“If you take responsibility for yourself, you will develop a hunger to accomplish your dreams.”
— Les Brown
So it's obvious why I love this concept right? Reading many journals about resilience never been a hard thing for me. It was always fun, yet since I'm doing a correlational research, I have to pick another variable: Coping—the way people deal with things that they feel way over their capacities. I found that it's interesting to analyse how people cope with stress or simply, the daily hassles. People different in many ways, also in how they react & response to the certain difficult situation.
My research's purpose is to see whether there is connection between resilience and coping in a cancer patient. Why cancer? Honestly, my first choice was anything related to addiction. Reality hit and i have to merge the wants & needs till I'm down with chronical illness. So, why cancer? Personal matters, of course. I lost my grandma from mom's side because of a colon cancer & my other grandma is now suffering a breast cancer. I simply want to know if one day, I could help people with the same condition as them one day. I also want to learn from the patient's experience, to be more resilient. Along the journey, I found that helping people who physically ill with the psychological approach is one of the things that I want to do for the rest of my life.
So I wrote the early chapters of my thesis with passion. I love the topic, I believe that it's important, that's why it's not that hard to make it believable since I really do believe in it. The obstacles come when I'm looking for the participants. Finding cancer patient who's willing to participate in a research and share their experience is not that easy, but I can say until now, everything's worth it. Skipping classes to meet them, taking buses to unfamiliar faces only to chase them, the long wait to finally got the data are totally worth the lesson what they taught me. To not give up. To trust your significant others. even more, to trust yourself. To believe in God's plan. To love your life, no matter how hard it is. To be resilient.
I still have to find 30-50 participants and I just found out that a hospital that should be my resource charged nearly 1 million only for the access. The number that obviously can't afford. So I have to find another way to collect the data before next Monday. Screwed? Yea I kind of feel like that. My thesis adviser also gave me a surprise, that be leaving this country by the beginning of December, precisely the 8th. I practically have to finish everything before that, therefore, she can sign it before the departure. With five subjects and many final assignments, this won't be easy. For me, this actually more like a Roro Jonggrang Project when she asked Bandung Bondowoso to finish 1000 temples by one night. Yet I have to try, right?
Rene Suhardono said, "Life is either dangerous or boring. It's always better to be scared than bored." As much as I scared to death about the uncertainty about my future, it turned out that it's always okay to be scared. We'll never know for sure about what's going to happen, unless we give it a try, to give our best.
The journey is still long and hard, yet the dream to make everyone proud to graduate soon, the purpose to be a successful psychologist who helps people especially in cancer with a training or such intervention related to resilience, the social support from my significant others, should be enough to keep me going. To be more resilient.
Wish me tonnes of luck,
Clarissa Rizky
Being a 21 years old somehow means also being the last year student in campus. I still have 12 credits that only can be taken in this semester and well, the thesis. I've always said that it's more important to graduate with 3,5+ GPA than to finish my study in 3,5 years. I don't know what's got into me but now both of them are my priorities. You know when I said something to be my priorities, they really are. I started my thesis months a go, even before leaving to Borneo. I've always thought that this one should be my masterpiece. Like after tonnes of paper, essay, and other academic writing during my study, this research should be my final and considered to be the best compared to my other writing. I also wanted this to be a start to my future career—i mean, if I want to shine in a specific sphere in psychology, then I have to start to pick since very early—let say, now.
So firstly, i made my decision to be a clinical psychologist, as in for the adult. They can handle teenagers, but not kids. I have tonnes of reason why I finally gave up the dream to be a child psychologist which I have since years a go & trust me it needs a lot of courage and arguments with the parents—but I chose. Maybe one day I'll post my thoughts about this one, but long story short, I picked a topic from clinical psychology sphere for my thesis. Since I always want to write with passion, I pick a concept that took my heart long before, named Resilience. Why resilience? Because deep down, I've always wanted to be someone who can introduce Psychology as a very practical science—and the very first step to do that is to learn about a concept which is close and can be applied to anyone, like this one.
Everyone needs to be resilient. I mean, no one lives without problems. Everyone must have experienced failure—no matter how much we try to run, it will happen at some point. There'll always be the expectation that just doesn't meet with reality. There'll always be disappointments in life. One said that life is fair because it's unfair to everyone. Bad things can always happen. We fall and get back. That's life. The ability to get up and get going is what I mean with resilience.
Theoretically, resilience connotes emotional stamina and has been used to describe persons who display courage and adaptability in the wake of life misfortunes (Wagnild & Young, 1993).
Resilient individuals are goal oriented, meaning they don't give up easily. They know they can depend on themselves to do what it takes to get the job done, even if this means going it alone (Wagnild, 2011). They also keep a sense of proportion, meaning they know what is reasonable and impossible. When it comes to life's challenge, they face it with courage and emotional stamina, even when they're terribly afraid. They realise that hard time taught us to grow. The following question is, do you want to be resilient? I do.That's one of the reasons why I pick this is a variable in my research.
To be resilient, we can start from knowing five core components:
1. Meaningfulness (Purpose of life)
So firstly, i made my decision to be a clinical psychologist, as in for the adult. They can handle teenagers, but not kids. I have tonnes of reason why I finally gave up the dream to be a child psychologist which I have since years a go & trust me it needs a lot of courage and arguments with the parents—but I chose. Maybe one day I'll post my thoughts about this one, but long story short, I picked a topic from clinical psychology sphere for my thesis. Since I always want to write with passion, I pick a concept that took my heart long before, named Resilience. Why resilience? Because deep down, I've always wanted to be someone who can introduce Psychology as a very practical science—and the very first step to do that is to learn about a concept which is close and can be applied to anyone, like this one.
