Developing Emotional Resilience

TERRY PEARCE
DEVELOPING
EMOTIONAL RESILIENCE
DEALING WITH STRESS
ON A DAILY BASIS
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Developing Emotional Resilience: Dealing with Stress on a Daily Basis
2nd edition
© 2020 Terry Pearce & bookboon.com
ISBN 978-87-403-3341-1
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DEVELOPING EMOTIONAL RESILIENCE Contents
CONTENTS
Author Biography 6
Preface 7
1 What Is Resilience? 10
1.1 Definitions Of Resilience 10
1.2 Resilience In Action 11
1.3 Resilience Factors 13
2 Expectations 14
2.1 Benefits Of A Positive Outlook 14
2.2 Barriers To A Positive Outlook 16
2.3 Your Explanatory Style 18
2.4 Other Tools For More Positive Expectations 21
3 Compass 24
3.1 Morality And Resilience 24
3.2 Meaning And Resilience 25
3.3 Tools For Aligning And Training Your Compass 27
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DEVELOPING EMOTIONAL RESILIENCE Contents
4 Responses 29
4.1 How Instinct Works Against Us 29
4.2 Tools For Turning Difficult Reactions Into Productive Responses 32
5 Habits 41
5.1 Physical Habits 41
5.2 Behaviours And Routines 45
6 Relations 50
6.1 The Importance Of Support Networks 50
6.2 Growing Your Support Network 51
6.3 Improving The Quality Of Your Network 52
7 Making it Happen 53
7.1 The Complete Toolkit 53
7.2 From Intention To Action 57
7.3 Daily Practice 57
7.4 Getting Help 58
7.5 Your First Step 58
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DEVELOPING EMOTIONAL RESILIENCE Author Biography
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
In 2005, after a learning and development career in the NHS and telecoms, Terry Pearce
founded learning design specialists, 360 Learning Design. Since then, he’s helped thousands
of people to improve their communication, their approaches, and their results, by creating
practical, engaging learning materials with strong visual and interactive elements. His focus
is on everyday practicalities and making a difference in the day-to-day working lives of
his learners and readers. His learning materials have won awards within the NHS and the
learning and development industry. He lives in London.
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DEVELOPING EMOTIONAL RESILIENCE Preface
PREFACE
Our resilience is tested every day. But it’s not every day that it’s tested in very similar ways
at the same time for huge swathes of the world’s population. It’s not every day that billions
have to adjust to the same challenges together, across the world.
As I write this in April 2020, over 100 countries have put some form of lockdown in place,
restricting people’s movements to address the global coronavirus pandemic. Billions of lives
have changed almost overnight. People have lost jobs and livelihoods. People have found
themselves unable to see loved ones. Many people worry for at-risk friends and relatives,
or worse, have seen them catch the virus. Working patterns are changing, with millions
having to adjust to working from home or working differently, or being placed on leave or
furlough. Many people’s social lives are unrecognisable.
More people are directly affected by this as it’s happening than any event in human history.
And so, we need our resilience more than ever. But it can seem harder than ever, because
it’s all so unprecedented. Who’s been on a lockdown? Who’s had to deal with a global
pandemic like this?
The good news is, the tools don’t change. The proven resilience tools that that this book
is based on have been tested in arguably more stressful places than the one we’re in.
Comparisons are not always helpful – how difficult we find our lives is very personal. But
the ‘lockdowns’ Victor Frankl experienced at the hands of Nazi Germany, or Helen Keller
in many ways experienced throughout her life through her deafness and blindness, would
represent a greater set of challenges for many of us than the ones we face today.
So we can look to the tools that helped others through other crises to help us through this
one. This book talks about five types of resilience tool. I’ll explain here how each is relevant
to the crisis caused by coronavirus and its effects on individuals.
Expectations
Our expectations have all been thrown out of balance. Our plans, for holidays, for work, for
savings, are for many as unpredictable as they have ever been. And the media gives us plenty
of reasons for pessimism every day. So we need tools to help us manage our expectations,
and find the brightness that’s there to help us look to the future with some positivity.
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Compass
Many of the things we took our bearings from may seem to have fallen away in this strange
new world. What’s right, what’s wrong, and how can we work out our direction? Again, we
need tools to help us when many of the societal signals have become muddled.
Responses
We have very natural biological and psychological responses to change and threat, and this
crisis triggers them for almost everyone. If we’re not careful, we can end up being pulled
along by our fear reaction instead of making a plan using our executive functions. We need
tools to manage our responses productively.
Habits
When our daily routines have changed beyond recognition, we need to re-examine our
habits and perhaps make new ones. And we need to make sure that the habits we adopt,
whether consciously or unconsciously, don’t lead us to unhealthy places, for example missing
out on exercise or sleep.
Relations
Our relations with others are key in our quest for resilience. But now that many of us
can’t see our loved ones, how do we maintain these relationships? We need to examine this
consciously, and decide the best approach using the tools and technology we have.
Specific Tools
I am navigating this crisis myself using tools from this book. Here are a few specific ones
I recommend:
Tool #1 Review your Explanatory Style

This tool helps me to examine the story I tell myself about the crisis, and how I’m dealing
with it, and make sure I’m not giving myself a hard time for not being perfect.
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Tool #7 Vulnerability
This tool helps me to remember to open up to others when I’m struggling to make the
changes I need to make and adjust to difficult new circumstances. I’ve gotten a lot of help
from others when I’ve remembered to be human instead of thinking I should be strong all
the time.
Tool #8 Circles of Influence

This tool helps me to remember that the most important things to focus on are the ones
where I can have some bearing on the outcome, instead of spending my time railing against
things I can’t affect.
Tool #15 Fix Negative Thought Patterns

It’s easy to get caught up in negative spirals of thought about the crisis and how you are
handling it. This tool helps me to recognise and halt thought patterns that only make
things worse.
Tool #22 Mindfulness

The most important place to be right now is here, in the present moment, where I can do
the things that will help me and the people I care about. Mindfulness helps bring me back
here when my mind wanders.
Your Journey
Everyone has a different reaction, even to very similar challenges. How you find the coronavirus
crisis difficult will be different to how your neighbour does. But in the five sections and
twenty-five tools in this book, everyone will find something that will help.
Even if some of this material is familiar to you, take a look at it now, in light of your current
challenges. It’s a tough world out there at the moment for many. But you can navigate it
if you have the right tools.
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DEVELOPING EMOTIONAL RESILIENCE What Is Resilience?
1 WHAT IS RESILIENCE?
You’ve probably heard the term resilience more and more over the past few years. Psychologists
and social scientists first started using it in the 1970s and it’s been gaining currency ever since.
1.1 DEFINITIONS OF RESILIENCE

People use different definitions, but the most respected definitions have a few things in
common:
Resilience is about how you respond to life’s difficulties

The American Psychological Association defines it as ‘the process of adapting well in the
face of adversity, trauma, tragedy and even significant sources of stress – such as family and
relationship problems, serious health problems, or workplace and financial stresses’.
Resilience is about bouncing back from adversity

It’s not about not feeling the effects of setbacks and stresses, but about adapting to them
and coping. A resilient person has strategies, ways of behaving and habits that help them
resume normal functioning more easily and quickly after setbacks.
Resilience is made up of lots of different behaviours and approaches

Rather than a single skill, resilience is a collection of habits, approaches and ways of behaving
that serve an individual well in difficult circumstances. Some people may be amazing at
some ‘parts’ of resilience but have real difficulty with others.
Different stresses and difficulties call on resilience differently for all of us

One person may have no trouble coping with others doubting them at work. Another may
hold this as their worst fear. But how tough things feel for the same two people may be
completely reversed for a different challenge, such as navigating family disagreements.
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Resilience can be learned

It’s not fixed. These approaches can be developed and your resilience can grow. It’s not
always easy, as your habits are part of your psychological makeup. But you can improve
your resilience, especially if you make a concerted effort.
1.2 RESILIENCE IN ACTION

Case studies on resilience abound, and everyone has their favourite story of somebody
who won through despite seemingly impossible hardships and setbacks. But it’s important
to remember that you don’t need to have a life-changing injury or disability, lose loved
ones, or be a victim of violence. You may need and display deep reserves of resilience in
situations much less serious-sounding. We all experience stress and trauma differently, and
one person’s squall is another’s tsunami.
So remember when we look at case studies to review how resilience helped real people in
real life – resilience is one of the most generalisable skillsets in human experience. Even if
your challenges are very different, you may find that similar approaches help.
Case Study 1: Victor Frankl
Victor Frankl was held in concentration camps by Nazi

