This will be a valuable activity on sharing your understanding of how morality influences resilience and overall decision-making.  If we are beginning to understand that an optimistic attitude can positively build resilience (Southwick & Charney, Ch. 2 from last week), then why not simply tell people experiencing traumatic events to think “happy thoughts” and be optimistic?  When might this be appropriate or not?  How could you relay the importance of optimism while still being sensitive to those who suffer?

• Consider the role of leadership and teamwork (versus acting independently) when facing high-stress situations.  For instance, most first-responders act autonomously, yet also have a commander or person in charge who provides direct leadership during an incident (i.e. incident commander).  This is also true of military conflicts, as well as human services work where a supervisor delegates workload and manages ongoing tasks.

• Prepare to discuss how we can face stressful events (even the prospect of death) with hope that we are one in Christ if we know the LORD (1 Thess. 4:13). Ensure the following points are addressed:

• • Describe how personal outlook or attitude impacts the subjective perception of stress.
  • Consider how you would help someone facing a traumatic or stressful situation (i.e. cancer diagnosis, critical incident at work).
  • Delineate how you would encourage and implement the importance of a positive outlook or attitude, while not appearing trite or uncaring.
  • What role does leadership and teamwork play in resilience?
  • Cite at least two Scripture passages to support your discussion.

Support your work with scholarly academic resources, textbooks, or other sources provided.  Quoting or paraphrasing from any source in discussion posts requires APA format by including an in-text citation and listing the reference at the end of the post.