Whew! At least I’m a master at the flashy “red car syndrome” – SCN Encourager

Author Jessica Lahey would be so proud of me!

Well, maybe not.

But I’d sure like to think so.

I’ve really taken her message about the importance of RESILIENCY to heart.

In fact, thanks to Jessica’s book and Kym’s interview with her about it last week (both well done!), I’m now working my way through a weird kind of “red car syndrome.”

And you know what I mean by “red car syndrome,” right?

It happens when, say, you’ve bought a brand new flashy red car – a not-so-common one, or so you thought – and then bam! Within seconds of driving it home for the first time, you see dozens more exactly like it all over the road.

Amazingly, now it seems there are all kinds of red cars all over the place now that you own your own.

This is what has happened to me lately – only with RESILIENCY popping up and unexpectedly catching my attention.

Two examples.

This one comes from the world of sports – the Detroit Lions to be precise.

Of course, we all know that if any there’s any team on the planet that has battled defeat and frustration nearly every Sunday, it’s the Detroit Lions.

But take a look at this quote from the Lions’ under-performing, highly paid 3rd year tight end Eric Ebron.

According to a report in The Detroit News on Saturday, Ebron’s confident the team’s new offensive coordinator (Jim Bob Cooter) will help the team shrug off their perennial “loser” image.

“Jim Bob is straightforward, he’s gonna tell you what’s up,” Ebron said. “You ball, you play. You don’t, your ride the pine. He’s not hiding anything, he’s not gonna baby-sit anyone. Everybody’s been babied growing up, especially my era of kids, and I’m only 23. Jim Bob brings the best out of us. He told me what he expects from me as soon as I walked in the building.”

Did you catch it?

The underlined sentence sure sounds like Jessica Lahey’s theme, doesn’t it?

NOW maybe if the Lions would buy into her notion that shielding young people from challenge and tough times isn’t the way to go, they’d shock us by winning a playoff game in the upcoming season.

Nah… but it’s fun to dream.

Here’s my RESILIENCY oriented “red car syndrome” example #2.

I heard it in a radio interview on Sunday with Dr. Mohamed A. El-Erian.

Dr. El-Erian serves as the chair of President Obama’s Global Development Council and he earned his upper level degrees in economics from Oxford and Cambridge.

Dr. El-Erian believes we are heading into some very uncertain and turbulent economic waters, where we will face greater pressure from financial disruption and job displacement in the next 2-3 years.

So what does he suggest we should do to prepare for this? (We… as in ourselves and our children?)

I’ll bet you can guess!

Dr. El-Erian said we need to become more resilient than ever before.

We need to educate our children – and ourselves – in ways that’ll prepare us to have more than one economic path to choose.

We’ve got to do this because we can no longer have the luxury of staying solely within the comfort of just “one economic domain.”

Our educational system will become even more critical and it must be laser focused on helping everyone become more “agile” learners and creators.

Setting one’s sights on one set career path without also embracing the willingness to adjust for inevitable change is the fool’s way.

The future will be kinder, said Dr. El-Erian, to those who are the most resilient and agile.

While I wish my dabbles with the “red car syndrome” didn’t take on such a serious tone, I probably shouldn’t have expected much else.

Because, no doubt, a certain sad reality has tainted my prespective.

I’ve never known the actual joy of having a flashy red car to zip around town in, you know.

Ever.

So this  “red car syndrome” is likely the closest thing I’ll ever get to the experience!

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –