Turning Points

Everyone has challenges in their life, this is part of a normal life. Resilience is the ability to experience
these challenges and keep living a good life. It is not having a perfect life, it is more not getting derailed by the challenges and stuck in them.

Resilience is often marketed as a bunch of strategies like mindfulness, self-care, gratitude, and ‘boom’ you are resilient. These approaches generally don’t work. That is because they don’t address the problems in your life and they don’t give you a reason to do the work. They don’t answer questions like: Why should I engage in healthy relationships or mindfulness? Why should I forgive someone? Why am I so angry? A self-care walk is lovely to do, but you have to understand why you are going on the walk and do something about that.

This book will help you to understand your challenging experiences, and why some have impacted you and others have not. You will see why you set poor boundaries, give up on things too easily, or have conflict in relationships. It will also help you to develop better coping skills – embracing both your emotions and your practical side to work though challenges. Most importantly, this book will help you to redefine your worth. When you understand your value, you will work to change what is not working in your life.

Once you make different choices, you will experience a turning point. This is when you turn away from the current path you are on and start to travel on a more helpful one. These turning points aren’t always large changes, but they are enough to help you to live a resilient life. I hope through reading this book you experience your own turning points, and that you get to live the life you want. Life can throw some big challenges, but if you know how to manage them you can be resilient.

Dr Mandie Shean has completed a Bachelor of Education (primary), Bachelor of Arts with First Class
Honours (Psychology), and combined Masters/PhD in community psychology (Resilience in adolescence)
at Edith Cowan University.

She is a registered teacher and psychologist. She has worked as a primary teacher for 20 years, a school psychologist in government schools, and a lecturer in the School of Education at Edith Cowan University (ECU). She is currently working in a K-12 school as the College Psychologist and holds an adjunct position at ECU.

Mandie’s research and practice is focused on increasing family, student, and teacher wellbeing. She believes in developing healthy community that support individuals to the be the best version of themselves