Germany. His wife and brother were killed in concentration
camps, and he contracted typhoid. The conditions were
barely endurable. In his book, ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’,
Frankl talks about the hopelessness and suffering in the
camps, but recounts his (successful) efforts to find meaning
and optimism in life in even the worst circumstances. He
achieved this using only his mind and his communication
with other prisoners.
Frankl’s experiences in wartime remind us that through only

the power of our thought patterns, unimaginable difficulties
can be overcome.
Case Study 2: Helen Keller
Helen Keller became blind and deaf before the age of

two. She overcame the challenges this presented (in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth century, when support
structures were less developed) to become a successful
author, speaker and political activist. It took her a long time
to even be able to communicate with the world. But she
made up for this lost time later in life through a determination
and grit that saw her help others and enact social change.
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Her faith sustained her through many of her difficulties,

and while not everyone has or wants faith, many different
philosophies, some of them non-religious, can play a similar role.
Case Study 3: J. K. Rowling
Rowling says that her teenage years were unhappy. She had
to deal with a difficult relationship with her father, and her
mother was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. Seven years
after graduating from university, she was a single mother
after a failed marriage. She was diagnosed with depression
and contemplated suicide. She’d had no success as an
author, and was abjectly poor.
But she kept writing, and kept trying. She found ways to
be an author and a mother, and survive on her funds, until
her first book was accepted by Bloomsbury – the first step
to her later incredible success.
You may not be experiencing challenges on the same playing field as these examples. Or
maybe you are. Either way, if any setbacks you face make it seem hard to keep functioning,
you can learn from those who have displayed resilience under pressure. All of the ways that
worked for them won’t always work for you, but if you look in the right places, you can
find at least some things that will.
Note
This book is not intended as a substitute for professional help with mental health. The
contents of this book can help people in all kinds of situations, but if you are experiencing
acute distress, I recommend that you see your GP or a medical professional to get appropriate,
one-to-one help.
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1.3 RESILIENCE FACTORS

Many authors and studies have tried to categorise the skills and approaches that make up
resilience. I find that five categories are useful:
EXPECTATIONS
What you expect from life and work is the foundation of resilience. An excess of pessimism or
cynicism can be problematic in obvious ways, but too much optimism can also be an issue. How
you frame the story of your life and the things that happen to you can make all the difference
when thinking about the future. Managing your expectations can help with worry, stress and the
sadness caused by low expectations, as well as the disappointment caused by unrealistic ones.
COMPASS
What guides you? Faith? Reason? How do you decide what’s right? Do you have a moral code?
Do you follow it? The answers to these questions are key resilience factors. There are as many
different compasses that guide as there are people, but some build greater resilience than others.
Note that this book won’t tell you what moral code or belief system is ‘right’, but we will look at
what kinds—and uses—of compass tend to be effective for resilience.
RESPONSES
You are a biological creature. You feel fear, and sadness, and you have automatic systems in your
brain that set you off on thought patterns. But you also have some control over our responses,
both to external events and to your own biology. You can often choose or guide responses, and
you can train yourself to do so in ways that contribute to greater resilience.
HABITS
Exercise. Diet. Sleep habits. How you relax. These and more make up huge swathes of how you
spend your time. They create, to a large extent, who you are on a day-to-day basis. And habits
can be healthy or unhealthy in resilience terms. Habits can be trained, whether they’re physical or
mental, and can lead to greater resilience.
RELATIONS
You are not an island. The people around you: friends, family, colleagues and those who provide
professional services are your support network. How we grow, maintain and lean on that network
is crucial to resilience. People you will never meet can also be part of it, as role models. The part
others play in your life is the final piece in the resilience puzzle.
We will now look at each of these factors in turn, and give you tools to develop each.
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DEVELOPING EMOTIONAL RESILIENCE Expectations
2 EXPECTATIONS
What you expect from life and work is the foundation of resilience. An excess of pessimism
or cynicism can be problematic in obvious ways, but too much optimism can also be an
issue. How you frame the story of your life and the things that happen to you can make
all the difference when thinking about the future. Managing your expectations can help
with worry, stress and the sadness caused by low expectations, as well as the disappointment
caused by unrealistic ones.
2.1 BENEFITS OF A POSITIVE OUTLOOK

Is the glass half-full, or half-empty? The classic question is supposed to illustrate the difference
between optimists and pessimists, but in real life, it’s the wrong question. When the question
is phrased using the word ‘is’, both answers are correct, and the argument is a diversion.
Reframe the question: is it more useful to think of the glass as half-empty or half-full? Now
you have a much more useful question, that begs another: what’s the context? In real life,
there are no abstract, idealised glasses without history or surroundings. If you need a full
glass of water and there may be ways to get a refill, it’s probably more useful to think of it
as half-empty. But if the glass is all you have and your most productive way forward is to
work out how to make it last, it’s more useful to think of it as half-full.
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Negative emotions serve a useful purpose. Anger and fear are survival mechanisms, that
activate our ‘fight or flight’ responses. So thinking about possible negative outcomes can
be useful, and in fact completely necessary at times. However, the situations where these
type of responses are useful have become less frequent for most people in modern society,
as danger becomes less frequent. When we over-use negative and defensive responses, we
feel stress and overestimate threat.
Many studies suggest that positive emotions also have beneficial effects, and ones that are
sometimes more suited to our modern cultures. Whereas a sense of danger encourages
fight-or-flight (or freeze, like a rabbit in headlights), Barbara Frederickson’s work suggests
that a sense of optimism encourages ‘broaden-and-build’ responses, where we broaden our
attention and behaviour, and build better relationships and habits.
We’ll call this the survival/growth spectrum. When we’re on the ‘survival’ end of it, we
see negative, threatening things around us, and this triggers stress and our neurochemical
defence mechanisms. We more easily ‘fight’ (e.g. lashing out, pushing people away and
getting defensive), or have a ‘flight’ or ‘freeze’ reaction (avoiding things or people, giving
in, or failing to open ourselves to new experiences). But when we’re in ‘growth’ mode, our
more positive, exploring outlook helps us look at things in new ways, build bridges and
move out of our comfort zone.
Survival Growth
• Response to perceived • From the social,
threats constructive part of us
• Triggers stress response • Broadens comfort zone
• Fight/flight/freeze • Can help problem solving
Figure 2.1: The Survival-Growth Spectrum
This is not a cry for optimism at all costs. Too much optimism can be as much of a problem
as too little. Being in ‘growth’ mode at appropriate times could lead to you trying your best
for a new job, rebuilding a relationship after an argument, or finding a new solution to a
problem where you’re stuck. Being in ‘growth’ mode too much could lead to you walking
blithely through dangerous areas late at night, taking unacceptable health and safety risks
at work, or investing money against all expert advice. There’s a reason we developed our
‘survival’ modes. At a minimum, too much optimism can lead to disappointment.
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But optimism as a general attitude can put us in growth mode when we need it most. Steven
Southwick and Dennis Charney, in their book ‘Resilience: The Science of Mastering Life’s
Greatest Challenges’, suggest that optimists gain three practical resilience-based benefits:
1. The ability to positively reframe challenges and find opportunity in adversity,

rather than become caught up in a negative focus on problems and the
associated negative emotions
2. The tendency to cope with stress by actively looking for solutions, in a
productive way, instead of feeling helpless or focusing more on the problem than
possible solutions
3. The ability to find meaning in life, leading to a range of positive emotions and
happiness, rather than to see things as essentially random
A huge range of studies also show that optimism is good for your physical and mental
health, with greater reported satisfactions levels, better psychological health and better
physical wellbeing. This can even extend to better health outcomes, such as better cancer
recovery rates, less reported pain, and lower mortality rates.
2.2 BARRIERS TO A POSITIVE OUTLOOK