Everyone needs to be resilient. I mean, no one lives without problems. Everyone must have experienced failure—no matter how much we try to run, it will happen at some point. There'll always be the expectation that just doesn't meet with reality. There'll always be disappointments in life. One said that life is fair because it's unfair to everyone. Bad things can always happen. We fall and get back. That's life. The ability to get up and get going is what I mean with resilience.
Theoretically, resilience connotes emotional stamina and has been used to describe persons who display courage and adaptability in the wake of life misfortunes (Wagnild & Young, 1993).
Resilient individuals are goal oriented, meaning they don't give up easily. They know they can depend on themselves to do what it takes to get the job done, even if this means going it alone (Wagnild, 2011). They also keep a sense of proportion, meaning they know what is reasonable and impossible. When it comes to life's challenge, they face it with courage and emotional stamina, even when they're terribly afraid. They realise that hard time taught us to grow. The following question is, do you want to be resilient? I do.That's one of the reasons why I pick this is a variable in my research.
To be resilient, we can start from knowing five core components:
1. Meaningfulness (Purpose of life)
It's the realisation that life has a meaning & the recognition that there's something for which to live. It's like being aware that where your life really is heading to. It's when you wake up every morning, knowing that the day will not only passing by but really matters for you & your surrounding. You can ask yourself, deep within, what do you want to do with your life? It's pretty cliche, but this is the primary component.
2. Perseverance
As I told you before, resilient individuals don't give up easily. Perseverance means the act of persistence despite adversity or discouragement connotes a willingness to continue the struggle to reconstruct one's life. It simply the ability to keep going despite the adversity. They anticipate, rather than fear the future. A simple question can be a parameter for you, do you finish what you start?
3. Equanimity
This one has always been my favourite, a balanced perspective of life. Resilient individuals know that life is beyond right and wrong--therefore they decide to stay focus on positive things. It's when you experienced terrible things & knowing that everything still can turn out to be great at the end of the day.
4. Self Reliance
It's the belief about your abilities while knowing your capacities. It's simply believing you--the realisation about yourself true strength & limitation. That no matter what, you can depend on yourself.
5. Existential Aloneness (Coming home to yourself)
Realising that everyone's path is unique, is one of the definitions about this component. It's the ability to not only accept yourself the way it is but about having the comfort to be your very self. Resilient individuals are their own best friend. This is when you can learn to live with yourself & know it better.
So it's obvious why I love this concept right? Reading many journals about resilience never been a hard thing for me. It was always fun, yet since I'm doing a correlational research, I have to pick another variable: Coping—the way people deal with things that they feel way over their capacities. I found that it's interesting to analyse how people cope with stress or simply, the daily hassles. People different in many ways, also in how they react & response to the certain difficult situation.
My research's purpose is to see whether there is connection between resilience and coping in a cancer patient. Why cancer? Honestly, my first choice was anything related to addiction. Reality hit and i have to merge the wants & needs till I'm down with chronical illness. So, why cancer? Personal matters, of course. I lost my grandma from mom's side because of a colon cancer & my other grandma is now suffering a breast cancer. I simply want to know if one day, I could help people with the same condition as them one day. I also want to learn from the patient's experience, to be more resilient. Along the journey, I found that helping people who physically ill with the psychological approach is one of the things that I want to do for the rest of my life.
So I wrote the early chapters of my thesis with passion. I love the topic, I believe that it's important, that's why it's not that hard to make it believable since I really do believe in it. The obstacles come when I'm looking for the participants. Finding cancer patient who's willing to participate in a research and share their experience is not that easy, but I can say until now, everything's worth it. Skipping classes to meet them, taking buses to unfamiliar faces only to chase them, the long wait to finally got the data are totally worth the lesson what they taught me. To not give up. To trust your significant others. even more, to trust yourself. To believe in God's plan. To love your life, no matter how hard it is. To be resilient.
I still have to find 30-50 participants and I just found out that a hospital that should be my resource charged nearly 1 million only for the access. The number that obviously can't afford. So I have to find another way to collect the data before next Monday. Screwed? Yea I kind of feel like that. My thesis adviser also gave me a surprise, that be leaving this country by the beginning of December, precisely the 8th. I practically have to finish everything before that, therefore, she can sign it before the departure. With five subjects and many final assignments, this won't be easy. For me, this actually more like a Roro Jonggrang Project when she asked Bandung Bondowoso to finish 1000 temples by one night. Yet I have to try, right?
Rene Suhardono said, "Life is either dangerous or boring. It's always better to be scared than bored." As much as I scared to death about the uncertainty about my future, it turned out that it's always okay to be scared. We'll never know for sure about what's going to happen, unless we give it a try, to give our best.
The journey is still long and hard, yet the dream to make everyone proud to graduate soon, the purpose to be a successful psychologist who helps people especially in cancer with a training or such intervention related to resilience, the social support from my significant others, should be enough to keep me going. To be more resilient.
Wish me tonnes of luck,
Clarissa Rizky
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