Al Siebert PhD is an acknowledged expert regarding the science of resilience. His website – https://resiliencycenter.com – provides you with the ability to evaluate the strength of your resilience, “The ability to bounce back from life developments that may feel totally overwhelming at first.”
I have frequently written about this powerful personal tendency, most recently in an article titled, Making the Most of Your 2nd Fifty Years.
I decided to write about it again as a resource for anybody at any age because of the deadly Coronavirus.
NOTE TO READERS: I am not a Doctor and this article does not provide medical advice regarding how to deal with the Coronavirus. This article is about how individuals might more effectively handle their emotional reaction to the current international coronavirus crisis.
Getting data about how resilient you are can take ten minutes. When you go to the Al Siebert Resiliency Center website identified above the Homepage asks, “How Resilient Are You? Take our Resiliency Quiz.” You do not have to register on the site to take the quiz and they do not store your scores or ask for contact information. There are twenty questions you need to answer. I ask you to please be brutally honest with your answers or else you are wasting your time.
Once you finish the quiz you receive an immediate answer with your resiliency score. You also receive an Interpretation sheet thar provides very specific suggestions about how people act who are more likely to bounce back from life developments that may seem totally overwhelming like the pandemic coronavirus.
You might also want to suggest having each of the adults in your family take the resiliency quiz. The ensuing honest discussion about each family members areas of strength regarding handling the emotional nature of the current situation and areas where they might need to improve might help the entire family generate suggestions about how they can assist each other during this difficult time. This could be particularly impactful if your family situation has changed because of having adults who are now working from home and/or also having children home from school. Having this kind of open and honest discussion would ideally take place in a family that would be open to that level of transparency and find that kind of conversation productive.
There are multiple resources on the website other than the 13 suggestions about how to be resilient made on the interpretation sheet you receive with your resiliency score. These include:
-Dr. Siebert’s two books, “The Resiliency Advantage: Master Change, Thrive Under Pressure, and Bounce Back from Setbacks” and “The Survivor Personality: Why Some People are Stronger, Smarter, and More Skillful at Handling Life’s Difficulties…and How You Can Be, Too.”
These books are well written and provide numerous suggestions that expand on what you receive from the website after taking the quiz. I have suggested them to hundreds of clients. If you are interested in purchasing one of them, I would start with “The Resiliency Advantage: Master Change, Thrive Under Pressure, and Bounce Back from Setbacks.”
-Resiliency reading list.
-Resiliency Experts.
-Resiliency Research Resources.
-Resiliency Links – A sample of interesting sites.
I hope you found this article to be helpful. I wish you the best regarding staying well during these difficult times.
Peter Prichard, CMF
The Prichard Partnership Ltd.