Life Skills Developing resilience

LIFE SKILLS Developing resilience

1 In pairs, discuss these questions.

1 Which experiences in your life so far have you found the most challenging?

2 What difficulties in life do you think you may have to face in the future?

3 Who do you know who has faced a very difficult situation and recovered? What did they do?

4 What kind of person does someone need to be if they are going to be good at being resilient in the face of personal challenges?

2 6.11 Listen to part of a presentation about resilience. Is the information they give about what a resilient person is like the same as your ideas?

3 6.11 Listen again and complete the statements from the recording with 1–3 words in each gap.

1 Following a challenging event, resilient people can choose ___ .

2 Resilient people display ___ and know that even the deepest feelings are only temporary.

3 Resilient people know that finding solutions for problems gives them a and helps them to heal.

4 Resilient people encourage community by creating a ___ of family and friends who can give, as well as receive, support.

5 It’s also very important to ourselves if we want to be resilient, doing what is needed to help us to recover.

6 After a stressful event, it’s important to have ___ about your needs, both with yourself and also with the people around you.

4 Read about Maha Al-Bargouthi. What challenges did she face in her life?

5 Read the article and decide if the statements are true (T) or false (F) or if the information is not given (NG).

1 Maha’s paraplegia prevented her from communicating with others.

2 When she was growing up, Maha wasn’t always treated fairly by other people.

3 Maha’s parents always came to watch her games.

4 The first race that Maha won was in Berlin in 1995.

5 Before Maha, no other Jordanian had won a gold medal at the Olympics.

6 Maha felt it was very important to believe in yourself.

6 In pairs, discuss the strategies in the Life

Skills box and if they are shown in Maha’s story or not. LIFE SKILLS |Developing resilience 1 Instead of seeing difficulties, see challenges.

2 Look for actions you can take to make a positive difference.

3 Find people who can help and support you.

Be sure to help and support them, too.

4 Focus on the things you can do that you have control over. If you can’t change a situation, don’t spend too much time thinking about it.

5 Find healthy ways to deal with stress, such as exercising, getting plenty of sleep, writing a diary or practising breathing and meditation rituals.

6 Be kind to yourself.

7 Think about a situation in the past where you have faced a personal challenge. Did you do any of the suggestions in the Life

Skills box? If so, which ones? If you didn’t use any of the suggestions in the box, how could they have made a difference to the situation if you had?

Some people find themselves facing greater difficulties than most of us can imagine and yet still manage to rise above them. Maha AlBargouthi was one of those people.

Maha was born in 1962 in Amman. Not only was she unfortunate enough to have polio at birth, but it also led to her developing paraplegia: a condition which affects sufferers’ legs. In the face of such debilitating and unlucky setbacks, she could have been forgiven for choosing to live a quiet life.

However, Maha did not decide on this and refused to let being a wheelchair-user impose limitations on her. So from the age of 11, she embraced her love of sport, becoming involved in both athletics and table tennis.

It wasn’t the easiest option. Maha faced numerous difficulties, including discrimination and sports facilities not catering to her needs. Yet her strong will refused to bow to the opinions of others, and she saw these obstacles just as rungs on the ladder to her success.

Key to Maha’s attitude were her parents who she credited with giving her invaluable support and being her biggest fans. As she was growing up, they treated her in a way that made her feel no different from her classmates, which fuelled her confidence and her self-reliance. Later as an athlete, Maha didn’t see herself as disabled at all and openly rejected sympathetic comments from others regarding her disabilities. As she said in an interview, ‘I want to achieve and win more medals. I don’t want sympathy.’ Her hard work and determination paid off at the Berlin

Special Olympics in 1995.

Against the odds

Her 200-metre wheelchair run both won the race and set a world record for the event with a time of 32.26 seconds. This victory would have been enough for most, but not Maha.

She had her heart set on additional goals.

Just five years later in Sydney’s Paralympics,

Maha won the first ever gold medal for

Jordan at para table tennis singles. She later described the enormous pride she felt at being able to raise the flag of her country and have the Kingdom’s national anthem played for the first time at an Olympic event. She went on to win eight medals altogether at the Paralympics, World Championships, Pan

Arab Games and Asian championships: an incredible feat and proof of Maha’s attitude that she would not be hindered by her disability. Her advice? ‘Seek out and try to achieve your dream, no matter how difficult it may be. True disability is the neutralisation and frustration of your desire to achieve your goals. The keys to success are perseverance, determination, and faith in one’s own abilities.’