CASS 2024 PEPY Recap

Sunflower

Resilience

A lesson about adaptive capacity and growth.

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?

It’s a Sunflower!

How would you describe the sunflower?

It’s Yellow. It’s beautiful and tall. It looks pretty healthy, the leaves are green. It makes me feel joyful and happy. Full of life, 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. Maybe a bee landed on it?

Now play the video.

After watching the video you can see that the sunflower has fallen down and had to grow sideways. Maybe it wasn’t as tall as you thought. Something happened to it that disrupted its growth. That’s ok.
Ask the students, did the sunflower stop growing? Did it give up?
No! It kept growing (sideways) even though it got knocked over.
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!

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.

PEPY’s 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.