نطق دوم

Lecture 2:

Listen to part of a lecture in a psychology class.

There’s a common notion that psychology is about what’s wrong with people, but psychology also offers us important tools for living happier, for getting more satisfaction out of life. And a key concept in the field of health psychology is is resilience.

When resilient people face adversity, they generally refuse to be discouraged. So when a negative event occurs, say, losing a job or another major setback, are they like, uh, “why did this happen to me?” or do they try to bounce right back and perhaps learn something meaningful. This attitude, this tendency to deal with difficulties in a positive way is what we call resilience.

Resilient people don’t generally feel like victims or feel sorry for themselves or complain a lot when things go wrong. Instead, they use active coping mechanisms.

Active coping includes things like finding social support and reframing stressful situations in a positive light. And research shows that using active coping mechanisms is associated with an improved sense of well-being.

Take this scenario. The psychology department here recently started offering some courses online over the internet, but before students can enroll, they have to master some fairly complicated computer skills. Some students get frustrated easily and perceive this challenge to be insurmountable. They just sit around complaining.

But students who are more resilient find a way to learn the technology. They even seem to like the challenge, even when it’s more difficult than they expected and not much fun, unlike the first group who just throw up their hands.

What I’m talking about is persistence, coming back again and again after repeated failures. Persistence is another aspect of resiliency, and so is seeking to learn from adversity, realizing the value of what we take away from one challenge and using it to help us tackle the next challenge.

Think of resilience as a set of personality traits that predisposed someone to approach a difficult situation as a challenge that can be overcome and that might even offer an opportunity for some deeper understanding.

So do you think resilient personality traits are inborn or are they learned, acquired somehow?

Well, I don’t want to go into biology, but there’s some evidence that you are born with a certain predisposition, let’s say. So you have a genetic factor there.

However, if you are raised in a family where people have a lot of energy, where parents coach their children through adversity, that predisposition isn’t going to affect you as much as the environment in which you are raised.

Now, having said that, if you’re raised in a home where it tends to be negative, that’s going to affect how you see the world, but not irreparably, you can have other adults in your life, other than your parents, what we call natural mentors, who can model and encourage resilient behavior, maybe a grandparent, or neighbor or a coach who inspires you to practice harder after losing again.Say once you are an adult and you are out of school living on your own, is it possible to teach yourself to become more resilient?

Well, historically, the predominant view was that personality was pretty much set by age 30, but recently we found evidence suggesting that fundamental personality traits such as agreeableness and willingness to take risks can change to some degree.

One major survey found that experiences like education, jobs, and parenting can alter personality and generally for the good. For example, holding down a job requires that a person be conscientious and organized, so people tend to become more responsible as they age. So while it does get harder to change the older we get, it is possible.

But to be more specific about your question, how can we become more resilient?Well, first we need to identify traits we have that make us less resilient.

Which traits might fit into that category?Uh, impatience or fear of failure?

Sure, also being overly critical of ourselves, demanding perfection. By becoming aware of such tendencies, it may be easier to block or ignore them when they get in our way. But we should also identify our traits that can help us become more resilient. Like perfectionists tend to be very good at setting goals, so they could set a new goal, becoming more resilient. It also helps to ask the support of friends, to encourage them, like those frustrated psychology students I mentioned earlier. A friend could help them identify what’s blocking them, fear of breaking the computer maybe, and reassure them, and also stress the rewards of taking online courses, like getting a good education or finding a whole new career.

South Asia……