But it’s hard to just ‘be more optimistic’. There are many reasons why optimism and the
‘growth’ mode or ‘broaden and build’ approach can be difficult to adopt.
Biological Imperative
As we noted in the last section, our hardwiring for danger

is important. It’s often stronger than our hardwiring for
community and connection, because if we fail to react well
to significant danger, there won’t be any chance to build
communities and perpetuate the species.
Availability Bias
Maybe partly because of the above, bad news sells better

than good. Bad news stories are hard to avoid. Good news
ones can be hard to find. This plays into our availability
bias – our tendency to assume that the available information
is a good sample of all the information. If almost all of the
stories we see are bad news stories, we tend to assume that
this is representative of all the stories we don’t see, as well.
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Attention Bias and Confirmation Bias
We all tend to build up an attention bias over our lives. We

pay attention to the things we think matter, and ignore or
overlook those that we think don’t. Once we start to think
in pessimistic ways, this can become a vicious circle, where
we just can’t see the good, because we dismiss it as an
outlier, while at the same time taking the bad we see as
confirmation that our pessimism was justified.
Memory Effects
We often believe our memories are like a video camera,

faithfully recording what happened to us until we want to
recall it. However, it’s more like a story we tell ourselves,
supplying the pictures as needed. The story is often full
of errors, and is coloured by our biases, assumptions and
expectations. For example, we believe we see patterns and
narratives in random events (the ‘narrative fallacy’). This can
cause us to weave a story of conspiracy or fate around what
was just a run of bad luck.
Learned Helplessness
If we repeatedly experience bad things happening that

seem to be beyond our control, we can internalise the
powerlessness we feel. Whether we did have control or
not, the perception that we did not can be very strong
and can generalise to other areas easily. This then acts at
an unconscious level, and we give in to the idea that we
really can’t change anything.
Clinical Depression, Anxiety and Related Factors
Thoughts and emotions are caused just as much by chemicals

inside your brain as they’re caused by events outside yourself.
When these chemicals are imbalanced, there are a variety
of clinical effects such as depression which are extremely
difficult to ‘think’ our way out of.
These are some of the key barriers, but it’s not intended to be an exhaustive list. When we
go on to look at some of the ways we can think more positively and optimistically in the
next couple of sections, keep in mind that it’s rarely as simple as ‘reprogramming’ your
thought patterns or feelings.
If you identify with one of these barriers, raising your awareness of it is a great first step – you
can’t work on what you’re not aware of. If you have biases and distorted thinking patterns,
identifying them can lead you to work steadily on countering these patterns with healthier
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ones. For more serious and deeply ingrained barriers or issues such as depression, awareness
and trying to work on it may not be enough on its own, but it’s unlikely to be a bad thing.
Once you’ve started to work on any barriers, examining the way you frame what happens
to you can be a great place to start moving your expectations towards a healthier place.
2.3 YOUR EXPLANATORY STYLE

We are storytelling creatures. We interpret the world, weaving events into a narrative that
makes sense to us. We explain the events that happen to us. But we don’t do this objectively.
We do it through our filters and preconceptions. Explanatory Style maps the different way
we do this by suggesting three aspects to our explanatory style:
• Personal (whether we explain events by focusing on internal or external causes)

• Permanent (whether we explain things as likely to keep happening or as one-offs)
• Pervasive (whether we explain things as happening everywhere, or as local or
context-specific)
Optimists and pessimists tend to sit at opposite ‘ends’ of the scale suggested by each of
these three aspects, as shown.
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Aspect or scale Pessimistic end of scale Optimistic end of scale
Blames negative events on internal Explains negative events via

causes (‘it was my fault’) and external causes (‘it was bad luck’),
Personal explains positive ones via external and explains positive ones via
causes (‘I got lucky that time’) internal causes (‘my hard work paid
off’)
Explains positive events as Explains positive events as stable

unstable across time (‘I couldn’t across time (‘I always come off well
Permanent repeat that’) and negative events in those situations’) and negative
as stable across time (‘this kind of events as unstable across time
thing always happens to me’) (‘lightening won’t strike twice’)
Generalises negative events as Dismisses negative events as local

global (‘people everywhere are (‘one bad apple…’) and generalises
Pervasive cheats’) and dismisses positive positive events as global (‘this just
events as local (‘turns out there’s shows you, people are generally
one nice person’) good’)
Figure 2.2: Pessimistic and Optimistic Explanatory Styles
None of these positions are necessarily more ‘right’ in general than another (sometimes
causes are more external, sometimes more internal, and this is true across all three aspects).
But, as we explored in section 2.1, there are tangible benefits to the more optimistic side,
so long as it’s not blind optimism.
Analysing your explanatory style

Think back to key negative and positive events in your past. Maybe you failed a test, fell
out with a friend or colleague, or had an accident. Or maybe you passed a test, started an
exciting new relationship, or got some good feedback from a client or customer.
How did you explain it? What narrative did you weave around it? Where is the table above
does it fit? Does it suggest a more pessimistic explanatory style, or a more optimistic one?
People are complex. They don’t just have one style all the time. And for any event, the
optimistic or pessimistic explanation may be more—or less—justified by the facts (although
more often than we realise, our explanatory style has at least some influence). But if you notice
patterns over time that suggest a more pessimistic style, this may be hampering your resilience.
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This stands to reason if you think about it. If bad things are mostly your fault, long-lasting
and everywhere, while good things are lucky, isolated flukes, it’s hard to meet new challenges
with confidence and strength.
Tool #1: Review your explanatory style
• Look out for times when you explain things in a pessimistic style
• Check if you're personalising things, or making them overly permanent or pervasive
Reframing Problems as Solution-Seeking

Just noticing your narrative style can help. What happens if you realise that—actually—it’s
not the case that you’re always bad at everything, it’s just that your mind narrates it that
way? It can make the narrative easier to refute.
But you can also make a conscious effort to switch frame from ‘what’s bad about the
situation?’ to ‘how can I make the best of things?’. Or, as it’s sometimes called, from Problem
to Solution-Seeking Frame.
This isn’t about just putting rose-tinted glasses on everything. It’s about moving past any
assessment of what’s wrong with things towards looking for solutions. So, ‘it was my fault’
can become ‘what can I do to make amends?’, or ‘This kind of thing always happens to me’
can become ‘Why does this often happen to me, and what can I do to make it happen less?’.
Great solution frames include:
• Focusing on strengths you could use

• Asking how you could reduce the chances of more of the same
• Asking how you could make things like this have less impact
• Asking how you could make the best of things
• Focusing on what you can learn from the situation
• Reminding yourself that every situation is different
• Asking, ‘what do I have to lose?’ (by for example trying again)
• Asking, ‘how important is this in the grand scheme of things?’
• Listing reasons for optimism
• Listing causes besides my own fault (including bad luck)
• Looking for role models who’ve beaten similar challenges and learning from
them
• Focusing on times you overcame challenges and how
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Tool #2: Reframing problems as solutions-seeking
• Every time you find yourself focusing on a problem and feeling bad about it, reframe it
with a focus on seeking a solution or way to make the situation better
2.4 OTHER TOOLS FOR MORE POSITIVE EXPECTATIONS

Your explanatory style is so important I’ve devoted a whole section to it. But there are some
other, simpler tools that can really help to shift your expectations in a positive direction.
Gratitude/Achievements
Happiness research shows that we get a spike in happiness when something good happens
to us: a promotion, a new relationship, winning the lottery. But after a while, we ‘baseline’
this new state, and get no new happiness from it. We expect more good things to happen,
and forget that we’re already enjoying the ones that did.
We can bypass this by making a gratitude list or achievement list. Try it now. Make a list
of five things you have to be grateful for, or five things you’ve achieved recently. It’s better
to use a number, like 10, 5 or even 3 for a quick one, because then we bow out on a firm,
positive note rather than trailing off when we just can’t think of more.
How do you feel when you make this list? Many people find it useful to make a gratitude
or achievement list every day, either at the start or end of the day.
Tool #3: Gratitude/achievement list
• Make a gratitude and/or achievement list regularly, to make sure you don't take the good
for granted
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Positive Attention Focus

Every conscious moment, you choose which of the many visual and auditory stimuli that
pass through your eyes and ears to pay attention to. You ‘tune in’ when your name is
mentioned and ‘tune out’ when something is boring. You notice all the cars the same as
your own, but probably never used to notice them before buying it.
If your outlook is pessimistic, chances are you pay attention to the negative things that
happen. In the news. In our lives. From passers-by. Before we even explain the world around
us in a positive or negative way (as per explanatory style), we’re filtering out the good so
that there is just more bad to be seen, and so our expectations are confirmed.
So, a simple tool for a more optimistic outlook is to just make sure that when positive
things happen, whether on the news, to our friends or to us, we’re on the lookout for them
and notice them. Just making a commitment to doing this can make a difference.
At the start of each day, make a commitment to look out for and not dismiss the positive.
Your commitment could be general, or could focus on something specific, such as ‘I’m
going to look out for…’:
• The good things about my actions/behaviour

