How to overcome that overly familiar feeling of being beside yourself. The secret of resilience.

The ancient Greeks believed that when a person is under intense pressure the soul leaves the body and literally stands beside itself.

I think that we live in a world where the souls actually put a little distance between themself and themself - just to be safe.

On the eve of Cyclone Yasi while north Queensland was bracing for impact, some people were worried about the price of bananas. 

Just like Cyclone Larry a few years back, Yasi flattened Australia's biggest crop.

And you know I'm struggling to keep all of this in perspective too because I'm sick of listening to all the news about disasters - it feels like the dominoes are falling around me and I can't stop the chain reaction.

I don't know if the ancient Greeks were right. They say that you should cultivate the ability to objectively observe the world and your ramblings through the world: i.e. stand outside yourself and watch.

Years ago I did a course called The Centre Within at the Relaxation Centre which talked about examining other points of view when dealing with stressful situations, rather than just reacting to events.

People go on and on and on about the importance of resilience - how do you teach resilience? Researchers build careers on how to build resilience and they are still talking about it.

Well, resilience is the opposite of "churn". Last week I was doing some data entry work - the annual update of an email mailing list of thousands of email addresses.

It was weird to see how people swung between Optus and Telstra. 

And how many email accounts people have and how many times they change their email addresses - these are small business doing this and virtually engaging in suicidal behaviour.

I suspect that people may be the only animals on earth who demonstrate this "churn" behaviour - it makes people and businesses vulnerable doesn't it?

Watch any nature documentary and there's a predictability, a continuity of behaviour - unless there's an evolutionary change. 

Evolution. The ability to adapt is the key to survival - that's a great theory but exactly how many species are extinct, hey?

Maybe teachers can use Spike TV in the classroom to demonstrate resilience - you get hit from all sides but you have to learn where the obstacles are to avoid them.

I wrote a series of feature articles for the Courier-Mail year ago when they announced the six Queensland Greats - Great Queenslanders who were all high achievers.

I asked all of them one question: What's the secret of success? The answer is resilience.

They said they just kept getting back up when ever life knocked them down - resilience is enduring the put-downs, the bad luck, the prejudice, the loss, the grief, the feeling of being beside yourself.

But to me it's summed up in one word. Steadfast.

That's the motto of Mansfield State High School - it's something that stuck in my heart when I wanted to give up when something I really wanted was just out of reach. Doesn't mean I got it.

And I'm going to make an utterly ridiculous suggestion here but how can we think that animals don't have souls?

If they weren't wired together body and soul then they could not survive - even those silly banana birds stand beside the body of their friend who's squashed on the side of the road.

It was instinct that brought people together en masse in the Great Floods Clean Up - social instinct. What a great collection of souls that was!

Fall down seven times. Stand up eight. _ Japanese proverb.

Charles Dickens and the worthwhile moment. Does Success= Worthwhile?

I often feel like a character out of a Jane Austen novel - rarely the heroine these days.

I know my character flaws and over the years I have tried very hard to be the "good", do the "right". If I were a character in a Charles Dickens' novel I would be the one who never got away with anything and was always required to "be good".

My belief is that life is not about actual "right". It's not about actual "good" because these are relative - you can be right all the time if you hang out with people who think like you do. You can all be wrong together. Just think of the climate change debate. Just look at the political reporting about the Labor leadership and Prime Ministership of Julia Gillard.

All the fuss over who said and who did what to whom boils down to nothing but hot air. I guess if you want to be remembered do something worthwhile, say something worthwhile. 

Do you think that Alexander The Great should be considered "great" just because he conquered the "known" world? Maybe. But it didn't last long - well, he died so he didn't have time to do anything, so I guess he's great. Does anyone know what benefits flowed from this "great" acheivement? So he used elephants! But he did add to the sum total of knowledge at the time and probably opened up new trade routes. You probably can find Greek pottery in India thanks to Alexander. Many a mere ordinary mouse appears to think themselves an Alexander these days.

I fear that today we don't examine this idea of "worthwhile" too much unless it applies to us personally. I won't be around when the Torres Strait Islands sink beneath the waves and the stars go black so I don't care. How many times have I heard a similar refrain? 

For some people, worthwhile is bringing up a family, for others it is cooking food for others, or teaching. It's all cool and awesome in my book. It's "great"! 

Maybe worthwhile is as simple as peace of mind, the ability to turn the other cheek and show compassion. That's not easy. The ABC recently screened a series by Jimmy McGovern called The Accused - you should catch it if you can. It is crazy amazing and awesome!

There's a norm and you've got to find it and conform otherwise ... I think this is the part in the Bible which refers to "the meek". The meek shall inherit the Earth, not the powerful, because it takes immense (great) strength to be meek.

Try not exploding over dinner with someone you have known forever who obviously has an axe to grind but does not say a word in order to apply the pressure - there's Dickensian bile.

If you manage to show compassion, or do something worthwhile,  six out of 10 times (that is a passing mark) people still tend to only count the four times you didn't turn the other cheek. Fat people must walk the plank along with old people, poor people, people of different races ... the list could go on depending on who you meet. 

Legislate all you like to stamp out discrimination but the Dickensian Truth of Humanity and the Darwinian Theories will prevail. 

Sydney University's Professor Paul Griffiths spoke at last year's Happiness Conference in Brisbane about Darwin's theory of Group Selection - he tried to explain how altruism flourishes in society.

Google this topic and all you get are academic/scientific abstracts - no wonder this kind of thinking does not pass into general knowledge. I can't think that a busy teacher would have time to read this stuff in a world saturated with information.

Prof Griffiths told the 2011 conference that Darwin's theory of Group Selection had been discredited but was again gaining credibility. A successful society co-operates. FACT.

So even though it appears that selfishness prevails in our society there are enough altruistic individuals in our midst to dissipate the selfishness. As altruism flourishes in one group, individuals break away to move to another group to seed the process again. Eventually, selfish groups should become extinct because they fail. See Libya, Syria... despotic regimes. 

The more I blog, the more I write, the more I am in awe of great writers like Charles Dickens who build the truth of the world in words. If I could have dinner with anyone alive or dead it would be Charles Dickens and Charles Darwin.

 

If only Charles Dickens were alive to provide the commentary on our rapidly transforming world today! Recognizing a Dickensian moment is possible but putting it down on paper with panache - that's something else.

Define "good", "worthwhile", "great", "awesome". Define "right". Then take your self-interest out of the equation and redefine it. Who says there is nothing left to explore?