Your Guide to Life’s Most Important Skill: Resilience (Part Two!)
Happy Sunday!
In case you missed last week’s newsletter, Part One of The New Happy guide to resilience, you can check it out here.
We’ll be picking up right where we left off: now that you know a bit more about how resilience works, how can you develop it?
Today, I’m going to be introducing you to a number of different tools that you can use, every day, in any combination, to help you develop more resilience.
Some of these tools may resonate more with you than others; some may feel harder to grasp right now. That’s okay. My hope is that you keep this list handy when tough times arise and that it helps you to cope more effectively in that moment; this practice will also serve to build your resilience muscle over time, too, becoming an ingrained habit rather than a choice.
My Personal Tools
Before I get into the scientifically-backed tools (the ones that have been tested and retested and have been proven to have a meaningful impact on resilience, well-being and other measures), I want to share four of the tools that I have come up with for myself.
I share these because I want you to also feel empowered to come up with your own tools that are customized for you and your context. While the science-backed interventions are incredibly powerful, they can sometimes feel a bit generic. In those moments, please, come up with approaches that work for you!
I’ve really needed these tools lately. My partner has been battling a very serious medical condition for the past year. It has taken all of my resilience (and then some) to move through this phase of our lives. In addition, I have a demanding full time job, run The New Happy, coach individuals and teams, and have a new full-time role navigating the medical system and being a caretaker. I need quick, effective exercises that help me to re-approach the adversity in my life. You might too.
Here are four of my tools.
Find A Resilience Anthem
It sounds so silly, but this has been an enormous help to me. I choose a song that made me feel strong, empowered, and able to rise above my challenges. I chose… Elton John’s I’m Still Standing. It is a badass resilience anthem.
Don't you know I'm still standing better than I ever did
Looking like a true survivor, feeling like a little kid
I'm still standing after all this time
I listen to this song every time I’m feeling like I can’t face the challenge in front of me. Sometimes I listen to it ten times before I’m able to reframe or take action, but it always gets me there. (I’ve used this strategy in other demanding moments of my life. While I was in grad school and working full time, it was “Nonstop” from Hamilton.)
Help Someone Else
It might seem counterintuitive to do this when you’re already overloaded. But I’ve learned that this is the mother of all magic pills.
If I need a booster shot of resilience, that’s when I immediately look around to find someone else who needs help. And give it to them, right then. The key here is that these are quick helping activities. There are so many ways to do it, and these are the ones I’ve been really leaning on lately:
Have an engaging and personal conversation with the grocery store clerk
Write a thank you note or email or text
Scroll through my contacts to find someone I love who I haven’t reached out to lately, and send them a note telling them I love them
Holding doors for people
Buying the person behind you a coffee
Baking cookies and handing them out in my apartment building
Connecting with people on LinkedIn and helping them with their career goals
Exercise
We all know the benefits of exercise on our physical health, but for me, there is another oft-ignored impact - on our mental health.
Exercise is something that is uncomfortable, hard, and requires intense effort - just like a challenge does. When I exercise, I remind myself that I am stronger than I think I am, and that I can usually handle whatever is thrown at me.
I’ve found that willfully exposing myself to uncomfortable situations through exercise has really helped me in facing uncomfortable situations in my life.
Make a Reminder List
My last trick is one that I’ve used for years.
I have an ongoing list of all of the things that I’ve gotten through that I thought I couldn’t. And when I need a reminder that I’m strong and capable and able to rise following despair, I look at it, and it reminds me of what I have survived and what is possible.
I hope these inspire you to come up with your own tools!
Science’s Resilience Tools
We’ll cover three interventions today: the ATC model, detecting icebergs, and the three magic sentences.
The ATC Model
As we’ve established, resilience research is based upon the idea that our thoughts drive our emotions and behaviors; when we change our interpretation of events, we can transform everything else, too.
The ATC model is a tool to help you break that process down into the three steps of adversity -> thought -> consequence. Sometimes in the heat of a hard moment, it can be really tough to untangle all of these things, particularly because the thought comes so fast and the emotions so furious. This model helps you to bring awareness to the way that emotions and behaviors unfold.
In our example here, the Adversity is not performing well on a client call, which leads to castigating thoughts due to the particular interpretation of the call, which then lead to emotional consequences and maybe even unproductive behaviors.
We all experience adversity every day. But resilient people are good at revisiting the beliefs that show up alongside of adversity, attempting to understand whether or not they are true - because a lot of the time, they are just a figment of our imagination!
The important question here is: what underlying beliefs about yourself and your life do you have that get triggered? You might have an underlying belief that “everything bad is my fault” or “I’m not able to perform under pressure”. Maybe your beliefs are “I’m going to fail in this job no matter what” or “The future will never change for the better”. The next time you feel yourself getting upset beyond what the moment calls for, pay attention to the thoughts running through your head.
There are some pretty typical T->C connections, where the thought reliably triggers a specific emotional reaction. Which one is most prevalent for you?
