Fall 2018 - Resiliency Reader Index
• Molly's Corner: Quantum House Resiliency Summit 2018: Brazil! • The Blind Baker (article by Glen Fahs ) • The Value of Pain (article by Michelle Atlas) • The Resiliency of Stephen Hawking (tribute by Glen Fahs) • Resiliency in the News • Quote of the Quarter • Question of the Quarter • Worthwhile Read: Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience and Finding Joy by Sheryl Sandburg • Upcoming Events: Quantum House Resiliency Summit - São Paulo, Brazil, 9-11 November 2018 • Read the emailed version of the Newsletter.
The Value of Pain
by Michelle Atlas
When you experience emotional pain what do you do?
Do you turn toward it, or away from it?
Do you respect it or are you ashamed?
Do you talk about it or hide it?
and… the most important question we can ask is…
Can we allow our pain to soften our defenses, so that we can live from love rather than from fear?
Are You Happy All the Time
In Western culture "happy" appears to be the most popular mood… or so we think.
It's a bit like "groupthink", where everybody thinks that everybody else is happy. So in order to fit in, we project a happy persona too.
Pretending to be happy… all the time, requires ignoring the full spectrum of human emotion and experience, and is a form of self-abandonment and self- alienation (not a very happy place).
The Value of Pain
Our pain is often a messenger of the highest order. After all, when our day to day holds so many external demands, what else would cause us to pause and question our most deeply held values and reflect on our priorities?
Pain interrupts the habitual ways that we think and feel and behave.
It slaps us in the face, hard... so that we may more deeply inhabit our bodies and pay attention to what it wants to teach us.
In my life pain has been my most honorable teacher.
Nothing and no one quite compares, and I've had many teachers!
Pain has…
Catapulted me from my head to my heart.
Pierced the veil of self-protection that kept me isolated from a rich sense of connection with other human beings.
Burned a multitude of false identities to the ground, leaving only the softest skin exposed and the most tender, open heart.
Given me back the essence of who I am, beneath the defenses I had concocted to survive my early years.
Taught me what real safety is and carved a path so deep to its source within, that I can never lose my way again.
Opened me to the gift of living in discovery rather than in knowing.
How has Pain made You Greater?
When times are tough, we always have a choice.
Will we navigate our difficulties as a victim, feeling resentful, embittered and disempowered?
Or will we choose the high road and as a true lifelong learner, with genuine curiosity, relate to our pain as a messenger that brings meaningful lessons and even healing for our greatest good?
What's the greatest lesson you learned from a painful experience?
What's one painful experience you wouldn't trade for anything, because of the person you've become as a result?
- - - - -
Michelle Atlas, PCC, is a Newfield Certified Coach and Mentor Coach, a Certified Resiliency Facilitator and Facilitator Mentor, and a Sacred Money Archetypes Certified Coach. She has provided resiliency training to top level US federal government leaders and certified resiliency facilitators in Singapore and Sweden. As founder of Michelle Atlas Coaching, Michelle inspires her clients to use their greatest difficulties to become their true self and to empower their relationship to money, so they can create rich, meaningful businesses/careers, relationships and lives. With her lifetime commitment to personal development and spiritual practice, laser focused intuition and a huge transformational toolbox, she’ll help you discover courage you did not know you have, so you can create change you did not think possible. Michelle is also an Al Siebert Resiliency Center Board Member. www.MichelleAtlas.com
The Blind Baker
By Glen Fahs, PhD
Often we look at a disabled artist or athletic star who have had to overcome great barriers and wish we were so amazing. Sometimes that special person is someone just down the street from us who refuses to be dependent. One such bright light is Carlna Comer who had a brain tumor when she was a baby that left her blind in one eye and sight-impaired in the other. When the tumor returned at age 7, her parents kept their rage and resentment private, and never allowed their daughter to wallow in self-pity. (See Oregonian 5/20/2018, Hallman at Large).
