Mental Resilience - What Does It Take?

Mental resilience is the ability, capacity and will to recover to normalcy after a crisis. Everybody will experience crisis and setback in life. If one cannot bounce back from something bad, one can be trapped in a cycle of depression, self-doubt and disappointments. So it is important to have mental resilience. Mental resilience must also be complemented by a measure of physical resilience. It helps to be fit and healthy but mental toughness and resilience is the key.
Especially when we age, we will experience immeasurable grief - the loss of loved ones, inability to have a child, loss of direction in life, regrets and disappointment in lack of achievements. Some people can be so troubled by life's problems that they become depressed.
If we think about it, such misery is self-imposed. Another person in the same situation may react differently. So we have a choice. We can trap ourselves in constant gloom or we can accept what we cannot change and move on. Focus on the positive rather than the negative.
The Secret of Happiness


I used to tell anybody who would listen, that the secret of life is everybody is unhappy because everybody thinks that everybody else is having a better life.
So what is the secret of happiness. To me, it is to be in a constant state of satisfaction. Think about it, what makes you elate? Getting your first bicycle? Getting good result in your lest favourite school subject? By now, you would realise that both material gain and self improvement only provide short-lived joy. Well, the secret of happiness is to constantly pursue that source of short-lived happiness.
I want to focus on self-improvement rather than material gain. Frankly, it is easier to do. Material gain also desensitize us. After a while, we need more and more to achieve any level of satisfaction. You will be on top of the world if you are a child and you earn your first $10 working hard to clean somebody's yard. Fast forward years later in your life, would you be equally happy if you earn $10 for an hour's work as an adult?
Self-improvement on the other hand, can be as simple as reading a book, learning to bake or just climbing a hill. You challenge yourself and push the boundaries.
It should not be a self-absorbed pursuit. We also attain happiness by being useful to society and others. So helping other people, especially those in need, is essential for the pursuit of happiness. Ultimately, it is about making sense and finding meaning in what we so in this life.
So happiness is not reaching a destination of permanent bliss. It is the journey itself and how you live that journey. There will be setback. Mental resilience is recognising that it is a temporary setback and moving on with what needs to be done.

Spanking Young Children Can Lead To Aggressive Behaviour Later

Children who are spanked by their parent frequently at age of three are more likely to develop aggressive behaviour when they're five. This is according to a recent study published in the May 2010 issue of the journal Paediatrics. In the study, researchers surveyed 2,500 mothers with young children of the age of three. It was found that two years later, the mothers who had spanked their children more frequently reported higher levels of aggressive behaviour such as arguing, shouting, screaming, fighting, destroying things, acts of cruelty or bullying in their children.

In the survey done at the children's age of three, nearly half of the mothers had said that they had not spanked their children in the past month, while 27.9 per cent said reported spanking one or two times and 26.5 reported spanking more than twice.

The result of the study reinforce earlier studies which have found that young children who are spanked have lower IQ scores. Frequent spanking during childhood has been linked to growing up problems such as anxiety and behaviour problems as well as higher risk of violent or criminal behaviour, depression and excessive alcohol use.

The American Academy of Paediatrics strongly discourage striking children for any reason and recommends more effective means such as time outs, withholding special privileges and logical consequences for bad actions like taking toys away for the rest of the day if a child does not keep them properly after play.




Perhaps, I am one of the outliers. I was punished almost weekly by my Chinese language teacher in Primary 3 and Primary 5. I had the misfortune of having that horrible man as my teacher twice. I failed almost all my weekly spelling and I swear, by the smirk on his face, that he took delight in slapping my palm with a ruler or hitting my buttock. I do not remember the physical pain. It is the shame and humiliation that haunts me. I grew up hating the subject and today, I cannot read and write in Chinese. But I digressed. Despite being spanked, I do not think that I have aggressive behaviour today. I do not punish my daughter by spanking. I do not see the need for punishment in the past two years. I had only made her stand in a corner twice when she was younger. It is a simple thing but the fact that I am angry enough to punish her is punishment enough for my daughter. So, do I have aggressive behaviour? I think not.