Step Six: Persevere

We spoke about the immense importance of a solid, supportive and stable community outside of your child’s school environment (where bullying most frequently occurs) in helping, guiding and mentoring them through the experience of bullying.?

There are four main benefits of such a community:

Provides emotional support: A positive community helps a young person deal with failure or defeat by teaching them to put the ups and downs of life into perspective and ensuring that they learn the value of perseverance. We’ve seen this have the biggest impact on young people dealing with the loss of a loved one, separation of parents or moving schools – the three transitions – reducing the harmful effects of these highly stressful situations.

A positive community also promotes mutual support and the importance of empathy. This teaching will remain with them, influencing how they raise their own children. We learn so much from our peers, and empathy is a social skill that increases our emotional intelligence and improves our character.

What’s more, in a positive community a young person develops relationships with other members and enjoys spending time in the community. This will make them happier. By promoting healthy competition, for instance in a sports club, members of a supportive community can build each other up.

Promotes health and fitness: If the positive community is sports or activity-related, young people develop a physical routine that promotes a healthy lifestyle. This can prevent obesity, stave off health problems and reduce the chances of anxiety and depression. A community of this kind typically understands the importance of and encourages healthy eating. This can stay with a young person for life, helping to avoid nutritional problems.?

In this way, such a community promotes a healthy lifestyle, which will ensure that the young person enjoys being active and thinks of healthy activity as a part of normal daily life.

Provides inspiration: By providing inspiration, a positive community will increase a young person’s aspirations, encouraging them to strive to be the best they can be, changing how they see themselves and what they aspire to become. It also helps to develop their mindset and, more immediately, their confidence and self-worth.

A positive community gives a young person perspective on life, encouraging them to see the ‘big picture’ and giving a deeper meaning to life’s challenges and successes. This perspective will inspire the young person to seek out bigger problems to solve so they can have a greater impact and become a leader in their community.

Encourages challenge and adventure: A positive community will build independence in a young person as they seek out challenges and make their own important decisions. This is a skill that will dramatically increase their ability to deal with peer pressure, which will be less likely to influence them in a negative way as they become accustomed to making and feeling confident in their own decisions.

This will increase the young person’s resilience in stressful situations, give them the ability to lead and inspire others and empower them in their own lives. It will improve resourcefulness. When tackling challenges in the community, a young person has to think on their feet, and they can go on to apply this process to dealing with other challenges that life throws at them.

As the American author, coach and philanthropist Tony Robbins said, ‘It’s not the lack of resources, it’s your lack of resourcefulness that stops you.’

Through the process of setting and achieving goals, a positive community can greatly increase a young person’s confidence and self-esteem. It can enrich the young person’s life by giving them more opportunities to explore, encouraging them to learn more about the world they live in.

To discover whether or not your child is part of a positive community, you can use the following exercise. If you would like to do this exercise online, go to www.notavictim.co.uk and follow the link to the Community Analyser tool.