• Kindness in others
• Good news stories
• Beauty in the world around me
• Reasons for optimism
Tool #4: Positive attention focus
• At the start of each day, make a commitment to look out for the positive things that happen
• Try general (positive things) or specific (e.g. kindness in others)
Positive Self-Talk
Almost everybody has an internal monologue. A little voice that talks to you about what you
see. Yours probably adopts your explanatory style, as per the previous section on that. Many
people think of that little voice as their ‘self ’, their ‘I’. But it’s just one part of each of us.
It becomes a problem when it’s overly negative. This could be any of the ways described
under pessimistic thinking, such as blaming issues on yourself, or dismissing success as
lucky. Or it could just be general negativity like ‘you can’t do this’, or ‘you’re going to fail’.
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If we feel like that little voice is us, it’s very difficult to stop doing it. But when we realise
that it’s only one part of us—and an often unproductive, unhelpful part at that—we can
start to counter it. Everybody’s style is different, so you should adopt your own style of
counter-argument. However it’s phrased, just having a voice that says, ‘hang on, there are
some good things out there too’ can help balance things out.
Tool #5: Positive self-talk
• Recognise when your negative inner voice is sapping your resilience

• Talk positively to yourself to counterbalance it
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DEVELOPING EMOTIONAL RESILIENCE Compass
3 COMPASS
What guides you? Faith? Reason? How do you decide what’s right? Do you have a moral
code? Do you follow it? The answers to these questions are key resilience factors. There are
as many different compasses that guide as there are people, but some build greater resilience
than others. Note that this book won’t tell you what moral code or belief system is ‘right’,
but we will look at what kinds—and uses—of compass tend to be effective for resilience.
3.1 MORALITY AND RESILIENCE

You can’t really adopt a moral code because you think it’s beneficial. You have to believe in
it. But you can look at the benefits of taking the idea of a moral code seriously; of having
one and following it. And studies show there are resilience benefits.
In neurological terms, your body releases lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol in
stressful situations if you reflect on and reaffirm your values immediately beforehand. And
altruism and performing socially valued activities have been linked to dopamine (improving
motivation and wellbeing) and oxytocin (promoting calm, trust and belonging). Links have
even been made between doing ‘good’ (as you yourself perceive it) and lower mortality risk,
better marriages, and reduced anxiety or depression.
24
These benefits are gained regardless of the specific moral code or good cause involved. So
in a very real sense, it doesn’t matter to your resilience which code you choose. You just
need to really believe in it. It could be your own outlook on what’s right, or that of your
faith. It could be what you were taught at home and at school, or it could be a philosophy
you read in a book.
There are other benefits to subscribing to codes others also subscribe to, whether faiths,
philosophies or some brand of humanism. These include plenty of social benefits like the
ones I’ll mention in the ‘Relations’ section, later. But choosing the right code for you, one
you believe in, is important.
Southwick and Charney (2012) argue that the three key elements are:
1. Actively identifying your core values

2. Assessing the degree to which you are living by these values
3. Challenging yourself to adopt a higher standard where necessary/plausible
Many of us actively avoid doing these things, perhaps because we’re afraid we’re falling
short. Brené Brown, in her book The Power of Vulnerability, argues that we need to have
compassion for ourselves and both acknowledge and share our shortcomings. Her TED
Talks on this are quite inspiring to many people who naturally shrink from taking any
kind of moral inventory.
3.2 MEANING AND RESILIENCE

Some of the benefits above may result from the sense of meaning many people find in having
a faith or spirituality, or a firm belief in what’s right and wrong. One of the central ideas of
Victor Frankl’s legendary book ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’ is that we make our own meaning.
Through his horrific experiences in concentration camps in the Second World War, Frankl
was able to find resilience in some of the most abject horror by looking for meaning, and
finding it. Others have done the same when confronted with real adversity. Jerry White, a
multiple amputee because of a landmine injury, found meaning in his campaign to rid the
world of landmines.
Frankl and White took the elements of the awful things that happened to them, and found
or made their own meaning in the tragedies themselves. People find meaning, or place their
idea of meaning in all kinds of things, many of them more everyday. Family. Achievement.
Charity. Bettering Yourself.
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We can find meaning if we frame our circumstances in a way that brings it out. There are
strong overlaps here with some of our discussions on optimism and how you frame your
life’s narrative, except here we are not looking to say that things are good (or bad), but
simply that there is meaning. It would have been easy for Victor Frankl to give in the idea
that it’s all meaningless. Instead he searched harder.
We can find or make meaning in many different places, but the one place we can’t find it
is in a world where we believe there is none. And if we believe it will find us, we may be
waiting a long time. From a resilience viewpoint, a great strategy is to spend time considering
our own meaning. Asking ourselves questions like:
• What do I find fulfilling and worthwhile?

• What do I think contributes to a better life, for me and others?
• What kinds of things give me a sense of purpose?
• What am I here to do or be?
• What about my life could I see as an opportunity unique to me?
These are difficult questions. We don’t have to answer them all right away. But if we’re on
the lookout day to day for the answers, we may be surprised by how many insights are all
around us. Your sense of meaning may be rooted in work, relationships, creativity, family, faith,
new experiences, philosophy, legacy, hobbies, learning and personal growth, independence,
fighting for what’s right, achievement, volunteering, good works, or just the kind of person
you want to be in the world. Or a combination of things. Or things not on this list.
Just like with our moral code, the big question if we do have a sense of meaning or purpose
is: how well are we living in relation to it? Can we change the way we live, behave or think
to make us more in tune with that purpose?
‘Life is asking me to fill the space in which I happen to

have landed. My station in life, my occupation—they do
not matter. What matters is what I do with what I have.’
– Victor Frankl
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3.3 TOOLS FOR ALIGNING AND TRAINING YOUR COMPASS

These tools are a little more involved than those we’ve covered so far. Your moral compass
and sense of meaning are not easily found or adjusted. But if you feel that this area of your
resilience toolkit is lacking, sitting down with a paper and pen and working through these
tools could make a huge difference to you.
Conscious Development of Moral Courage

Rushworth Kidder, in his book ‘Moral Courage’, suggests a three-step process:
1. Assess where you are right now. Ask yourself: What are my core values and
beliefs? Which are most important? Where am I living by these and where
am I falling short? Do I want to change? Do I have the courage to change?
Write it all down.
2. Discuss the results with people whose ethics and principles you respect. This
may feel odd, but tell them what you’re doing and why, and ask or their help.
This can help you to check your analysis and highlight when you may be being
too hard or soft on yourself. Discussing these things rather than just thinking
about them makes them more ‘real’ and solid.
3. Act according to your values. Take care and review progress, because it’s easy
to take short cuts and rationalise or justify specific actions that go against
your intentions. Persistence is how we change; what you make a habit of
becomes who you are.
Tool #6: Work on your moral courage
• Work through the 'Kidder three-step process', self-assessing values and beliefs and
performance against them before discussing with others and deciding the way forward
Vulnerability
Brené Brown has made a career out of talking about vulnerability as a strength. This sounds
contradictory, but it goes something like this. Resilient people open themselves up to the
world. They activate their ‘growth’ mode even when they feel like freezing, fighting or flying.
They admit when they are scared, or ashamed, or guilty.
27
Why? Because they believe it’s necessary for real, strong human connection. And because
human connection is necessary for a full life.
This links back to expectations, and later I’ll come back to it when talking about responses
and support networks. But here, where we’re talking about meaning, it means keeping a
few things at the top of your mind:
• I may never have all the answers to what’s meaningful or right, but I need to
keep looking
• I may be wrong about things I thought were right or meaningful; realising this
is strong, not weak
• If I admit to my failings, it makes me stronger, not weaker
These are difficult lessons to internalise, even if you accept them. But focusing on opening
yourself up wherever appropriate, and not shying away from vulnerability, can make you
more resilient. It can help you make sure your moral compass is based on the reality of the
situation rather than some image of yourself you think you need to project.
Tool #7: Vulnerability
• Watch Brené Brown's TED Talk on vulnerability, or her Netflix show

