At an Oz Talk Nov. 6, associate professor Christine Hirsch told attendees about when she has had to persist through hard times.
Hirsch, who works in the communications department, spoke in the Onondaga Hall basement at 7 p.m. on “The Gift of Resilience.”
Hirsch detailed her story of abusive marriage, going for her degree late into her life and declaring bankruptcy. She said resilience to her means to not give up, or accept that life will continue to be the way it is, no matter the circumstances.
She called the many terrible things that can derail one’s life and what happens after as a “Check up from the neck up,” meaning that one might need to reassess their own mental state after trauma to restabilize themselves before their clouded judgement affects their decision-making.
“Check up from the neck up is nothing to ever be ashamed of,” Hirsch said. “Smart people are the ones who try to get the help they need. Other people stumble around. So, be smart.”
Hirsch said she believes in the idea that luck is not something someone can control; the only thing that people can control is their actions afterward. To back up her theory, she used science of “Rational Motive Therapy,” in which people attach actions with thoughts and, when done poorly, create reactions like Pavlov’s dog. This can create incredibly irresponsible behaviors and cause people to develop nonsensical phobias or OCD-like reactions to otherwise harmless scenarios.
“When you think about it and start assigning meaning to [the event], you can cause all sorts of trouble because based on what your conclusion is you will develop feelings,” Hirsch said. “Feelings impact your behavior. Behavior impacts your outcome. Event, thinking, feeling, behaving and outcome, that’s the basics of Rational Motive Therapy.”
Without explaining the explicit psychology of the phenomenon, she told students how they could positively use it to their own advantage to keep down the tragedies of life.
“Choose how you are going to react to the things that happen to you,” Hirsch said. “When you go around thinking that you’re afraid and labeling things as, ‘The worst thing that could happen,’ it sets you up for failure. It sets you up to be more afraid.”
She then recommended three books to students about motivation and controlling one’s behavior: “Psycho-Cybernates” by Maxwell Mattz, “Power of Positive Thinking” by Norman Vincent Peale and “Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life” by Martin Seligman.
Hirsch said these three books had provided her with the courage to see through life’s tribulations and experiences.
“Be kind to yourself because I think that’s one of the things that I see as a trend,” Hirsch said. “When we make a mistake, we beat ourselves up worse than anyone else could.”
Photo by Stephen Novak | The Oswegonian
