"Post Traumatic Growth"

Recently while watching one of the TED-TALKS, I came across this word, “post-traumatic growth”.  This is a talk by Janie McGonigal about "Game that can give you 10 extra years of life". (You may see this video below.)

Well, my first reaction was that does something like this even exist?  Then after some initial looking up on the net I found out that it really does. Post traumatic growth in fact is a very inspiring and interesting concept. As the name suggests it says that any major roadblock in life, a major setback can actually be used as a springboard to unleash the best qualities and lead better lives. If a person has successfully overcome a traumatic event in life then he / she can see his / her life and its purpose in a better way and with more clarity, and may be that’s why this newly acquired knowledge brings them eternal peace and perfect clarity which we mostly miss.

This indeed is true, how many of us actually take a step back for a minute just to think where exactly we are headed to. Do we take some minutes off to plan the week? (Even I myself don’t do it, planning to try it after this post.) This habit not only helps us to keep a track on ourselves but also keeps our long term goal in check.

Anyways, umm.. returning back to the topic, well frankly speaking we all need the positive effects which post traumatic growth brings along but obviously none of us would be interested in the “trauma” coming along. Hence, the only solution to this is that we need to acquire these qualities which a person recovering from “trauma” possesses. We need to have more clarity towards life. This can come by 2-3 short habits such as planning our day, week etc., but more importantly we need have a goal, a destination where every step taken by us should subsequently take us.

So, let’s try and get better at our lives, without the real trauma coming along.. ;)

P.S.: Stay away and always ignore the evil twin of our friend, it’s known as “post-traumatic disorder”. I got the picture and this evil twin concept from this link.