Attitudes and Emotions

Some responses that strongly affect resiliency are positive attitudes, positive emotions, and the ability to appropriately express all emotions, even the negative ones.

Positive attitudes. These attitudes include thinking positively, encouraging ourselves to try, being determined to persist until we achieve success, and applying a problem-solving approach when we encounter difficult situations. Positive attitudes reflect a sense of power, promise, purpose, worth, and "self-efficacy." Children and adolescents with positive attitudes are optimistic. They believe that when they try they can learn, achieve in school, and have successful careers. They also believe they are capable of making friends. Parents and other adults play a critical role in helping children and adolescents to develop these positive attitudes. Many successful persons remember specific adults who gave them words of encouragement when they were young, resulting in the development of positive attitudes.

Positive emotions. Emotions such as love and gratitude also increase resiliency. Children need to be cared for, loved, and supported by adults at home, in the neighborhood, in school, and in organizations such as the Boys' Club, Girl Scouts, and places of worship. Parents should remember to praise their children and adolescents much more often than they criticize them, and every child should have at least one adult with whom they feel able to trust and confide. Every adult should strive to appreciate each child and adolescent in their lives. Parents and caretakers should deliberately develop their ability to be sensitive to the needs of each individual child and respond to those particular needs. Children and adolescents who are cared for, loved, and supported learn to express positive emotions to others. The ability to receive, feel, and express positive emotions can buffer children, adolescents, and adults against depression and other negative reactions to adversity.

Numerous harmful circumstances are caused by other people-sometimes by accident, sometimes through deliberate abuse or neglect. Learning to forgive others and oneself for playing a part in causing adverse circumstances fosters resiliency. Forgiving is not the same as forgetting, pardoning, condoning, excusing, or denying the harm that one person does to another. But forgiveness makes a person less angry, resentful, fearful, interested in revenge, or remorseful. It is neither possible nor appropriate for forgiveness to occur while the harm is still occurring. In forgiving, an injured person can develop empathy. Empathy can enable a person to accept imperfections in all people, including themselves. Forgiving persons choose to experience, appropriately express, and then let go of negative feelings of anger, guilt, and retaliation. All of these responses increase future resiliency.

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