posted on Friday, May 02, 2008 8:44 PM by AnjaliSastry

Resilience

What allows you to be resilient?
An optimistic approach can help. Not too optimistic, of course, but an appropriately positive view of things can really help cultivate your ability to bounce back from setbacks. That's the message from the research on learned optimism.

I recommend you take the online quiz at the authentic happiness site. Where do you fall? Do you think you should try to cultivate a more optimistic explanatory style?

If so, don't forget the ABDCE strategy--here's a very useful summary of the main ideas, plus some tips on when to use optimism and when not to.
There's a similar suggestion from psychologists Karen Reivich and Andrew Shatte, who also consider the cognitive strategies to combat negative thinking in their book, “The Resilience Factor.” They address tendancy of people who feel anxiety to catastrophize – “dwell on a current adversity and within a few minutes have imagined a chain of disastrous events stretching into the future.”

Reivich and Shatte outline a five-step method for countering catastrophic thinking:

1. Name your adversity and the worst-case things you believe could happen as a result
2. Evaluate the probability that each of these events will happen. You’ll see the odds are long against any of them coming to pass.
3. Next, think of the best-case scenarios possible. They should be so unrealistic that they make you smile, or even laugh. You want to break your “doom and gloom” thinking.
4. Now that you’ve plotted the extreme cases – you’ve identified the worst and the best results possible – focus on the most-likely outcomes of the adversity.
5. Then, with your newfound perspective, come up with a solution to remedy the problem.

Now, it might be that negtive thinking and pessimism are not problems for you and your team, and this advice might be moot! But tuck these ideas away in case they come in handy in the future for you or your colleagues, employees, or reports. A Boston Globe article overviews some of these ideas in a piece entitled, "Set priorities with a dose of confidence and resilience" that connects to work-life balance issues too. For more thoughts on the work of Seligman and Shatte, click through to read a transcript of a radio interview in which they link neurobiology to how organizations can help their employees handle adversity and anxiety better.

I think that the main idea to remember is that the way you interpret things can have a massive impact on how you handle events. I don't want to end without mentioning another component of resilience that I consider important: a growth mindset. Like optimism, it's something you can cultivate in yourself--and even in others around you. This short, readable article, the effort effect, gives you a sense of the work of Carol Dweck on how to cultivate an orientation that helps you enjoy challenges.

Finally, consider how to get your daily dose of happiness. This blog is one of those sites, like lifehacker, that I've spent a bit too much time looking at, but you may find it fun, too: THE HAPPINESS PROJECT. The author shares blow-by-blow details of an entire year she spent, in her words, “test-driving every principle, tip, theory, and scientific study I could find, whether from Aristotle or St. Therese or Martin Seligman or Oprah...[to] gather these rules for living and report on what works and what doesn’t. On this daily blog, I recount some of my adventures and insights as I grapple with the challenge of being happier.”

Happy reading!

Comments

# re: Resilience

Saturday, May 10, 2008 6:27 PM by Kyle Maner
I think the concept of resilience, and how one’s optimism affects resilience, is really interesting. The one thing that I really remember from the conversation in class is that one very particular definition of optimism completely loses the concept of self-accountability. And that, I think, is very dangerous. But perhaps the self-accountability is what total and complete optimism needs to be tempered with in order to achieve a more realistic view on life.

My fiancé and family find my resilience to different things humorous, primarily because from an outsider’s perspective it might appear as if I am completely wishy-washy. When Matt and I first planned our wedding, I was so excited!!! Two days later that plan completely fell through due to constraints on family members. I was devastated. I talked to Matt and we came up with a new plan that was much more low-key but which we knew our families would rally around. I was so excited!!! It was because we had a new plan.

I tell Matt all the time that all I need is a plan. Recently, he told me he might take a job in the Midwest. I immediately got on-line and looked up information about the Midwest and found some really cool things that I got so excited about! Then he cautioned me that we might say in Virginia – and I began rattling off all the reasons why I wanted to stay in Virginia! The next you know, he’s telling me that a school in California is courting him – and I’m thinking that’s awesome because I can finally live at the beach!!

From an outsider’s perspective I think this probably seems like I am all over the map and don’t really know what I want. But that’s not true. I want to marry Matt, I want to have a healthy family. I can do that anywhere. And because of my optimism, I believe that we will be happy, I will be happy, anywhere, doing anything. Because of my optimism, I can rally around any idea. And as soon as one idea emerges as the definite front-runner, I will be all about that idea. But the second it changes, I’m not disappointed because my optimism allows me to rally around the next.

I’m grateful for my optimism. I firmly believe in self-accountability. I don’t think I could survive without both. And I don’t think I would be happy as a pessimist.