The lessons of resilience from the sunflowers are both powerful and unique. A shift in what resilience truly means.

Lesson One: Accept the fact that life is never a straight line.

Lesson Two: Turn Constraints Into Something Beautiful.

Lesson Three: Wellness is a Journey. Rise together in that journey

Lesson One

What do you see in this picture below?

How would you describe it? It’s a Sunflower. Yellow, Beautiful, Tall, Joy, Full of Life. Happy. etc.

Can you tell by looking at it what kind of life it had? Someone planted it. It grew. It got water and sun. It seems happy. etc.

Now play the video.

After watching the video you can see that the sunflower might have fallen down and had to grow sideways. It wasn’t as tall as you thought. Something happened to it that disrupted its growth.

The sunflower’s purpose was to find the light and make a beautiful flower, despite whatever knocked it down.

You might be able to say the sunflower found some beauty in it’s struggle, right?!

That is the first lesson from the sunflower, accept the fact that life is never a straight line.

There will always be obstacles in the path of your life. A storm to knock you over when you’re growing tall toward your own goals in life. When that happens and it will to all of us, just grow sideways like the sunflower did. Keep growing. Bend, twist and adapt until you find the light again. 

The definition of resilience is to build adaptive capacity.

Accepting life struggles, building passion fuel and growing sideways builds adaptive capacity. It’s a bank account of wellness you can use today or later in life to help others or yourself to accomplish goals or deal with new challenges.

This includes capacities to recognize one’s strengths and limitations with a well-grounded sense of confidence and purpose.

• Experiencing self-efficacy

• Having a growth mindset

• Developing a sense of purpose

Our hope is that these lessons will reach the widest audience of kids, teachers and parents and will inspire them to discover and tell their own stories of resilience.

These are just a few ideas generated by teachers of how we can use the resilience lessons in schools.

• Journal on our “sunflower” resilience moments in life

• Put a sunflower picture up on your board once a week and give students or staff time to reflect on their newest “sunflower lessons” or realizations.

• Students can share their stories in announcements or at an assembly.