Hello, gidday and kia ora…welcome to my website.

It’s about life. The challenges, the ups and downs, the tuff stuff and the inspirations. Just life really.

(You will need Adobe flash player for any of the vid type things below. Click here to download it).

So welcome… I hope there is something here of interest and use to you. And do let me know if you would like something added. Cheers. Pete

Thought I would put something up here about the resilience stuff as it continues to attract a great deal of attention. That’s good as it’s an important idea. The fear I have is the overuse problem. We use the word so much it gets sucked of its meaning. This has happened to the word ‘empowerment’. People being in charge of themselves really is important, but we can’t hand out empowerment like we had a bucket of it to distribute. And I have literally seen someone answer their mobile in the middle of a conversation about respect! They used the word but somehow missed the idea!

So for what it’s worth…let me throw in some comments about resilience…and its connection to other popular ideas.

Optimism

Optimism is about seeing the best, having realistic and positive views of self and the world, hoping for the best and working towards it.

A strengths approach

A strengths-focus in working with people means just that. Looking to people’s triumphs, abilities, qualities and strengths as a way of approaching life. And of dealing with the difficult stuff…including the less-wonderful aspects of ourselves. It is a realistic and optimistic approach to people.

Resilience

’The process of growing strong as a person…and being able to bounce back from the hard times of life.’
 It is an ongoing process rather than something that you ‘get’ and have forever
 The most resilient person will have ups and downs, good days and bad days. There are lots of ideas about resilience.

Let me offer you my list of ingredients for resilience. I have been drawn to these, because each of them I have seen stand out as a real dynamic over and over again in both research and in the experience of my work. And secondly, this framework is useable. It can be translated into do-able actions.

The seven elements of resilience

 Meaning
People need to have a sense of purpose, a sense that what we do and who we are actually matters
 Meaningful relationships
Being connected to other people in mutually fulfilling, supportive and uplifting ways seems to be good for us. Some of us are more in contact with others, some of us less so. Some people learn to be comfortably alone while others are just lonely. So there are variations. Having said this, for most us, relationships really matter
 Participation
Being actively involved in what happens around us, rather than being passive recipients of whatever we are offered, is good for us. It creates a sense of involvement and interest in our own lives and those of others
 Personal power
Having some sense of control, some power, influence in our lives builds within us a confidence and ability to tackle life’s hardships and challenges
 A strong sense of self
This is much more than self esteem. It is a deep sense of worth, of belonging, of having a clear place and purpose, a sense of agency or personal influence, a sense of being in charge of our own lives
 Other’s positive expectations
We are likely to flourish when others expect the best of us. (The reverse is also true). These expectations need to be positive, high and realistic. We tend to do well when others focus on what we can do rather than what we can’t; on our qualities rather than our shortcomings
 Hope
We need a sense that we can get through something; a belief, a faith that ‘things can be better’, that ‘life will be okay’, that ‘I will prevail.’

And of course, these are just words until we bring them to life in the actions we take.

Resilience The shorter version

 Identity
 Sense of belonging
 Relationships
 Sense of being in charge of own life.

And here is another take on this. It is what children say matters to them.
(From a study by the NSW Commission for Children and Young People and Uni of Western Sydney)

 Agency
 Security
 Positive sense of self.

Collectively these ideas can establish a framework to guide how we work with individuals, families and communities…noticing and helping strengthen the elements of resilience, working with the strengths of those we work with and noticing movement, change, growth…and having faith that it will continue.

Everyone wants kids to be safe. No-one wants them to be hurt, and everyone wants them to lead meaningful active, happy lives. Drug education, whether information-based or skills-based seeks to do this. Yet I have to say that a lot of what I see seems at best useless and at worst harmful. And after 30 years of working with young people, and reading widely through research, some of which supports my views, and some of which challenges my own views, I find it difficult to support ideas which talk about ‘Drug free societies’, ‘Immunizing our children against drug use’, ‘Zero tolerance’ and various other ideas which can sound attractive but can, I think, be counter-productive. I am not arguing an individual right to take drugs, nor any aspect of the ‘I can do what I like to my body as long as I am not hurting anyone else’ argument, I am simply saying that in the (now here IS a value-ridden view) alcohol-soaked, advertising-steeped consumerist world in which we live, occupied by significant numbers of disgruntled and disengaged people, I think we can, if we are not careful, create interest in drugs AND activity where there was none before.

I heard something on the radio recently that kind of worried me…a show about methamphetamines….and I wrote in a comment to the station about it because I think it was a little dangerous. I will not name the show nor the station because I am a fan of both, but on this occasion I think they got it wrong.

