Submitted by marti on January 20, 2013
Adversity, personal injury, grief and loss can make you feel as though you have lost touch with yourself, but the truth is that adversity introduces us to our real selves. When you survive something awful, you have the opportunity to increase your personal power, strength of character, and ability to contribute to the greater good based on how you react to and rebound from the adversity.
Submitted by marti on January 16, 2013
My name is Marti MacGibbon, and I’m a human trafficking survivor. In 1985, I was a standup comic with a scheduled appearance on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Despite my success, my recreational drug use spiraled into addiction, and I became entangled in the San Francisco drug scene. This fact, and an abusive relationship I was desperate to escape from⎯made me vulnerable to traffickers. I was trafficked from San Francisco to Tokyo and found myself completely under the control of Japanese organized crime figures⎯threatened, brutalized, isolated, and absolutely terrified. I feared I would not survive the experience, but I am one of the lucky ones.
Submitted by marti on October 13, 2012
Luck. We hope for it, count on it, blame it when things don’t go as planned. Isn’t it tempting to console ourselves that a rival’s success is due to luck, not talent and hard work? It’s just as tempting to dismiss any of our own accomplishments as luck, especially when the payoff comes long after all the effort, planning and angst. Attributing all successes to luck is certainly self-defeating, and that’d be, well, unlucky...because it’s daily effort, optimism, consistency and tenacious adherence to the journey that make the luck. That’s why the payoff, or lucky break, always seems to come out of nowhere, creating an “overnight success.”
Submitted by marti on June 24, 2012
Resiliency is the ability to bounce back, adapt to adversity, and roll with the punches. Resilience gives us the flexibility to restore ourselves, and our lives after difficulty, trauma, and loss, and it is a quality in high demand during these rapidly changing times. Although there may be a genetic factor involved, resilience is not something you are either born with or not. You can learn, build, and develop your resilience. A sense of humor, like resilience, can also be learned and developed, and it can really help you to roll with the punches.
Here are four strategies to help you build your resilience:
