Building Resilience with Evelyn Asher

Inside Knowledge

Show Notes – Evelyn Asher

• Personal definition of resilience – the ability to go forward by looking in the rear-view mirror and seeing how the situation was handled, the personal choices made and people who have helped along the way.
• Her role as a global community coach is about broadening people’s perspectives. Helping women in technology pitch their products.
• Two big loves are writing and social justice. Resilience is involved in these fields. She had three brothers growing up and they challenged her to be able to participate more. She now tries to bring those qualities out in others. She has also worked with many non-profits. Her parents modelled this and showed how committed they were to the community.
• Her grandparents immigrated from Russia and Hungary. They never talked about their experiences but they modelled resilience in the way they started their new lives in the US.
• Evelyn journals every day. She also carries her journal with her and if she has to wait during the day she will take the time to write. Sometimes it is random thoughts, other times poems. If she has a meeting she will go to her living room sanctuary and write deeper thoughts.
• She interviewed the author of The Happiness Hack and makes sure to take herself away from distraction where her thoughts can be much clearer.
• She moved to be with someone special but 18 months later (which were like 20 golden years) he suffered from a health trauma. Evelyn was inspired by Julia Cameron’s book The Right to Write. She wrote on her porch every day and published an anthology called A Bridge of Hope in 2003.
• She talked about her involvement in Tracking Wonder Quest and how it focuses her on the need for connection, collaboration and community.
• She talks about latch key children who never had opportunity for conversation and are now entering the workforce. She helps those people to develop their conversational skills.
• She also mentors kindergarten children and gives them much needed one on one attention. She loves spending time with the children and has been doing this for 10 years.
• She again talked about the value of journaling as a tool to greater resilience.