This is what I gleaned from that show:
• Methamphetamines are widely used today because they ‘…intensify your awareness…’, ‘…bring you into a partying society…’ and’…seem to fit the current trend.’
• Making these drugs is cheap and easy
• Making these drugs is very profitable. (The figure quoted was $100,000.00 for a night’s work)
• If you want to obtain the legal ingredients from a pharmacist who seems reluctant to supply them, then just act ‘menacing’ because pharmacists will then supply you, because they have a fall-back position of making a ‘safety sale’.

Drug educators have long been wary of the danger of certain forms of drug education in schools because they run the risk of generating interest where there was none. This show had all the ingredients of an advertisement not only for the drug, but for Its manufacture.

I can make something attractive by its presentation or merely just talking about it. The following poster has been around Sydney for some time.

The caption says:’This is the drug that scares other drug users.’ Some of the young people I work with would respond to this with: ‘Bring it on!’ But maybe that’s just the ‘collateral damage.’

I sometimes hear people say: ‘If this saves just one life then it’s worth it.’ Let’s turn this around. If it costs just one life is it worth it? Kids on the outer of our society tend to smoke cigarettes a lot more than ‘mainstream’ kids. Not all of them smoke but a lot do! (And interestingly, there are many smokers amongst those who work with them.) Maybe that’s the price for making smoking socially unacceptable. But somehow it doesn’t seem right.

Okay so if we don’t do all that, what do we do with young people in places like schools? If I may hope and assume for a moment that whatever is presented is done so in an interesting and engaging way, then the following might be part of such an approach:

WITH A FOCUS ON MEANING IN LIFE (and Hope)
• What do you just love doing in life?
• What could you NOT live without?
• What do you care most about?
• What is the most amazingly wonderful thing that has ever happened to you?
• What is the most amazingly wonderful thing that you have ever done?
• What are you doing to keep your life, or make your life, the way you want it?

WITH A FOCUS ON RELATIONSHIPS
(Done carefully and while being mindful that not everyone has perfect relationships)
• Where do you turn for laughter?
• For support?
• For challenge?
• Where do you look for inspiration?
• What do you most look for in a friendships?
• In a really close relationship?
• When do you feel closest to others?
• If you were having a hard time of life…what would you want from others? (Your friends? Family? Anyone at all who noticed your hard time?)
• What would you do if someone you knew was having a hard time?

AND IF WE REALLY WANT TO REFER TO SUBSTANCES
• If you needed information about….do you know where you would get it?
• If you realised a friend was getting into trouble with substance use…what would you do?
• What would you do if someone you cared about just started having a hard time of life?
• What would you want if you started having a hard time of life?
• What would you do if a friend of yours (having taken ’something’ at a party) went unconscious?
• What would you want people to do if you went unconscious?
• Would you call an ambulance for someone?
• Would you want an ambulance called for you?

WITH A FOCUS ON BEING IN CHARGE OF YOURSELF (also hope)
• How does the world seem to you?
• What does the future hold?
• What would you like the future to be?
• What sort of future are you working towards?
• What have you contributed to your own life recently?
• To the lives of others?

Things like this, I think might just help.

If this website is about people and our lives…then here is something that blew me away. My source, as it often is, is ABC Radio. In this case Hindsight March 18th 2008
about an amazing woman Mrs Mac, 1892-1982.

There are lots of parts to her story whch are just wonderful…Australia’s first woman radio telegraphist (1924); the only woman member of the Wireless Institute of Australia; founded and directed the Women’s Emergency Signalling Corps…which led to the Women’s Royal Australian Naval Service. Okay they are facts and as impressive as they are…check this out…she wants to become an Electrical Engineer so she goes to Sydney Technical College to enrol and is told she has to be working in the field to enrol. (Catch 22 had not been written then!) So she prints cards with her name on it saying she does electrical work, checks the newspapers and finds a place at the end of the transport lines where they need electrical work done and it’s too far for most people. She gets the work and then goes back to the Tech College and is accepted. Now how cool is that!

During the war she trains thousands of servicemen and trains the women to train the men. Something like 10,00n men and 3,000 women are trained in all.

She goes on doing this work for something like 10 years after the war.

She uses music as part of her teaching…morse code goes dada dadit..sing ‘to hell with it’ to get the rhythm.

She does it all for free!

And then to leave one more things behind her, as she gets older she says: ‘To keep one’s courage and faith to the end, is the chief goal of life.’

What a great woman.

James Baker: ABC ‘The world today’ March 5th 2008 had this to say:

‘Everyone was a bit happier overall, so everyone was a little bit less distressed but the big difference was that people who actually started a blog, felt more socially integrated.’

And James Pennebaker says this:

Importantly, he adds this:

And I certainly know that drawing about stuff has been good for the people I have worked with for years…and although I do bear in mind Jonathan Adler when he says that:

‘The stories that stick around…become who we are’

He says that stories of ‘victorious struggles’ are the stories that help us. Those stories where we just go round and round a problem aren’t so helpful. Doing this with others he calls ‘Co-ruminating’.

