What Resourceful People Do

What do resourceful people do?

Here at True Balance Karate in Downers Grove, Illinois, we have a social emotional learning program called True Character. I’m Esther H. owner and chief instructor here at the studio, and I have two master’s degrees in education. We’ve developed this curriculum to best meet the needs of our youngest students who are three or four, and our oldest student who is eighty-five.

This month we are talking about resourcefulness. We started off last time talking about what is resourcefulness, and it’s being creative and looking around and finding different ways to overcome difficulties. Resourceful people will use their environment. They’ll use what they see. They’ll use what they know to overcome whatever they’re facing at the moment.

Today we’re talking about specifically some skills and strategies of what resourceful people do. When my kids were younger, they’re 15 and 18 now, but when they were little, we talked about what it would look like if you got lost in the store, and who were the people that you went to, right, if you were at a certain store, they wore a certain colored shirt, and that would be the person that you would look for. How do you find your way up to the front of the store? What would you be looking for? We talked about how you would need to find the big families. Don’t go for people that are just by themselves walking around, but look for the moms and dads pushing strollers or the groups of people together. That would be people that could help you if you got lost. It was teaching them specifically certain resources that they could go to when they were separated from us. That kind of thing.

Talking about this, it was one of those things where I didn’t want to scare them, but I wanted to help them so that they had their eyes open and they were looking around and they would see things. Now that they are 15 and 18, if we’re going on trips, if we’re going anywhere, we’re talking about the directions that we’re taking. If we happen to be at the airport, how do we find the rental car place or back to where we parked the car, whatever it might be. They have developed this skill of looking around and seeing where would they go to for help at this moment in time? It’s that kind of thing. A resourceful person is always thinking about how they would solve a problem. What do I mean? Well, let’s say you’re learning something new. Even as adults, we can be learning something new.

In fact, I have a friend who always wanted to learn the piano and her son took up the piano two years ago. That’s when she started to learn how to play the piano when she was my age. We were talking about it. She goes, in all honesty, the hardest part for me is the practicing because as adults we have a lot of things happening, a lot of things on our to-do list, a lot of things to take care of. For her to set that time aside to be able to do the practicing was difficult, so she had to get resourceful as to when she did it, how she did it. Was it five minutes here, five minutes there? Was it while something was cooking in the oven?

Planning that schedule because it was important to grow the skill, and a resourceful person will practice, will ask questions, will work to learn and grow and figure things out, but they also have to be really good at organizing their time and using checklists and figuring out the best way to go about it for themselves. When we’re talking about what a resourceful person looks like, that’s what we’re talking about is that awareness for the world around us. It’s the person who’s got their head up and they’re looking around, they’re figuring it out.

Now, as you get into junior high, as you get into high school, we want to make sure that our kids are being part of the team, that they’re being team players, that they’re aware that the garbage needs to go out, and then the bag needs to get put back in the can. Where would you find that and that kind of thing? What do you do if you spill a glass of milk? Do you leave it for the person or are you resourceful and you’re like, oh, I should get a paper towel and clean it up. It is interesting because sometimes it’s huge ideas, and then other times it’s the small mundane tasks that we don’t even realize that we are being resourceful when we solve them. It’s this back-and-forth mixture. But either way, it’s awareness, it’s explicit teaching, it’s sharing of ideas, it’s confidence in knowing that you can ask the question and get the answer. When we share and when we’re resourceful, we wind up making each other better.

Thanks, and I’ll see you on the mat!

True Balance Karate was founded in 2012 by Master Sue and Paul Helsdon.

We offer kids karate lessons for pre-school children ages 3-6 and elementary age kids ages 7 and up. These lessons are designed to develop the critical building blocks kids need — specialized for their age group — for school excellence and later success in life.

Our adult martial arts training is a complete adult fitness and conditioning program for adults who want to lose weight, get (and stay) in shape, or learn self-defense in a supportive environment.

Instructors can answer questions or be contacted 24 hours of the day, 7 days a week at 630-663-2000. You can also contact us here. True Balance Karate is at 406 Ogden Ave Downers Grove Illinois, 60515 (next to CVS) Check out our Facebook!