The Duality of Resiliency | Harold Brown | TEDxVanderbiltUniversity transcript

as an adult there's something powerful and nostalgic about reflection more specifically there's something powerful about reflecting on our childhood and acknowledging those habits that have helped to make us the people we are today you see no matter who we are we all have those habits as a child our habits can be as practical as making our beds in the morning or even as trivial as blowing in a game cartridge because we really think that's gonna prevent the game from freezing spoiler alert for gamers it doesn't work nevertheless these habits work together to help us make sense of response to and navigate life one childhood habit however that I think we often overlook is resiliency you see some of you probably think that resiliency is developed I think our teenage years or even adulthood I will argue however that resiliency is actually developed in early childhood you see psychology tells us that is somewhere during the sensorimotor stage which is usually the first 24 to 36 months of life where a child starts to make sense of its environment the objects in it in relation to itself to kind of conceptualize this by show of hands how many of us have been in a room where a child is taking a really nasty fall or even a really bad bump to the head and we all hold our breath waiting for that child to cry right we all had however taught surprise that child just gets back up and continues along their day completely unfazed in that stressful moment we start to see not only is resiliency manifested but we start to see resiliency become a habitual response to adversity unfortunately however we rarely explore the duality of their response now when I speak to duality of resiliency I'm merely speaking of two sides of the same coin a yin and yang of sorts where no side is greater than the other and they work intended to help balance each other out you see throughout our lifetime we're conditioned to only view and utilize resiliency as a shield that helps to protect us from uncomfortable circumstances and situations both expected and unexpected yet we rarely explore what IRAs insi looks like as a sword a story that can help us not only combat adversity but a sword that can also allow us to take the very thing that routes us and repurpose it to serve a soil for our growth now I'll be completely remiss if I stood before you today and talked to you about this topic and not share that I too struggle with this very thing you see was in 2005 and I was 13 years old was the Monday after Thanksgiving and like any other day my mom woke me up and told me get ready for school and so I started to do so and I don't know where my dad called my name now to be completely transparent argument the first time because my dad was notorious for being that parent who would call you into a room just to hand him something that was within arm's reach and I've had some for that day morning nevertheless I continued to get ready and I heard my dad called me a second time and this time it sound a little bit more concerning and so I go into my parents bedroom and I see my dad standing there over my mother and he's talking to 9-1-1 as I approached a bit I see my mom lying there not breathing we meet Lee goes to the hospital and after spending hours in the waiting room and talking to various doctors unfortunately that day I end up losing my mother we all came together as family to help coordinate her burial arrangements and then next Monday I was right back into school and me and my dad were left trying to make sense of our life as we know it now that she's not in it fast 40 11 years to the May of 2016 probably the third is great third greatest day of my life I graduated with my master's degree from Louisiana State University go Tigers and the day was filled with friends and family my aunts uncles cousins and my father were all present to add more excitement to this moment I ended up a week later packing my things and relocating to Nashville to start my professional career and you see to be honest I thought I had a handle on this adulting thing because I had my own place had my own bills in my own name and on top of that I had food in the fridge Manji frozen dinners cuz I just came from a college setting but nevertheless I really felt as though I was living my best life well that is until about three weeks until my role here at Vanderbilt I get a call from my uncle saying I needed to come home and deal with some decisions regarding my dad's health needless to say I go home and I spend about a week and a half beside my father and I see you and unfortunately sad to say he passed and similar to my mom our family rallied together and coordinated the burial burial arrangements and we went back to our life as we knew it and I came back to Nashville and continued as a professional and have been Krista's persisting since and ironically enough today is my dad's birthday he would have been 72 years old you see I shared these two life hurdles not to bring a somber mood into the room or even to garner pity but rather to illustrate a couple things that took place during those times you see for one after each traumatic event I immediately hopped back into my life and picked up where I left off without even trying to understand what just took place and how this going to impact me secondly between 2005 and 2017 I literally function my resiliency as a shield and like many books I took their very same shield and charge into the blows of life while still sustaining damage damage that looked like being emotionally callous being distant and relationships and even being bitter and so I knew that I needed to make a change and so I told myself I said hero I said huh if you're going to press on you need to learn how to process before you progress you see process before progress is my own personal cheat code now for my non gamers out there Chico's a series of buttons that you were enter into a video game in order to unlock a particular skill or character or even a tool and you see for me this helped unlock my ability to start to utilize my resiliency as a sword you know this isn't a cure-all method to trauma and adversity but it did help me to be intentional about how navigated the first step in this process is process and process speaks to doing the most uncomfortable and difficult thing in the face of adversity and that is to sit in it reflect and actually try to extract something of valuable out of it it's easier said than done but process can also look like something action-oriented for me look like establishing a work/life balance reaffirming and reestablishing friendships and past relationships and even seeking out therapy when I felt as though I had a handle on the process I started to move towards the progress now I must underscore that progress isn't to focus solely on how much distance is covered but rather to focus on always going in a positive direction and I'm proud to say that even today I'm still progressing and this looks differently for all of us you see I learned in those moments of my life there what's guaranteed is that we're going to encounter adversity and challenges without a doubt what isn't guaranteed however is how we choose to respond to them but yet we have the power of choice and so I charge you to leave here today and start to utilize the duality of your resiliency to its fullest potential because it takes 21 days to form a new habit so why not start today thank you [Applause]