Look at these terrific drawings.

This woman in her 50’s who describes in this drawing, her flight to freedom across several war-torn countries.

And this 53 year old man who has a wonderful memory of being on his father’s shoulders as a child.

And this young woman who draws herself the person, herself scared and herself brave.

And this teenage boy who just expresses his opinion about an event where he was socially brave.

Stories of victory are good for us, putting words down on paper (in certain ways) is good for us, drawings tell stories…so…I’m thinking…all worth thinking about.

I am about to conduct some workshops on ‘Engaging the disengaged’…that is how to get the attention of a young person whose identity has been established in opposition, defiance and the expectation that the world is unloving and uncaring….

…how to get this young person’s attention and then hold it…so that you might be able to have…a conversation together.

Well apart from anything else…here are some bits of research that I think are particularly relevant to any such discussion.

Jay Giedd Neuroscientist. (See ‘Frontline’ on the net) says: ‘In the teen years ‘…this part of the brain that is helping organization and planning and strategising is not done being built yet.’

‘Those cells and connections that are used will survive and flourish. Those cells and connections that are not used will wither and die.’

Dennis Proffit (University of Virginia) says something along the lines of: If you are looking at a hill and working out how steep it is, and if you have a weighty pack on your back, you are going to OVERestimate how steep it is.

On the other hand, if you are looking at it with a friend standing next to you, you will see it as easier. If the friend is a long-term friend then you will find it easier still. This is kind of interesting in terms of working with people in hard times. What hills are they facing? How are they looking at their hardships? Are they facing them alone or with someone?

I am always referring to Len Syme…and I have no intention of stopping now. Len (Professor of Epidemiology) says:

‘I’m looking for the answer… My hypothesis is that it’s control of destiny… My argument was this is the most important finding in the last several decades. So I now understand why social support is seen to be important. I now regard social support as one of the ways that we use to control our lives. That is to say, if I challenge you with a problem and you look to others for advice and support, that helps you negotiate life’s challenges.’

Jonathan M. Adler (doctoral psychology student) has studied what influence the telling of stories has on people’s lives, and what happens if people spend a lot of time caught in telling stories of failure and mishap. As the quote above suggests, if we tell the same story of misery and failure to ourselves and others over and over, we may well be setting ourselves up for more of the same. On the other hand Jonathan goes on to say that people who seemed to do best…tended to tell stories of ‘a victorious battle.’

With a young person who is disengaged, I often find myself focusing on the following aspects of their life:
• IDENTITY
• BELONGING
• RELATIONSHIPS
• CONTROL

And with an awareness of the challenges…if we pay attention to these areas and do so with creativity and invention, we might be making a good start. So for a disengaged young person and for you? Some questions:
Where is home?
Where do you belong?
What do you care about?
Who do you care about?
Who cares about you?
What is it that makes you…you?

I did say I would give you some information about the fabulous women I heard speak on Radio National’s ‘Australia talks’ on 20th December 2007. Here they are under the title of that show:

Jennifer Graves
Professor of comparative genomics, the Research School of Biological Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra
Lish Fejer
Science nerd with a GSOH (good sense of humour)
Freelance communicator, presenter and performer, and appears on ABC TV’s Carbon

I went looking for a bit more and found more stuff including some of the bits you see below from Clio Cresswell, obviously smart and entertaining and I’m guessing it doesn’t hurt her to have a (literally) sexy topic and being not unattractive herself. All power to her. Here’s what she said on Radio National’s Catalyst 4th October 2007 on her topic of ‘Sex and mathematics.’

And a bit more from the New Zealand Listener (Oct 2004)

Wadaya reckon?

I keep on hearing all sorts of things about a genetic predisposition for…well all sorts of things really. Things like diabetes type 2, dependence on alcohol, violent behaviour, being happy or putting on weight. And all this may be true and I am all for finding out what is happening physiologically and how we can respond medically. It may save our lives.

SOME THOUGHTS
And yet I would like to throw in a thought or two:
1 My dad had pimples…so did I…I still do sometimes (and at my age it just ain’t fair)
2 My neighbours like me and talk to me. I like them and talk to them
3 People feel a whole lot better about themselves when they are in charge of their lives. Me too.

Okay, put a little glibly perhaps. But really I think it’s a bit like this

OR SAID DIFFERENTLY
1 Knowing what predisposes us can give us a caution about how to proceed.
So finding out about the genetic stuff does matter, and I really mean that. Yet put really simply it might just go like this. Hey, both of my parents seem to drink a lot…I wonder what that might mean for me and booze? I notice I have a couple of uncles and aunts who seem to be pretty down a lot of the time…and so am I…hmmm. Ya know what, lots of people in my family seem to be kind of stout…what does that mean for me and pizza? I can consider myself cautioned. And yes I know. Just being aware isn’t enough for anyone. We KNOW about skin cancer and the sun and yet check out any beach on a weekend in summer. We KNOW about smoking and yet just look around. But a genuine awareness is at least part of a change process.

