Name: Don't give up: Claiming your personal agency | Amy Wolff | TEDxPortland
Uploaded: 2024-06-20T01:00:16.000Z
Duration: 12 min 16 s
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On a cold, rainy night in October 2017, a man walked into a pizza shop to pick up dinner for his family.

As he pulled away, he decided that that night, he would end his life.

He took a different route home, one that was more nostalgic to him that he had used as a young boy to get to school.

And it was on that unusual way home that he saw something that totally took him by surprise.

In fact, he pulled over his car in disbelief.

Stuck in the grass alongside the road was a big white sign with three words.

Instead of going home and harming himself, he went home and told his family how deeply he was suffering.

I had no clue that my little yard sign idea, a grassroots family movement, would spread hope in all 50 states in over 27 countries.

It all started in May 2017, five months prior.

I was hanging out with some friends after work when one of them mentioned the suicide rates in our small town.

I was shocked, heartbroken, and I thought, I have to do something.

My sense of urgency and action started when I was 14 years old, after I witnessed the I remember exactly one year after he died, I was sitting on my bed with my Bible and my journal, and I made a pretty big life commitment.

I want to be a bridge between people's suffering and their hope.

So in May 17, I hear of a suicide spree in my community, and I think to myself, I have to do something.

And in fact, mental health challenges were uncharted territory for me personally.

The day came to stake them anonymously around town.

My husband buckled our two sweet daughters into their car seats.

And as I put the signs into my trunk, I had this thought.

Lots of people through addictions and divorces, diagnoses and deaths, and mental health crises.

So we created a spectrum of products from decals and pins and pencils and stickers and pins.

Two college friends, Jessica and Vangie, joined our team, and we clarified the mission to make love and hope tangible to anyone, anywhere, for any reason.

Thousands of people joined our mission, taking our products to pride parades, corporate events, summer camps for foster kids, family reunions, high school swim meets, music concerts, church programs.

Our movement spread fast, and it even went viral, although not always for the right reasons.

Today, I don't come to you as an expert on hope, but as someone who claimed my personal agency to spread it.

I claim my ability to spread hope, not because I'm perfect, but because I was determined.

And that is the idea I want to share with you all today.

Agency is the belief in our ability, our own power, our own influence.

We cannot control everything that happens to us or around us, but we can control how we show up, how we overcome, how we respond.

Hope and agency have actually a very beautiful relationship.

So let's take a brief dive into the psychology of hope.

Rick Snyder was a positive psychologist and deemed the first social scientist of hope.

He found that there are three important factors.

Hope being positive, desired outcomes for our lives.

Things we hope to do, hope to be, hope to have.

That we have to identify ways in which to achieve the hopeful goals.

We have to believe in our ability to achieve our hopeful goals.

Based on his findings, two men, two researchers, Gwyn and Hellman, found that on the journey towards hope, when there's a setback or an obstacle, maybe a crisis or a challenge, then we move from hope to anger, rightful anger.

But if we cannot identify pathways to overcome those obstacles, then we move from anger to despair.

And if we lose our sense of agency, a belief in our ability to overcome, when we cannot reimagine ourselves or our communities after a setback or suffering, then we move from despair to the opposite of hope, apathy.

Do any of those register with you, resonate with you?

Think of all the headlines over the last couple years where things felt too big, too broken, too dysfunctional, too disheartening, so felt helpless.

Global pandemic and beyond the staggering deaths and the economic impact, it significantly impacted our mental wellness.

One in five U.S. adults struggled with mental illness in 2020.

Thank goodness, 26.3 million of us got virtual mental health services in 2020.

So thank goodness we're breaking stigmatizing stories about getting help.

But 44% of global youth saw a decline in their mental wellness into categories of struggling and distressed.

But beyond the pandemic and mental crises, there's an opioid crisis, natural disasters, war, violence and homelessness.

Even right here in Portland, our Pacific Northwest wonderland.

Well, there's no magic wand to changing the world.

This is a crucible moment, a crossroads, because the reality is that tomorrows may never come.

What if today you have the audacity to claim personal agency?

What if you actually believe that you have the ability, the power, the influence to change things for the good?

Yes, you, with your broken heart or your busy calendar or your empty wallet, you can offer new hope and possibility to the world around you.

When apathy whispers, it's too big, it's too broken, respond with, watch me try.

So the next time you're scrolling through a headline and your heart breaks or you walk past someone with an obvious physical need, don't scroll or stroll by.

And when it feels too cliche, too silly, too small, or too big, do it anyway.

You could start in your very own front yards, maybe with a yard sign.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Don't give up: Claiming your personal agency | Amy Wolff | TEDxPortland

mental

depression

pandemic

empathy