PPZ3C
Unit 2: Unit 2: Social Factors that Influence My Health
Activity 3: Hang in There!
Entrepreneur Jia Jiang is the author of a book titled, Rejection Proof, and his website, "Rejection Therapy." One of Jiang’s goals was to learn how to deal with personal disappointment and rejection without feeling the need to run away.
This feeling is sometimes called the 'flight or fight response.' Take a moment to skim and scan this website to learn about the flight or fight response before moving on in this activity. You will need to understand this concept in order to answer questions later in the activity.
To achieve his goal of learning how to deal with personal disappointment, Jiang set out to make one hundred different requests of people that they would obviously reject: he was surprised at the results.
Which of Jia Jiang's requests - and its response - surprises you the most? Why?
Assignment: Rejection Protection
- Describe three things that Jia Jiang learns during his experiment.
- How did his actions reflect the flight or fight response?
- Recall a personal experience, or one from someone you know, where you or that person was rejected. How did you (or someone you know) handle it?
- Using Jiang’s advice from the Ted Talk, what could you or your friend have done differently to create a different result?
You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.
Being in good health means more than feeling physically well; it also means feeling mentally well. Today, we are more aware of how our mental and physical health affect each other. Setting aside time to focus on mental health is important – to you and those who care about you. Life is full of change, risks and challenges. Good mental or emotional health helps us find our balance and stay in control, even during turbulent times.
Resilience has been described as recovering after difficult circumstances. Dealing with challenges can make us grow and can make us stronger. Rather than merely bouncing back, we're better prepared than we were before to face challenges that lie ahead. Resilience is not something with which you were born.
It is a set of strategies that can be learned to help us cope with challenges, respond to stress, and continue to move toward our goals as we face difficult situations in life. A person who has resilience is able to show empathy. Being able to understand others is very helpful when faced with conflict; it is useful for problem solving, as well.
Assignment: Skills You Need to Be Strong
Let's take stock of the skills and attributes you have that help you be resilient. Let's also consider skills and attributes you might like to develop to increase your ability to deal with challenges and changes in your life.
Complete this Resiliency Inventory to learn about factors that contribute to your resilience and to consider how you might enhance these factors.
Developing skills that help you to be resilient when you are facing challenges is also beneficial to your mental health and well-being.
Mental Health means "striking a balance in all aspects of your life: social, physical, spiritual, economic, and mental. At times, you may tip the balance too much in one direction and have to find your footing again."
It is important to work at your mental health to help you be resilient. Mental health and resiliency go hand in hand. You can read more about mental health, children, youth and depression at the Canadian Mental Health Association website.
Assignment: Mental Health Fitness - What Makes You Strong?
Time to gather and organize.
Time to evaluate and draw conclusions.
After completing the interactive activity above related to mental health tips, consider the various tips.
Identify the top three strategies that you would use to work on your mental health and build your own resilience. Explain why each tip serves as an important one for you.
You just have to decide whether you are a Tigger or an Eeyore. You have to be clear where you stand on the Tigger Eeyore debate.
Energy
Often, people speak about having enough energy to enjoy everyday activities. We talk about how much energy certain parts of our day take. Have you ever noticed a person who enters a room and seems to bring energy with them? The air in the room seems a little bit electric, and people seem to notice. Other times, there seems to be an energy vampire in the room, and all of the extra energy seems to disappear?
Randy Pausch, a famous author writing on living your best life, speaks to the fact that you decide to be a "Tigger," meaning happy and energetic, or an "Eeyore," meaning sad and possessing low energy. He is referring to the energy that you bring into situations in your life!
Enrichment
Are you interested in hearing more of Randy's philosophy? Watch his very popular and inspiring Last Lecture:
Energy is often equated with mental health and wellness. But it also can contribute to your productivity, and your ability to get things done, to meet new people, to take risks and even to develop leadership skills.
The Energy Bus
Listening to a podcast is a great way to learn new ideas. You can be walking, or taking public transportation, and really be able to listen to the message located within a good podcast. There are many different topics that you can discover through podcasts; they are free and relevant to many interesting topics. Listening to a podcast while driving to work or sitting on a bus, travelling to another community for a competition makes the travel time feel shorter. It also allows you to learn anywhere and anytime.
Listen to The Energy Bus" podcast
In this episode Jon Gordon talks about his book, The Energy Bus. Although it was written in 2007, it offers ten secrets to apply to your life or job, by turning negative energy into positive outcomes.
Everyone faces adversity in every part of life, and The Energy Bus is designed to make you feel better and offers strategies in a simple, forward thinking manner.
Here are the 10 Rules for The Ride of Your Life that inspired Jon Gordon’s incredible best seller. It will allow you to get the valuable message from him even if you are not able to listen to the podcast.
Assignment: Advice for a Friend
- After listening to the podcast, "The Energy Bus," or reading the 10 Rules for The Ride of Your Life, think about the advice you might be able to offer to a friend who is struggling to improve their wellness, achievement at school, a relationship, or an unhappy job situation.
- Using your gathering, organizing, and analysing skills, find a suitable blog, podcast, article, or video that deals with the topic of facing challenges and building resilience to support personal health and wellness.
Assignment: Assessing Your Learning Journey #2
This self-assessment will provide you with practice for the culminating activity of this course.
Download and complete the following self-assessment by providing one piece of evidence from your work to shows how you have met the success criteria established for Unit 2, Activities 2, 3, and 4.
Introduction
Learning Goals and Success Criteria
Learning Skills and Work Habits
Rubric 1