How to be a force for good in a world turned up­side down by the un­prece­dent­ed covid-19 pan­dem­ic. For those who have lost fam­i­ly mem­bers and friends, or have had to bat­tle through ill­ness, loss of jobs and ca­reers, en­tire in­dus­tries have been dec­i­mat­ed. How do you keep a crush­ing loss from crush­ing you? How do you dig deep and tap in­to hid­den re­serves of in­ner strength you nev­er knew you had? I first heard the word sisu in 2006 - while read­ing for an ex­ec­u­tive mas­ters de­gree in sport man­age­ment- from a class­mate from Fin­land but to be hon­est, at that time I didn't give sisu any par­tic­u­lar study. Ac­cord­ing to Wikipedia Sisu is a Finnish con­cept de­scribed as sto­ic de­ter­mi­na­tion, the tenac­i­ty of pur­pose, grit, brav­ery, re­silience, and har­di­ness and is held by Finns them­selves to ex­press their na­tion­al char­ac­ter.

It de­rives from the Finnish root word sis­us mean­ing 'in­ner' or 'in­side'. It's a cul­tur­al con­struct that dates back hun­dreds of years is age-old and is said to de­fine the char­ac­ter of the cit­i­zens of the small nordic coun­try of Fin­land.

Ac­cord­ing to var­i­ous Google search ref­er­ences -Emil­ia Lahti has de­vot­ed her life to pro­mot­ing un­der­stand­ing of the con­cept of sisu. She asked her­self af­ter go­ing through ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult times her­self- How do hu­mans per­se­vere in the face of ex­treme ad­ver­si­ty? Be­ing from Fin­land, she re­called the Finnish con­cept of Sisu and start­ed ex­plor­ing it. Sisu refers to ex­tra­or­di­nary de­ter­mi­na­tion and res­olute­ness in the face of ex­treme ad­ver­si­ty. It is said to be a life phi­los­o­phy that can strength­en one's re­solve when tack­ling ex­treme­ly chal­leng­ing tasks or tasks that might seem to be be­yond one's ca­pac­i­ty.

Lahti posits that “A per­son with an ac­tion mind­set will (1) sign up for a seem­ing­ly im­pos­si­ble task (2), stand up for what is right de­spite po­ten­tial harm or even dan­ger (3), per­se­vere against all pos­si­ble odds, and (4) hold on to the slimmest thread of hope and start anew from scratch”.

Sisu as a con­cept of pos­i­tive psy­chol­o­gy is said to be close­ly re­lat­ed to grit, or pas­sion and per­se­ver­ance over a long pe­ri­ods.

Covid-19 is the biggest threat seen in this life­time to both glob­al health­care sys­tems and our econ­o­my. In the search for a way of cop­ing and a struc­ture of how to rise above covid -19 ad­ver­si­ties, the Finnish mind­set and con­cept of Sisu are worth ex­plor­ing and learn­ing more about. Dr Safeeya Mo­hammed, the chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer (CEO) of SISU Glob­al Well­ness in­tro­duced to Trinidad and To­ba­go the con­cept of SISU and de­vel­oped a holis­tic well­ness, well be­ing, re­silience and mind­ful­ness pro­gramme that em­bod­ies and em­braces pos­i­tive sisu. In these dif­fi­cult times em­brac­ing your in­ner sisu may make a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence.

For fur­ther in­for­ma­tion, SISU Glob­al Well­ness is on Face­book.

Last week in my re­marks dur­ing the his­toric vir­tu­al 26th TTOC an­nu­al awards cer­e­mo­ny. Two sen­tences ref­er­enced Fin­land orig­i­nat­ed word, Finnish cul­tur­al con­struct and men­tal­i­ty. There­fore, the prop­er ac­knowl­edge­ment was af­ford­ed to the ori­gin of the word sisu. Ref­er­ences to the word re­silience were made by all pre­sen­ters. The TTOC has not un­der­tak­en any oblig­a­tion to pro­mote, or cred­it third par­ties in­di­vid­u­al­ly or com­mer­cial­ly with­in its mar­quee event.

In 2021, if we want to reach the peak of our pow­ers we have to adapt the no fear fac­tor. Your dreams are on­ly as big as your vi­sion so strive for be­ing the best ver­sion of your­self. Ig­nore the doubters. If you have a dream don't let any­one tell you that you can't do it. You have to have a sin­gle-mind­ed fo­cus on achiev­ing your dreams.

Covid-19 or no covid-19 back your­self, go big, go brave, go all in and Be a game-chang­er.

"I use to love to hear the an­them play, go on­to the podi­um and see your flag raised, I loved all of that." - Roger Gib­bon.

Ed­i­tor's Note:

The views ex­pressed by the writer are not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of the TTOC or TTC­GA.