Open AccessAmir’s Life Story: Resilience and Other Soft Skills Development to Thrive, Despite Vulnerable Beginnings
Author(s) -
Yatela Zainal-Abidin,
Rosna Awang Hashim,
Hasniza Nordin
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
the qualitative report
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2160-3715
DOI - 10.46743/2160-3715/2019.3731
Subject(s) - mindset , psychological resilience , religiosity , soft skills , psychology , spirituality , life skills , resilience (materials science) , developmental psychology , sociology , social psychology , pedagogy , medicine , alternative medicine , philosophy , physics , epistemology , pathology , thermodynamics
This article explores the life story of Amir, a young adult from a rural village in Malaysia, who built resilience and developed soft skills to thrive in his life despite his vulnerable beginnings. Amir’s strong resilience and other soft skills that assisted him to be outstanding in his academics and career may have resulted from his caring and supportive authoritative mother, countering his strict and harsh authoritarian father, with an ecological system of protective factors and developmental assets strengthened by religiosity and spirituality. However, both his parents’ extremely different confrontive and coercive methods appeared to have worked together towards the development of certain soft skills, such as his entrepreneurial mindset. This fresh outlook may provide guidance to assist vulnerable children and youth from rural areas to thrive, while raising new questions for future research.