Resilient

1. Develop resilience through compassion, mindfulness, and learning

Compassion is both soft and muscular. For example, studies show that when people feel compassion, motor planning areas in the brain begin preparing for action.

Compassion fuels resilience. It involves recognizing pain with the desire to relieve it, both for yourself and others. By practicing self-compassion, you build a foundation for resilience. Mindfulness, the practice of present-moment awareness, helps you stay grounded and respond skillfully to challenges.

Learning is key to resilience. The brain changes through experience, a process called neuroplasticity. By deliberately focusing on positive experiences and letting them sink in, you can build lasting inner strengths. This "taking in the good" process involves four steps:

• Have a beneficial experience
• Enrich it by staying with it and feeling it fully
• Absorb it, letting it become part of you
• Link it to negative material to soothe and replace painful psychological patterns

2. Strengthen grit by cultivating agency and determination

Agency is the sense of being a cause rather than an effect.

Agency empowers grit. It's the feeling that you can make things happen rather than being helpless. To develop agency, look for experiences where you're making choices and influencing outcomes. Focus on and internalize these moments of active agency.

Determination fuels perseverance. It has four aspects:

• Resolve: Commit to your goals with seriousness and gravity
• Patience: Practice delaying gratification and tolerating discomfort
• Persistence: Keep going, especially through small, sustained efforts
• Fierceness: Tap into your primal will to endure and succeed

Cultivate vitality by accepting and appreciating your body. Recognize that how you feel about and treat your body affects your overall resilience.

3. Foster gratitude to enhance well-being and resilience

Gratitude and other positive emotions have many important benefits. They support physical health by strengthening the immune system and protecting the cardiovascular system.

Gratitude improves health and relationships. Research shows that practicing gratitude leads to more optimism, happiness, and self-worth, while reducing anxiety and depression. It also increases compassion, generosity, and forgiveness, strengthening social bonds.

Cultivate gratitude daily. Try these practices:

• Keep a gratitude journal
• Write thank-you letters
• Reflect on three blessings before sleep
• Celebrate gifts of life with others
• Look for the good in difficult situations

Take pleasure in everyday experiences, savoring sensory delights and mental or emotional pleasures. Recognize your daily successes, no matter how small, to build a sense of accomplishment.

4. Build confidence through secure attachment and self-acceptance

Confidence is the sure knowledge that there is goodness at the heart of you.

Secure attachment fosters confidence. When caregivers are consistently attuned and responsive, children develop a sense of being loved and worthy. As adults, we can heal insecure attachment by internalizing experiences of feeling cared about, developing a coherent narrative of our past, and creating secure relationships.

Self-acceptance is crucial. Challenge your inner critic and strengthen your inner nurturer. Practice self-compassion and recognize your inherent worth. Accept your body and appreciate its capabilities. Remember that most people see you as basically good, and work on truly believing this about yourself.

5. Regulate emotions by finding calm and managing anger

Calm people live, tense people die.

Cultivate calmness through relaxation. Engage your parasympathetic nervous system to counter stress and anxiety. Try these techniques:

• Extended exhalation breathing
• Progressive muscle relaxation
• Biofeedback
• Mindful movement (yoga, tai chi)
• Guided imagery

Manage anger skillfully. Recognize the two-stage process of anger: priming and triggering. Be mindful of building tension and intervene early. Slow down reactions, challenge righteousness, and disengage from fault-finding. Practice expressing anger without speaking or acting from it.

6. Harness motivation through healthy passion and goal-setting

Liking without wanting is heaven, but wanting without liking is hell.

Cultivate healthy passion. Combine sympathetic nervous system activation with positive emotions to create energized, joyful pursuit of goals. Find the sweet spot where challenge engages you without overwhelming you.

Set goals wisely. Use the motivational circuit in your brain by strengthening the association between actions and rewards. Consider your temperament and adjust accordingly. Focus on three key areas:

• Likes: Activities that give you pleasure
• Talents: Your innate abilities
• Values: What's important to you

Aim for goals that combine what you like, what you're good at, and what you care about.

7. Cultivate intimacy through empathy and unilateral virtue

A strong "me" in the midst of "we" fosters intimacy.

Balance autonomy and connection. Maintain a sense of personal boundaries while opening up to others. This paradox allows for deeper intimacy without losing yourself.

Develop empathy. Use these strategies:

• Explore your own interior experiences
• Step out of your perspective
• Increase cultural competence
• Pay close attention to others
• Track micro-expressions and tones
• Sense beneath the surface

Practice unilateral virtue. Take responsibility for your own actions in relationships, regardless of how others behave. This approach simplifies interactions, reduces conflicts, and increases the likelihood of positive reciprocation.

8. Speak with courage and assert yourself effectively

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Communicate authentically. Overcome fears of vulnerability to express important thoughts and feelings. Use these guidelines for wise speech:

• Well-intended
• True
• Beneficial
• Timely
• Not harsh
• Wanted (if possible)

Assert yourself skillfully. When addressing issues:

• Establish facts
• Clarify values
• Focus on desired results
• Consolidate gains
• Emphasize future actions
• Make requests, not demands
• Create clear agreements

9. Pursue aspirations without attachment to outcomes

One failure after another.

Dream big while staying grounded. Honor your deepest aspirations, including childhood dreams. Identify the essence of what you truly want and find realistic ways to pursue it.

Cultivate non-attachment. Adopt a growth mindset, focusing on learning and development rather than specific outcomes. Accept the possibility of failure and don't take results too personally. Let your aspirations carry you along rather than pushing yourself relentlessly.

Make your offering. Clarify what you can contribute and focus on giving your best effort. Recognize that you can influence causes but can't control results. Seek fertile ground where your gifts are appreciated and can flourish.

10. Practice generosity to enrich your life and others'

Who gives, one's virtues shall increase.

Recognize everyday generosity. Notice the many small acts of giving you already perform daily, from offering attention to helping others. Let the feeling of being generous sink in and become part of your self-concept.

Balance compassion with equanimity. Develop an inner stability that allows you to feel others' pain without being overwhelmed. Stay grounded in your body and see the bigger picture of suffering's causes and conditions.

Expand your circle of care. Gradually include more people in your sense of "us." Practice forgiveness, both for others and yourself, as a profound act of generosity. Remember that even small acts of kindness can have a significant impact on others and yourself.

Last updated: January 24, 2025