• Ask whether you could open yourself up more, to be stronger
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DEVELOPING EMOTIONAL RESILIENCE Responses
4 RESPONSES
You are a biological creature. You feel fear, and sadness, and you have automatic systems in
your brain that set you off on thought patterns. But you also have some control over your
responses, both to external events and to your own biology. You can often choose or guide
responses, and you can train yourself to do so in ways that contribute to greater resilience.
4.1 HOW INSTINCT WORKS AGAINST US
Fight-Flight-Freeze
I’ve already talked about the fight-flight-freeze reaction. Our current society evolved from
one where fighting and running away was often necessary for survival. If you’re like most
people reading this, you probably live somewhere where fighting and running away is less
necessary these days. It’s really not often that an office-based situation really warrants an
all-out retreat or a physical assault.
But your brain is still wired the same way. The unconscious part of your brain that detects
and responds to threat doesn’t make a category distinction between a sabre-toothed tiger and
that presentation you’re dreading. In both cases, it gears up for fight or flight by producing
adrenaline, by breathing more quickly to take in extra oxygen, and so on. These physical
responses are great if you really are going to have to run away from that tiger. But they
make it harder to give the measured, confident performance you’ll need for the presentation.
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Conditioning
In his famous experiments with dogs at the end of the 19th Century, Pavlov found that
dogs can be trained to salivate at the sound of footsteps or a bell, if that sound is associated
with food, even if the food link is then taken away.
You may feel that, as a human, you’re better than this, but you’re susceptible to conditioning
too. You associate sights, sounds and smells with experiences in your mind, and then
respond to them even when we encounter them separately to the experience. Survivors of
war trauma struggle with loud noises similar to shells and explosions, and abuse survivors
can have extremely negative responses to smells they associate with the time of their abuse.
The fight-flight-freeze response can itself be something we remember with pain and want to
avoid. Fear of public speaking is the number one fear in the US, above death and spiders. It’s
easy to go into a negative spiral about a fear like that. The presentation (or other everyday
thing we react to) prompts a fear or anxiety response. Then you remember that response
and how bad it made you feel, and your anxiety or fear response for next time becomes
doubled – you’re anxious about the thing, and about your response to the thing.
Conditioned responses can be very hard to break. In many cases people can find it hard to
even face their fear at all, never mind work through productive responses to it.
Unconscious Brain
Decades of thought and research was recently crystallised for many by the Nobel-winning
Behavioural Economist Daniel Kahneman. In his book, ‘Thinking Fast and Slow’, he talked
about ‘System 1’ and ‘System 2’, or the ‘Fast’ and ‘Slow’ systems. Others have called these
the ‘unconscious’ brain and ‘conscious’ brain, and a variety of other terms. Here, we’ll use
the ‘conscious and unconscious brain’ terminology as it’s probably the most common.
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Conscious brain
• Deliberate
• Uses reason and logic
• Limited capacity
• Slow
Unconscious brain
• Instinctual
• Uses shortcuts
• Can do lots of things at once
• Fast
Figure 4.1: The Conscious and Unconscious brain
Our conscious brains are deliberate. They use reason and logic to work out the best way to
reach a desired outcome. But they can’t hold much information or process too many things
at once, and they’re slow. They rely on the unconscious brain to take care of everything the
conscious brain isn’t focused on.
The unconscious brain can do that well because it’s fast and can do many things at once.
But the unconscious brain works on instinct and shortcut, and if important things that
require fresh perspectives or clear, rational thinking are left to it, it can take the wrong
shortcut and get to the wrong place.
Kahneman’s book excels in collating an astonishing body of research, much of it his own, on
how the conscious and unconscious brain operate in relation to each other. Their interaction
isn’t always smooth, and sometimes it can go badly for us. Kahneman found that:
• Our unconscious brain often uses shortcuts called ‘heuristics’, such as

substituting an easier question for a harder one – ‘what would be easiest to do?’
instead of ‘what should I do first?’
• This leaves us open to biases such as availability bias or confirmation bias, which
I outlined earlier when talking about expectations and optimism
• Our unconscious brain filters out lots of irrelevant information. This is necessary
to get by – we can’t react or respond to everything – but sometimes these filters
get rid of useful information
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All of these issues can affect our responses and decision-making in a way that makes life
harder and leaves us less resilient. For example:
You might leave all of your difficult tasks until later in the
day, when you’re less focused and have less energy, because
you substituted the question ‘what would be easiest to
do?’ for ‘What should I do first?’
You might feel like you’re failing at work because the only
feedback people have time to give you is about what
you didn’t do perfectly, and you assume because of your
availability bias that this feedback represents how they feel
about you in general.
You might be really busy on an important project and filter

out any information not relating to it, failing to notice until
too late that you missed an opportunity to stop the next
project from running really close to the deadline and therefore
moving from one stressful project to another.
You might substitute the question ‘will this change be

easy?’ for the harder question ‘will it be worthwhile?’, and
because of your confirmation bias, you might then seek
out evidence that it’s not working. Your filters might ‘edit
out’ any positives about how the change is progressing.
As a result, you might find the change much more stressful
and tougher going.
4.2 TOOLS FOR TURNING DIFFICULT REACTIONS

INTO PRODUCTIVE RESPONSES
I’ve chosen to include a big range of tools around this area, because it’s one of the places
where you can have a real impact by making a conscious effort to ‘re-wire’ your brain. We’re
all subject to the unconscious and instinctive reactions outlined, and we’re all guilty of
rationalising them away. Of saying, ‘I act rationally’, ‘I see the world the way it is’, when
these aren’t true anywhere near as much as we think.
By actively looking for ways to reduce the irrationality of our reactions, and replace them
with responses that are more resilient, we can all become happier, more resilient people.
Rewiring your brain and its habits is no small task. Each time the brain follows a familiar
path, it reinforces it, so you’re working against many, many years of reinforcement in many
cases. But it can be done, and these tools can help.
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Circles of Influence
‘Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.’
– Serenity Prayer
The serenity prayer was written by Reinhold Niebuhr in the US in the 1930s. It’s one of
the most ‘viral’ pieces of advice ever (before ‘viral’ was even a thing), in any form. It was
adopted by Alcoholics Anonymous and various twelve-step organisations and spread around
the world by word of mouth. I think it’s successful because of the note it strikes with most
people. In a way it’s the ‘trick’ to life: work out what you should focus on by working out
what you can affect and what you can’t.
Fifty years later, Stephen Covey’s ‘The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’ found another
way to express this. It struck enough of a chord with people that the book sold over 25
million copies. He called his idea Circles of Concern and Influence.
Circle of Concern
Circle of Influence
Figure 4.2: Covey’s Circles of Concern and Influence
Covey says we should always focus on our options and what we can do in response to a
situation. What we can’t do anything about is outside our Circle of Influence. But within
our Circle of Influence, we always have options, whether they’re about taking action, or
reassessing our emotional responses (as Victor Frankl did). If we are completely powerless,
we probably need to learn to accept the situation.
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Tool #8: Circles of influence
• Draw a diagram of your circles of influence and concern

• List your options about the things you can influence and choose one
• Try to let go of active worrying about what's outside your influence
Body-Mind Feedback
When your fight-flight-freeze response is activated, the mind causes the body to gear up
for the situation. But you can take advantage of the loop between mind and body to focus
your body on actions that suggest calm. Actions that kick us out of survival mode and let
the conscious, rational brain exert its influence, such as:
• Breathe more deeply, from the belly

• Take some time out of a difficult situation and return to it when you’re feeling
less threatened
• Sit down
• Activate any little rituals you associate with calm (like making/having a cup of
tea)
• Write things down instead of trying to process them mentally
• Talk things through with someone you trust in a calm setting
• Take steps to address any muscle tension – maybe stretching if a massage is not
an option
• Sleep on it
Tool #9: Body-mind feedback
• Force your mind to be calmer and suppress your stress response by doing things that make
your body relax, such as breathing deeply or sitting down
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Channel Physical Responses

The chemical things that happen to you when you start to respond as if to threat can have
upsides. Adrenaline and increased blood sugar give you more energy. Your heart beats faster,
pumping blood around the body and giving your muscles more fuel. You take in more
oxygen, ready to use more in more strenuous activity. Your filters take a back seat as you
take in more information, aware at a deep level that all details could be crucial.
As we discussed, many of these responses are problematic in everyday situations, and one
way to address them is to fight back by calming your body and convincing your brain
there is no threat. But a different way is to lean into the changes, and harness them to
your advantage.
Nervous and fearful about that speech? Make it a high-energy one. Hyped-up because you
got into a row with a colleague? Work it off in a great gym session. Ultra-sensitive about
every detail of this important negotiation? Store all of the information and use it to your
advantage, either during the negotiation, or to ‘playback’ what happened later and learn from it.
Tool #10: Channel physical responses
• Channel the physical stress response and use its positive aspects to your advantage
• Try to make a habit of this, whenever it’s not possible to reduce the response
Goal Focus
Soldiers will always face a natural fear response, and one of the main ways to fight this that
their instructors drum into them is to focus on the mission. This helps because of how it
affects focus and avoids distraction.
Your unconscious brain is fantastic at filtering out irrelevant information. But what’s
irrelevant is subjective. When you’ve clearly articulated a goal, that goal plays a large part
in your filters. Anything connected to it is fast-tracked to the attention, while anything
unconnected is more likely to be ignored.
So, if you’ve set a goal that you really need to finish this chapter before lunchtime, you’ll
be less likely to be tempted to check your inbox. You’ll be less likely to be distracted by
worry about whether or not writing the book is the thing you should be doing right now,
or any fear or anxiety around it. In studies, people who articulate a clear goal perform
around 15% better than those who don’t.
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How you express your goals is also important. Goals that will help you get on and be
resilient to distraction and loss of focus are generally:
• Broken down into manageable chunks, starting with something you can do
straightaway
• Linked to something you care about personally, or a reward
• Expressed in a way that will leave no doubt as to when they’re done
Tool #11: Goal focus
• Set yourself a small number of clear goals for each day or week
• Express them positively in manageable chunks
• Link each to something you care about
Get More Information

