Episode 91: Cultivating Resilience with Maria Sirois

 Maria Sirois is a clinical psychologist by training and a positive psychologist by choice. Being an intern assigned to the bone marrow floor at pediatric oncology early in her career, she saw children in their last moments of life and witnessed how families fall apart in those moments. What stunned her though was seeing how those families grow amidst those situations in a gigantic display of human resilience. This inspired her to explore more in this area of positive psychology. She wanted to be the kind of person those parents would make sense to.

Highlights:

• Positive psychology -- a branch of psychology that touches on the area of resilience (of thriving and of bouncing back)
• Permission to be human -- the antidote to perfectionism or the anxiety of not being good enough
• Permission to be magnificent --  a stance of personal leadership (shaping up); allowing oneself to grow towards excellence, not perfection
• Perfectionism -- a distorted idea of wanting excellence that results in shaming guilt and anxiety about not being good enough
• Extraordinary resilience -- most of humanity can bounce back to our level of functioning; but extraordinary resilience means bouncing forward, rising to the most excruciating moment

Some people are born with a more resilient and optimistic disposition but some are not. It is important to understand that apart from it being genetic, resilience is also a choice. And a resilience habit has to be cultivated in order for us to stay calm and be inspired in order to deal with chronic stress and overwhelm. If we want to make more sense of the necessity and the benefits of resiliency, the wisdom of the likes of Maria in the field of positive psychology could greatly help us.

Find her on LinkedIn or on her own website @ www.mariasirois.com

 

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52 Weeks of Me is hosted by Jacklyn Osborne and Erika Brooks.
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