Power Outage

In this blog we present a challenge and discuss some of the possible ways of dealing with it using the skills and the attitudes of resilience. These challenges are part of a game called Bounce Back that we developed a few years ago to teach the skills and the attitudes of resilience. We are in the process of finalizing an electronic version of Bounce Back that can be played off of a website and that will present these challenges to players and provide them with immediate feedback regarding the skills and the attitudes of resilience that we feel might be helpful in responding to the challenge.

So, as before, assume that you are playing Bounce Back and you have just been dealt this challenge: The electric company in your region has been trying to restore power for a number of days. Solar storms are disrupting communications and apparently are keeping the power grid down. It is the middle of winter and a very cold one. You are at home with your family. You only have a small woodstove and a fireplace. How would you deal with this challenge, using the skills and the attitudes of resilience?

We would assume, first of all, that you probably have a lot of feelings about what is happening. In order to think clearly and deal with the situation, you will need to keep your feelings under control and manage them. How would you do this? First of all, you would need to admit that the situation is getting on your nerves and that you are worried about your house and the pipes and plumbing and, in general, about what is going to be happening without any power.

Connecting with others and communicating is going to be really important. Maybe there is a portable generator that one of your neighbors has that you could use to run the refrigerator or to get more heat into the house or do some other things.

Then you’re going to need to be able to make a plan for dealing with the different problems that you are facing, such as frozen pipes, your unhappy children, since they are bored stiff without their electronics, etc. Thinking these problems through and doing problem solving with others will be important if you are to weather the power outage. Given the situation, keeping a sense of humor might also be helpful.

We are sure that there are other ideas that you may have or others may have about how to deal with the situation and how other skills and attitudes of resilience could be applied. We would encourage you to think this through and to talk with others about how they have dealt with situations like this in the past and how they believe they would deal with this challenge in the future. What did they learn from the past? As with many of the other challenges that we present, connecting with others and communication are important, but being able to control and manage your feelings in a tense, difficult situation is equally important.  If you were to think clearly and respond in an adaptive fashion, you need to manage how you feel rather than to deny or discount your feelings.