At seven, she had to travel weekly out of state to a hospital for radiation treatments. There nurses shared gifts with young patients donated by schoolchildren and their families.
As early as second grade, Carlna loved cooking with her mother. She could find and measure ingredients and learned to do more, step by step.
And she could care about kids still in the hospital. To repay the kindness shown her during her visits, she baked cookies and muffins to raise money for toys. Pedaling around her neighborhood on her tricycle, she sold the goodies, raising about $22,000 over ten years.
After a frustrating experience as a culinary school intern where staff relegated her to menial tasks, she got her MBA at Willamette University, and developed with friends a thorough business plan for a bakery. After finding people at Portland's Saturday Market really liked her baked goods, she went into business. She now has five employees, three who are sight-impaired.
Her day starts at 4 a.m. and some days goes late into the evening. She can expand bills on a large computer screen to see with her functioning eye. At 27, with many responsibilities, she refuses to complain about the hard work. Hallman quotes her: “Perseverance and determination,” she said with a smile, “Those traits run deep in my family.”
While most of us will admire Carlna for her motivation and commitment to giving back, let's not lose sight of the many on her journey who kept her going. Her parents. The nurses. The schoolchildren. Her teachers. Her friends. Her customers. The National Federation of the Blind who helped her find workers.
None of us succeed alone. All of us can help others believe in themselves and find a path to success.
Glen Fahs, PhD, has been a coach and leader for decades in the fields of training, resiliency, continuing education, change and transition. He has high-level training experience in government, nonprofit and the private sector and has taught for 12 colleges and universities. He has served on several boards, including currently on the Al Siebert Resiliency Center board. If you would like a resiliency coach, speaker or trainer, call Glen at 971-570-0159. To become certified for resiliency work, please see the guidelines on the Al Siebert Resiliency Center website: ResiliencyCenter.com.
The Resiliency of Stephen Hawking
By Glen Fahs
At the age of 21, Stephen Hawking suffered one of the worst diseases known to humanity: Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gerhig's disease. He was predicted to live only two more years, five at the outside, and yet, despite losing almost all physical control, he lived until he was 76 and better than anyone, helped the world understand the mysteries of the universe. Why? How?
A theoretical physicist, Hawking believed his passion for science helped his body, and especially his mind, resist the decline other ALS victims experience. He wrote a bestseller, A Brief History of Time, which, despite its esoteric exploration, sold 10 million copies.
The fifth and highest stage of resiliency is serendipity, which involves making the worst experience of one's life the most valuable. Hawking was a phenomenon at doing just that. Not having use of his body gave Hawking time to think, to innovate, and to advance science and popular understanding. He stepped outside the box by appearing on The Big Bang Theory, the most popular comedy of recent years, as well as several times — in animated form — on The Simpsons, the longest running comedy on TV. His sense of humor was undoubtedly a way to rise above his tragedy.
We can see Hawking as a special case, and, of course, like any star, he is. He had technological advantages and a spectacular brain that scientists would love to preserve. But whether we are discussing Abraham Lincoln, Oskar Schindler, Susan B. Anthony, Martin Luther King, Madame Curie or others who amazingly overcame devastating experiences and immense obstacles, the best role models can be emulated in our much less famous lives. We can all thrive on challenge and get up after being knocked flat. In our world, we can be role models too.
If you would like to read more about what made Stephen Hawking tick, grab a copy of his memoir, My Brief History.
(Photo of Stephen Hawking in a zero gravity airplane, 2007, courtesy NASA, via Wikimedia.org)
Glen Fahs, PhD, has been a coach and leader for decades in the fields of training, resiliency, continuing education, change and transition. He has high-level training experience in government, nonprofit and the private sector and has taught for 12 colleges and universities. He has served on several boards, including currently on the Al Siebert Resiliency Center board. If you would like a resiliency coach, speaker or trainer, call Glen at 971-570-0159. To become certified for resiliency work, please see the guidelines on the Al Siebert Resiliency Center website: ResiliencyCenter.com.
