Resilience and Well-being in the time of Adversity

Eldrin Steven Dones

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16 -- In line with the Mental Health and Well-being Celebration 2020, the Grade 12 students from the Senior High School Department participated in a webinar on “Growth in the Midst of Adversity.” via Google Meet.

Spearheaded by the Guidance, Counseling, Testing and Placement Department thru Ms. Renelene Tallod, the event was set forth by a warm welcome of Mr. Renz Louis Montano, RPm, as he was introduced as the speaker for the webinar to enlighten the minds of the SHS students about the said topic.

To kick off the discussion, the speaker gave a short background about the concept of “Growth Mindset” as an important role in modern society and adversity. More so, the topic was further explained that Failure and Rejection as a part of Adversity reflect a person’s mindset even if they are going through a lot of changes. And even if struggles hinder others’ personal goals, it can still be a way to learn and to push forward with resilience.

According to the quote from Victor Frankl, “Even when it is not fully attained, we become better by striving for a higher goal”, Mr.Montano elaborated that there may be several challenges along the way and the situations cannot be handled alone, but it is also the time that we allow ourselves to change ourselves and our mindsets to resolve a situation.

Subsequently, the speaker also shared some of his personal experiences on how his mindset of achieving greater things was changed and turned into a sense of fulfillment in the long run.

Moreover, he presented different illustrations regarding the Law of the Low Doorway showing the responses of children towards two different puzzles, an easy one, and a difficult one. Stating how emotions and words respond towards a circumstance and explained that human behavior has two emotional responses, the Helpless Response as the self-defeating approach, and the Mastery Response showing a more optimistic attitude.

Furthermore, Mr. Montano stated that these responses act toward a situation and that challenges are not always negative. These concepts can also be associated with the environments in a school setting and how students establish their goals. The basis for this concept was from the idea of Dr. Carol Dweck explaining that a human person has two mindsets that navigate life in the field of Psychology. If a person has a Growth mindset, he might say hopeful things such as “Failure is an opportunity”. And on the other hand, a Fixed Mindset person tends to doubt and say “Failure is the limit of my abilities. These concepts that he mentioned are all matters of how people see things and how they act upon a situation.

In a more relatable condition such as a student’s goal of having high grades, Mr. Montano justified that a better attitude towards this is to be happy because of gaining knowledge and learning even if the grades are not perfect. Instead of trying to impress other people and highlight that a better mindset to this is to use mistakes as an opportunity to improve academically and as a person.

“Yes, I made a mistake but it doesn’t mean I’m a failure.” Mr. Montano said.

Additionally, the speaker quoted another line from Dr. Dweck’s sayings “With the right mindset and right teaching, people are capable of a lot more than we think.”

As the webinar comes to an end, Mr. Montano concluded that life is not a sprint, but rather a marathon where people run at their own pace, and changing the mindset into a better one is a way to be thankful for another opportunity of being a better version of ourselves.