Violation of your rights -> Anger
Real world loss or loss of self-worth -> Sadness/depression
Violation of another’s rights -> Guilt
Future threat -> Anxiety
Negative comparison to others -> Embarrassment
You can use these T->C connections to unravel the emotions you might feel when you hit a moment of adversity, and to slowly learn about what common thinking patterns you fall into.
Here’s how you use this model, either in the moment, proactively, or retrospectively. I highly recommend writing this out rather than doing it in your head. Draw it out just like the diagram above.
Think of an Adversity and write it out objectively (focus on who, what, where, when!) What would a video recording of the scene have observed? Try very hard to ensure there are no opinions in here.
Then, skipping thoughts for now, move to your C’s: what Consequences occurred? How did you feel and react in the moment and after it? Was it intense, medium, or mild? Did you do anything because of those emotions?
Then, return to T to connect the dots: what belief or Thoughts brought upon those feelings and actions? Write down the thoughts that arose in your head right after the adversity. Are you surprised? Do you see how they led to the consequences?
By practicing this exercise, you will start to notice patterns that tend to crop up more frequently, and from there, to begin proactively looking out for the moments that might be triggering to you.
I use this model in my own life every time my mood suddenly changes. If all of a sudden, I start feeling grumpy or upset, I have to retrace my ‘thoughts’ and figure out what happened, and I use the ATC model to do it!
Detecting Icebergs
Iceberg beliefs are your underlying beliefs about the world that go deep. Very deep.
Whenever you have an outsize reaction to something, disproportionate to the trigger, it usually means you’ve hit an iceberg. These beliefs are so deeply held and buried beneath the surface, which often means they end up directly our life choices in ways that we wouldn’t choose consciously. There are a few common iceberg beliefs: go through this list and check off the ones that you suspect you might have. If you’re having trouble, the sneaky way to figure it out is ask the person you’re closest to which ones they think you have.
Being successful is what matters most
Failure is a sign of weakness
Anything less than perfect is a failure
It’s my job to please people and make them happy
People should always think the best of me
If I’m not liked, there’s something wrong with me
Asking for help means you’re weak
I must always be in charge and in control
Some iceberg beliefs are adaptive, but it’s still worth taking a look at yours to figure out what they might be costing you, and most importantly, how can you alter the belief so that you can reduce any costs?
One example to bring this home: I have a strong iceberg belief that ‘anything less than perfect is a failure’. This has harmed me and my life in many ways that I would not have consciously chosen. To reduce the costs of this belief, I have to constantly build the belief that many of the other things I value most in life (creativity, relationships, innovation, growth) all require failure to succeed. I remind myself constantly of this truth through examples, stories, and throwing myself into situations where I might fail in order to retrain my brain.
You might also notice a connection with the ATC model - often, icebergs are the source of T->C connections that are out of whack. Therefore, finding your icebergs can help you when using the ATC model, too!
Three Magic Sentences
These are three sentences that you can use in moments of adversity to challenge yourself to pause, calm yourself down, and appraise a more accurate view of the situation. I have these on a note on my phone as a reminder to myself.
“A more accurate way of seeing this is…”
Use this sentence to generate a number of different explanations that could also serve as the ‘why’ to the given adversity.
“That’s not true because…”
Find evidence to prove yourself wrong, which is the opposite of what we usually do, which is cherrypicking evidence to prove our belief is correct.
“A more likely outcome is… and I can… to deal with it.”
This helps us to narrow in on what is likely rather than what is most scary or triggering, and helps us proactively think about how we would address it if it did arise. Human beings are remarkably resilient, and we can handle so much, but in our heads, we find it far easier to catastrophize about the outcome and how it will effect us.
Let’s put them all together in an example that might have also happened to you. Let’s say that I missed a deadline for work and panicked. My immediate thought is “I’ve completely failed at my job and am probably going to be fired.” I can use the three magic sentences to talk to myself, saying:
A more accurate way of seeing this is that I was a bit late on sending something over, but that happens a lot and to everyone on my team. It also could be accurate to say that I’m generally a pretty trustworthy person and this is a rare misstep, and my boss will know that.
This thought isn’t true because just the other day, my boss told me that he was really impressed with what I’ve been working on, and he also told me he’s aware of how much is on my plate.
A more likely outcome is that I’ll apologize for the delay and I can set up time with him to talk about prioritizing more effectively; this could actually help me to better manage my work in the long run.
Your Resilience Checklist
I’ve just walked through a number of different tools you can use to help you cultivate more resilience. To recap, here’s the checklist:
Find your resilience anthem
Help someone else
Exercise
Make a list of what you’ve persevered through
Use the ATC model
Detect your icebergs
Use the three magic sentences
I hope this helps you in your cultivation of resilience. If this topic is of interest to you, I would refer you to my professor Dr. Karen Reivich’s book (alongside Andrew Shatte) from which these exercises are derived. It’s an even deeper explanation into this fundamental skillset and how to develop it, and I would highly recommend it to learn even more!