of us respond proactively to abuse and abandonment, while some choose to react negatively to circumstances in their lives? There are a number of reasons some people do not learn to respond appropriately, including mental illness or chemical imbalance. Most often, though, they react negatively to events because they never learn to take control of their own responses. There is so much power in this realization; the outcome of any situation and life itself can be positively influenced when we take control of our responses.
I kept a framed copy of the equation, E+R=O, in my classroom. Throughout the year, students and I would discuss events, both real and hypothetical. We would brainstorm responses and possible responses, and we would identify these as proactive or reactive. Students learned that the outcome of situations was more closely related to their response to the situation than to the event itself.
This murderer may have had a miserable childhood, but so did I. I was abused for more than six years by mother, abandoned by my drug addicted/alcoholic father, and spent all my vital teenage years in a number of different foster care facilities and a children’s home. The difference in the outcome for him and me is not the events in our lives; the difference has everything to do with our responses to those events!
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