A great way to deal with fear and anxiety is knowledge. If you encounter a new and threatening
situation, a large part of the threat comes from the unknown element. By researching or
asking questions about the threat, you are doing a few different things:
• Buying yourself time for your fight-flight-freeze response to abate

• Shifting towards ‘growth’ mode, where better problem-solving thinking is more
likely
• Giving yourself more resources on which to base rational decisions
• Increasing the chance of finding information that contradicts overly negative
interpretations of the situation, or irrational thinking patternsv
• Showing you’re more inquisitive than defensive (when you’re asking questions)
Remember, you’re not losing anything by showing curiosity. You can still retreat or refuse
at any time if you don’t like what you find out, but you’ll probably do so in a better, more
measured way.
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Tool #12: Get more information
• When feeling threatened in a new situation, ask questions or do research to get more
information, buying yourself time and giving you a better chance of making good choices
Set Your Intentions

A reactive day is not often a resilient one. If you’re constantly on the back foot, responding
as you go to what happens to you, you’re likely to be influenced by others’ agendas and by
chance events. The unconscious filters that affect how you interact with each new experience
are ‘set’ by your first experiences of the day, or by whatever grabs your attention most. This
means biases and inappropriate mental shortcuts can set in more easily.
Thinking back to some of the ways instinct can work against you, this:
• Makes your fight-flight-freeze reaction more likely kick in

• Leaves your mental filters to chance and increases the chance you’ll focus on the
wrong thing
• Leaves more to your unconscious brain, even with important things that need
your attention
• Reduces your control of what you want to prioritise and focus on
By contrast, an intentional day is one where you start out by setting intentions as to how
you’ll behave that day, what you’ll prioritise and look out for, and what’s most important
to you. This goes beyond goals to behaviours, values and focus. If you make a habit of
setting your intentions for each day—it needn’t take more than a couple of minutes—you
wrest back control of the day and dictate to your brain:
• What to focus on
• What’s less important and can be filtered out
• What’s important enough that you should engage your conscious brain directly
• What behaviour patterns and biases you want to recognise and avoid
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Tool #13: Set your intentions
• Make a commitment to yourself to start each day intentionally by making a few notes of
what to focus on or look out for, what to avoid or ignore, and what behaviours in yourself
to aim for or avoid
Work with Others

Why do people have personal trainers rather than a plan from a website or book? Why do
people see counsellors rather than sit with pen and paper? Why do people have meetings
rather than issue edicts by email?
When you work with others, you have to justify and explain your choices. When working
alone, you can rationalise away all of your biases and instinctive responses. But when you
work or consult with somebody you trust, they can challenge your thinking and push you
to think better, decide better, be better. Even before they actively challenge what you say,
you may adjust your actions because you know they’ll be subject to scrutiny.
Tool #14: Work with others
• For projects or situations where you feel your resilience may be affected by instinctive
reactions, choose trusted people to work with, or to share progress with
Negative Thinking Patterns

I introduced the idea of negative, unproductive thinking patterns, when I reviewed explanatory
style and the idea of seeing things as too personal, permanent or pervasive. We can think
of such patterns as semi-automatic responses, but ones we can do something about.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) looks at our negative thinking patterns and how to
unpick them. It’s a systematic, science-based approach to looking at the links between how
you think and how you behave. It contains many techniques, many of which can be very
useful for anyone, not just people who may feel they ‘need’ therapy. One of the core sets of
techniques is around reviewing and addressing unproductive thinking patterns. The below
table gives an idea of some of the most common types of negative thinking pattern, and
what you can do about them.
38
Thinking Pattern Example What you can do
Catastrophising: thinking ‘I’m going to completely Think of all the possible

that things will turn out the mess up that date, and she outcomes, good and bad,
worst possible way and all her friends will laugh and put the catastrophe in
at me’ perspective – it’s only one
possibility
All-or-nothing thinking: ‘I smoked a cigarette, so I Be realistic about how

thinking that as soon as failed at giving up and may perfect you can be; build
something isn’t perfect, it’s as well start up fully again’ some room for minor
awful failures into your goals and
intentions
Fortune-telling: thinking you ‘I’d like to go for that new Test out your predictions,
know how things will turn out job, but I’d just mess up the and notice that, while some
(usually badly) interview’ may come true, they don’t
all.
Mind-reading: thinking ‘She didn’t come to my Think of all the possible

you know what others are birthday drinks – she thinks reasons behind what you see,
thinking (usually bad things I’m a bore and would rather to give yourself perspective
about you) wash her hair’ – what you fear is only one
possibility
Labelling: thinking of people ‘I’m such a klutz, always Think about how complex
(including yourself) in terms knocking everything over’ they or you, like any human,
of labels instead of seeing or ‘He’s such a bully, always really are, and about how
the whole, complex person getting his own way’ blunt and inaccurate labels
can be
Low frustration tolerance: ‘I can’t handle this job; it’s Remind yourself that you can
getting quickly to the point too boring’ or ‘I can’t deal stand it. Weigh up the pros
where you feel you ‘can’t with his constant neediness’ and cons of your options,
bear it’ and make a conscious
choice.
Being demanding: thinking ‘I should get an A’ or ‘I must Watch your internal

too much in terms like never let anyone down’ or language; use ‘I want’ or ‘I’d
‘ought’, ‘should’ and ‘must’ ‘They ought to promote me’ like’ instead, and ask yourself
what’s reasonable to get
there
Emotional reasoning: ‘What he did really upset Give yourself time for your
forgetting that feelings are me. Therefore it was really feelings to subside; remind
just that, and believing they unforgivable and he’s a real yourself that not all feelings
indicate truth about the jerk’ need to be justified
world
Figure 4.3: Negative Thinking Patterns and CBT Solutions
39
Again, this is a huge area, and some of these solutions are easier to say than do, but the
first step is to recognise when one of these thinking patterns is something you often resort
to, with negative consequences. Once you realise that, you can resolve to work on it over
time. Many people find that it helps to write down a list of when the pattern happened and
why, so you can review it objectively as a pattern. Writing the events and your responses
down can give you some objectivity.
Tool #15: Fix negative thought patterns
• Make an effort to recognise negative thinking patterns

• When you notice a pattern, make a list of each time it happens and what prompted it
• Make an effort to step back from it and introduce more rational, balanced responses to
those situations
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DEVELOPING EMOTIONAL RESILIENCE Habits
5 HABITS
Exercise. Diet. Sleep habits. How you relax. These and more make up huge swathes of how
you spend your time. They create, to a large extent, who you are on a day-to-day basis.
And habits can be healthy or unhealthy in resilience terms. Habits can be trained, whether
they’re physical or mental, and can lead to greater resilience.
5.1 PHYSICAL HABITS