2 The neighbours thing. We really do know that where we live and how we live makes a difference in terms of all sorts of behaviours. We know poverty and oppression create criminal actions. I like this quote:

So I am pleased I get on well with and enjoy the company of those who live next door and around me.

3 The being-in-charge of ourselves is just huge. I constantly refer to Len Syme who has researched this extensively.

AND SO?
So what’s fixed and what can we choose? Well tricky ain’t it buuut…..maybe bearing in mind that we may well have certain tendencies…including towards good stuff…and we know that how we act is enormously influenced by social factors, and that people have more chance of flourishing when in charge of themselves, we can….
Possibly be a little more sensible about how we tackle things like obesity, violence and harmful use of alcohol and other drugs. We can focus on what drives or motivates behaviour rather than focusing exclusively on the behaviour. In our day-to-day lives, with a small picture perspective in our face-to-face stuff with people we can focus on their capabilities and the importance of them being in charge of themselves.
With the bigger picture stuff, because we do know for example that poverty and oppression create criminal actions, we can do whatever we can to help build societies, communities, streets and homes that are welcoming and inclusive. Make them downright neighbourly in fact.

So this will be my last post before Christmas. And here is what I have noticed lately. I heard an interview on Radio National Australia where the question ‘is homosexuality genetic?’ was put to a panel. A delightful and clearly erudite woman (who I shall find out more about) answered that it was. She also said that a better way of thinking of this was more in terms of a ‘man-loving’ gene rather than a homosexual one. Because as it turns out families which include gay men tend to have all members carrying the gene. Enter the straight people. The response in a straight person is to go out and have heaps of babies. Having completed the necessary prerequisites of course. So the ‘man-loving’ gene is good for the species…if we want to keep going that is. I will check up on this one and get back to you.

On a somewhat different topic, I have been struck by the work of Dennis Proffitt who says that his research tells him something like this. If you are looking at a hill and working out how steep it is, and if you have a weighty pack on your back, you are going to OVERestimate how steep it is. If you are looking at it with a friend standing next to you, you will see it as easier. If the friend is a long-term friend then you will find it easier still. This is kind of interesting in terms of working with people in hard times. What hills are they confronting? (Okay this is a metaphor right), how are they looking at their hardships? Are they facing them alone or with someone? I will look into this too and get back to you.

And as I look at the newspaper today there is an article by Hugh Mackay entitled ‘Triumph of ideals stirs a return to the big picture.’ He refers to a writing competition where young people were asked to respond to the question ‘what matters?’ And as he says, there is no better question. He goes on to say how the responses tended to be about things like poverty, bullying, indigenous issues…topics which are anything but superficial. On the same page of the newspaper is the following ‘cartoon’ by Michael Leunig.

Now I love Michael Leunig and I couldn’t agree more about the commercialism of Christmas. I also know that optimists live longer…and tend to have a few more laughs while here. I know too as Daniel Gilbert tells us, that depression is on the rise in the English speaking western world. And Michael Leunig has many aspects and I have to say that I know this cartoon is simply one of them.

Cynicism I suspect is one of our major enemies…so….if I can choose, or when I can choose, I will choose optimism and hope. And if it helps me with the hills, I will try and confront them when I am feeling lighter of load, and certainly I will do it with the good company of a friend. Good wishes to you at this time of year. I hope this time is just as you would want it to be.

I am amazed at how much blogging Wesley Fryer does. Where do you get the time Wes? And don’t scare me by saying you are just fast…coz I suspect this is true. Output and speed aside, Wesley has some interesting things to say. Like the following that he posted on 12th November this year.

Okay. Wes clearly has a position. And I must say that the more (useful) debate we have about what education should be the more I like it. Australia’s own David Loader has a lot to say about this as well. I posted something about him earlier. David thinks classrooms are out of date and we should rid ourselves of them.

Wes Fryer is also clearly an advocate of education for today and thinks many of our ideas are out-of-date. As I work constantly with unhappy young people who have fallen through the (widening?) cracks in our education system, and with those who are desperately unhappy while outwardly seeming to succeed, I am keen to think and talk about new ways of creating meaning with young people. This might be in school. And it might not.

Okay so here I am today reading an old delightful/difficult novel by J.P. Donleavy ‘A Fairy Tale of New York’ (1973) and there on page 315 is this:

And if that is a bit too poetic, then how about Oliver James in
‘Affluenza’ (2007) pages 188-189:

Schools are not bad places and teachers are for the most part, good people. Why then do we persist with what we have?