Tana Amen survived depression, bankruptcy, cancer, and her mother's brain surgery. She argues trauma can become strength through a skill called post-traumatic growth, not just stress. Her practice: when hardship hits, ask the mirror what opportunity it presents.
I would have had no way of knowing that the very worst things in my life that I have ever been through, the points where I wanted to die, I prayed to die, wicked depression, just everything was broken, financial. I mean, I filed for bankruptcy, dropped out of school, quit my job, going through cancer and going through wicked depression at the same time my mom had brain surgery. And there was no purpose for me on the planet that I could see. But those really, really difficult times in my life, I had no way of knowing that would become my purpose. That would be the thing that I would be able to use to help other people in the future. So your tragedy literally could be someone else's story of triumph later, what they use to transform their life, their transformation.
Wow.
So just Hang in there. Turning pain to purpose is one of the most fulfilling things we can do.
Turning tragedy into triumph. I like that. We hear a lot about post-traumatic stress. We don't often hear a lot about post-traumatic growth, where going through struggles can lead to strength.
And that's what we talk a lot about is post-traumatic growth. And why does that happen? I mean, some people think you're born with it. You're either predestined to experience post-traumatic stress or you are predestined to experience post-traumatic growth. Just like people think that you're either, you know, born resilient or you're born a victim. And I don't know that I believe that. So I do, I definitely have people in my family. They share my genetics. Some of them, you know, are very much still in the victim mode. And there are people like me, my mom is one of them, and I got her grit, that are just, we don't stay stuck in that victim mode. It's like, what do I do next? How do I turn this into opportunity? What something's going wrong, one of the things I taught myself is to look in the mirror and go, what do I get to do? How can I change this? What's the opportunity here?
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