“Step right up! It’s the miracle cure we’ve all been waiting
for. It can reduce your risk of major illnesses, such as heart
disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and cancer by up to 50%
and lower your risk of early death by up to 30%.
It’s free, easy to take, has an immediate effect and you don’t
need a GP to get some. Its name? Exercise.”
– National Health Service Website
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Exercise
The benefits of exercise for physical health are very well-documented at this point. But it’s
less well-known that, because your brain and body are inextricably linked, there are a lot of
proven mental health benefits too. Exercise releases endorphins, inhibits the stress hormone
cortisol, and aids production of serotonin and dopamine, which can:
• Reduce depression
• Decrease anxiety
• Improve attention
• Improve memory
• Improve decision-making
• Enhance mood
• Increase self-esteem
• Increase energy levels
• Reduce the negative effects of stress
To realise these benefits, some studies recommend a moderate level of exercise for about 30
minutes each day for most adults. The UK’s National Health Service suggests 150 minutes
spread across the week. Moderate level exercise is anything that raises your heart rate, makes
you breathe faster and feel warmer. Brisk and sustained walking fits in this category (less so
leisurely strolling, although anything is better than the sofa). Vigorous exercise like sports
or running can count double-time (i.e. most adults should aim for 75 minutes per week
or 15 minutes per day).
Joining a gym can be great if you go. But many gym memberships gather dust together
with the best intentions that led to them. Work out what would fit best into your day.
Link it to something else you do (‘I’ll walk the long way to the station’; ‘I’ll take the stairs
instead of the lift’) or get an exercise partner to keep you motivated and honest. Try and
push yourself to do it even when you don’t feel like it, for at least a couple of months, after
which you may find it becomes a habit.
Tool #16: Exercise
• Make a commitment to a moderate level of exercise (brisk walking) for thirty minutes a day
or two hours a week
• Or to vigorously exercise (running or sports) for fiteen minutes a day or an hour and a
quarter each week
• Make a plan of when this will happen
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Sleep
Studies of driving performance have shown that sleep impairment can inhibit driving
ability as much as a blood alcohol level of 0.05%, which could land you a drink-driving
conviction in some countries. Most of us have experienced the fatigue, irritability and loss
of focus that come from a bad night’s sleep. But we routinely ignore or explain away the
more subtle effects that build up when we regularly get too little sleep. Sleep professionals
talk about a sleep debt that we build up over time, which can lead to:
• Poor decision-making
• Tiredness and fatigue
• Irritability
• Loss of focus
• Difficulty in concentrating
• Depression
• Anxiety
Most adults need about eight hours a night, with a reasonable number also working well
with anywhere down to seven. Some few need less than this, but this is rare. The important
thing is to find out how many hours leave you feeling well-rested and ready for the day, and
make a positive effort to achieve this target. Some ways recommended by sleep hygienists:
1. Try to keep a regular sleep schedule with regular sleeping and waking times
2. Wind down before sleep: turn off devices, write a to-do list to ‘park’ concerns,
do relaxing activities such as reading or light yoga
3. Make your bedroom a sleep-friendly place: invest in a good mattress and
curtains/blinds, ban phones and devices, and keep it just for sleep and relaxing
activities like sex and intimacy
4. Avoid alcohol and caffeine, especially in the evenings
5. If you struggle to get the right amount of sleep, keep a sleep diary to look for
patterns in what you did differently on good and bad sleep days
Tool #17: Improve your sleep habits
• Review your sleep patterns and habits

• If you get less than eight hours sleep regularly, or find yourself feeling tired in the day, make
a sleep improvement plan
• Focus on behaviours and habits that encourage good sleep
43
Hydration
The brain needs water to work properly. When we don’t drink enough water, our brains
react with cortisol—the same chemical we use to prompt stress responses in threat situations.
This can make it difficult to think clearly. Decision-making gets worse. We find it harder to
focus. And it gets harder to respond thoughtfully and with resilience to difficult situations.
Keeping hydrated is one of the simplest things you can do to reduce stress levels and be
more resilient moment-by-moment. It’s body-dependent, but an average adult need around
six to eight glasses of water per day. So, carry a water bottle. Drink before you get thirsty
(if you’re thirsty, you’re already dehydrated). Drink little and often, and substitute water
for fizzy drinks.
Tool #18: Hydrate
• Carry a water bottle and resolve to drink its contents 2-3 times over every day
Diet
Diet is a very individual thing, and what’s right for you depends on your physical make-up,
so be careful not to take any dietary advice as universal. But everybody can benefit from
being aware of what they eat and making conscious choices that make their lives better.
What and when you eat can have a huge impact on your stress levels and your mental
functioning through the day. Most people resent being told how to eat, and find it hard to
make big changes in their diet all at once, so try to slowly move away from foods or eating
habits that damage your energy levels and increase stress, and towards healthier alternatives.
Some important ideas to start you off:
Eat breakfast: It’s important. When you skip it or just have

coffee, you make it harder to maintain good blood sugar
levels and energy. Good breakfast choices are things like
eggs for protein, and slow-release carbs like wholegrain
bread and oats.
Eat complex carbs: carbohydrates release serotonin, which

helps with mood. But many carbs are burnt off very quickly
by your body, so give only a quick boost. Complex carbs
release their energy over a longer period. Good choices
include whole-grain bread, pasta and oats.
44
Choose foods that help energy and stress levels: research

into nutrition can seem complex and confusing, but if you
focus on these two factors, patterns emerge. Good choices
include bananas, avocados, nuts and seeds, citrus fruits,
milk, fish, lean meat and chicken, eggs and leafy greens.
Avoid sugary snacks and processed foods: These release all

their energy quickly, leaving you to crash afterwards. White
bread, biscuits, chocolate, sweets and foods with added
sugar can fall into this category. There’s hidden sugar in a
lot of tinned food and processed or packaged food, too.
Buy well: Most of us have a mild sugar addiction. If you

reach into your fridge or desk drawer and see a chocolate
bar and an apple, it can be hard to choose the apple. But
if the apple is all that’s there, things get much easier. Stock
your home and office with only good choices.
Remember, it’s hard to change your eating habits. If there’s something in the world more
often started and then cast aside than diets, I don’t know what it is. It’s easier and more
sustainable—for most people—to make small improvements to begin with, or even to just
become aware of what you’re eating. Just getting used to reading food labels to look at the
sugar content, or going to a shop that generally stocks healthier options instead of, say, a
frozen food store, can start to make a difference.
Tool #19: Review your diet
• Keep a diary of what you eat

• Make a commitment to small, step-by-step improvements
• Always have one thing you're improving at any given time
5.2 BEHAVIOURS AND ROUTINES
Breaks and Working Hours

Many countries have a culture of presenteeism. What’s important is that you’re at the office.
For a good amount of time. Getting there early and leaving late is smiled on, the reverse
frowned on. Breaks are luxuries. A sandwich at your desk for lunch is the norm. But when
you fail to take breaks and work long hours, you just get less and less productive, and often
less and less happy.
45
Think about it. It’s three hours since your last break. You just need to get this piece of
work done. But you’re slowing down. You’re making more mistakes, having to go back
and correct them. When the piece of work is done, you’ll maybe get it back with more
comments needing more changes, taking more time.
Meanwhile, you’ve taken a very quick break after finally finishing it and moved onto the
next piece, but you’re finding it difficult to focus and are getting distracted easily by all
those annoying email pop-ups. You’re entering the last hour of the day now and very little
real work gets done as you jump from one thing to another, finding it difficult to make
progress with any of them.
In an alternate reality, you took a good, fifteen-minute break a couple of hours into the
piece of work. You got up and stretched your legs. You had a drink. While you were
walking between the kitchen and your desk, even though you’d stopped thinking about
work, an idea occurred to you about how you could put the next tab of the spreadsheet
together easier and quicker.
You returned to your desk with more energy and more focus. You’d lost fifteen minutes of work,
but that was work at the old unfocused, fatigued level, and you make it up easily by attacking
things with more motivation and energy. Your new idea alone saves you twenty minutes,
and your boss congratulates you on how accurate the work is, with minimal edits needed.
It doesn’t always go exactly like this, in either the break-taking or the non-break versions of
reality. But study after study has shown that regular breaks improve productivity, learning,
motivation, creativity, well-being, memory and a host of other important functions. Many
of the issues that test your resilience may well stem from the pressure to perform well at
work. Work smarter instead of working harder to live up to that pressure.
Everyone should:
• Take a break at least every 90 minutes if possible, every two hours at worst
• Take breaks and lunches away from their desk or workstation
• Take care not to make a habit of long hours, day after day
If you’re worried that the above may get you labelled as anything less than a hard worker,
focus on the output and the results. Tell your manager and anyone who’ll listen that you’re
focused on results, and so you’re going to work smarter to achieve them.
46
Tool #20: Manage your working time
• Resolve to take a break every ninety minutes

• Set a timer and stick to it
• Fix your leaving time from work when you arrive, and stick to it
The Pomodoro Technique

An extra tool I just have to recommend here is the Pomodoro Technique, a productivity
hack developed by Francisco Cirillo. The idea is to focus intensely on one task for twenty-
five minutes. If anything interrupts you during that time or you have any sudden impulses
to do or remember something else, you simply make a note to follow it up after the period
ends, and carry on with your task.
Then, after the twenty-five minutes, you get five minutes ‘licence’ to do other things, such
as following up on those interruptions, or checking your email, or getting up to grab a
drink. Then, another twenty-five minute focus period starts. You do this four times for a
total of two hours, and then have a longer break.
The idea behind it is that you can get far more done in that uninterrupted twenty-five
minutes than if you’re procrastinating or getting distracted all the time. But the other stuff
can get done in the five-minute periods, so you aren’t worrying it will get forgotten about,
or getting fatigued at too much hard focus.
It won’t work with all work or sets of demands, but like many people, I found the Pomodoro
technique a revelation. I feel more productive and focused, and get more done, both big
projects and little tasks, when I use it, and this helps my sense of well-being.
Tool #21: Focus with Pomodoro
• Download a Pomodoro Timer app for your phone or access one of the many website-based
ones
• Give it a try for a day
47
Mindfulness
Mindfulness came to fame through Buddhism, but it’s moved way beyond monks and
temples now. It’s used by the US Army and Google. MRI scans have shown that it heightens
activity in the areas of the brain concerned with the slow, deliberate, conscious thinking, and
reduces activity in animal, reflex areas. Studies show that it helps us think more analytically,
exert self-control and focus better. Also, that it improves people’s sense of well-being and
energy, and improves emotional resilience.
You don’t have to go on a meditation retreat to practice mindfulness these days, either. Apps
such as the incredibly popular Headspace or the free Insight Timer make it easy to practice
guided mindfulness before breakfast, or on your headphones on the commute. Sessions can
be as short as three minutes.
Simply, mindfulness is focus. Shutting out the speed and bustle of the world and focusing
on one thing – often the breath, or a concept you want to ponder. Much of the trick of
it is noticing when your mind wanders and gently bringing your attention back to the
desired object.
Many people practice mindfulness through meditation – by closing the eyes and literally
shutting out the world, but the two don’t have to go together. Any time you take a few
moments and detach from the normal speed of life to focus on one thing, you’re practicing
something like mindfulness. Many people find that, once they’ve started with guided
meditation, they’re able to be more mindful in snatched moments throughout the day.
It’s difficult to explain the impacts it has on you if you’ve never tried it. Speaking personally,
after trying Headspace’s free sample course, I was hooked. I found it easier to focus immediately
after each session, and after doing a few days in a row, I found myself better able to shrug
off setbacks and re-centre myself on what was important at any time.
Tool #22: Mindfulness
• Try a mindfulness course today, by downloading Headspace, Insight Timer, or a similar app
• How does it make you feel?
• Can you feel any difference after a week of daily practice?
48
Lifelong Learning
A 2004 study by Cathie Hammond at the University of London found that people who
continued actively learning throughout their lives:
• Improved their sense of well-being

• Were better able to cope with stress
• Reported a better sense of purpose and hope
• Gained more skills and competencies
• Had better social lives
• Had fewer mental health issues
• Recovered better from mental health issues
Lifelong learning means different things to different people. It could mean an adult education
course, an evening class, a subscription to BookBoon or Audible, attending seminars and
lectures, or signing up with any one of the many online learning options available. With
apps and audiobooks, learning can even happen in blocks of five minutes on your commute,
so nobody ‘doesn’t have the time’.
What’s more important than qualifications or grades is that you’re learning something
interesting and relevant to you, in a way that fits with your lifestyle.
Tool #23: Lifelong learning
• If you’re not actively engaged in a course or learning opportunity right now, find one that’s
right for you and sign up
• As soon as it’s finished, plan your next one
49
DEVELOPING EMOTIONAL RESILIENCE Relations
6 RELATIONS
You are not an island. The people around you—friends, family, colleagues and those who
provide professional services—are your support network. How we grow, maintain and lean
on that network is crucial to resilience. People you will never meet can also be part of it,
as role models. The part others play in your life is the final piece in the resilience puzzle.
6.1 THE IMPORTANCE OF SUPPORT NETWORKS

Evidence is everywhere for the idea that support networks are important for resilience. Strong
social connections are linked with better mental health, fewer physical health problems and
lower mortality (Eisenberger, 2013). They reduce the chances of depression and improve
recovery from depression and trauma (King, 1998). Those who feel supported tend to feel
more confident and in control, and they behave more healthily, avoid unnecessary risks,
use better coping strategies, and see stressful events as more surmountable (Holahan, 1995;
Rozanski, Blumenthal and Kaplan, 1999).
50
6.2 GROWING YOUR SUPPORT NETWORK

Social scientists have developed a number of questions designed to help us measure our
social networks. Things like:
• ‘Do you have people you could count on to help you if you’d just been fired or
expelled?’
• ‘Do you have people who would help you if a close family member died?’
• ‘Are you carefully listened to and understood by family members and friends?’
• ‘Do you have people you can spend time with who make you feel better when
you’re down?’
• ‘Do you have somebody you can go to when you need good advice?’
• ‘Do you have people you could discuss even difficult or personal problems with?’
If you find yourself tending towards ‘no’ or ‘not really’ in answer to some of those questions,
you probably need to spend time growing and improving the quality of your support network.
But making new connections can be tough. Where? How? And the fear of new social
situations and rejection can also inhibit us. Maintaining connections can also be difficult.
Maybe you had people who would’ve made you answer ‘yes’ to some of the above, but you
left it too long between calls or messages, or they just seemed to drift out of your life. Such
relationships are rarely unsalvageable, though.
No matter how daunting, the important thing is to take steps. Small steps at first. But make
it a conscious choice to grow and develop your network. You could, for instance:
• Look for opportunities to socialise with colleagues

• Make an effort to remember colleagues’ interests and ask about them
• Offer a kind word or an opportunity to talk to anyone around you who is down
• Call that family member you haven’t spoken to for a while
• Be more active on social media and look for opportunities to develop the best
friendships
• Enrol in a face-to-face course
• Join a book club
• Join a sports or interest group
• Get involved in local community or church events
• Join a committee at work
All of these will be more difficult for you if you feel your confidence or social skills are less
developed than others’, but you don’t have to be great or a natural at these things. Fear
of rejection or of embarrassment can be paralysing, but ask yourself: is it worse than the
alternative, given how important we’ve said social networks are?
51
6.3 IMPROVING THE QUALITY OF YOUR NETWORK

Great support networks move things beyond small talk to being able to talk about things
that matter to you, and feeling closer to people as a result. Most people find that this comes
with time and exposure. So quality is partly a question of building on the initial steps and
deepening relationships. Many people find it easier (as well as personally rewarding and
fulfilling) to give first, before asking, for support. So, look for opportunities to give people
the kind of support you may need some day from them.
Tool #24: Grow and deepen your network
• Take conscious, deliberate steps to make new connections

• Make the effort to re-establish old ones
• Deepen your existing connections through time, exposure, and giving
But also, we are social animals and we’re influenced by those around us. Social psychologists
Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler found in 2011 that:
• Students who have studious room-mates study more

• Restaurant diners who sit next to heavy eaters eat more
• People with happy friends are happier
• People with a friend who stops smoking are more likely to stop smoking
They also found many other similar influences. Our choice of companionship influences
our habits, behaviours and thoughts. Who you surround yourself with matters. I’m not
suggesting you get cynical about it and rate all potential friends and associates on how good
an influence they’ll be, but we all make small decisions every day about who to spend time
with, who to make an effort to keep in touch with, and which relationships to put effort into.
Tool #25: Cultivate your best relationships
• Review who you spend time with, inside and outside work
• Ask yourself: who makes you feel best? Who influences your behaviour for the better?
• Cultivate those relationships with time and effort
52
DEVELOPING EMOTIONAL RESILIENCE Making it Happen
7 MAKING IT HAPPEN
It would be really easy to nod and say ‘that sounds like a good idea’ at many parts of this
book, but then close it, get caught up in everyday habits, routines and demands on your
time, and forget about it, changing nothing. That’s because your habits are built up over
months and years. If you want to change the way you think or behave, you can’t just say,
‘okay, I’ll do it’. You have to put the hard work in. That’s one of the reasons I arranged
this book the way I did, with many practical tools scattered throughout.
7.1 THE COMPLETE TOOLKIT

All the tools, reproduced below in one place, are designed to be things you could start
doing now in easy steps. If you haven’t already, identify the two or three you’d like to start
with, and make a commitment to doing what it takes.
53
Expectations Tools
Tool #1: Review your explanatory style
• Look out for times when you explain things in a pessimistic style
• Check if you're personalising things, or making them overly permanent or pervasive
Tool #2: Reframing problems as solutions-seeking
• Every time you find yourself focusing on a problem and feeling bad about it, reframe it with
a focus on seeking a solution or way to make the situation better
Tool #3: Gratitude/achievement list
• Make a gratitude and/or achievement list regularly, to make sure you don't take the good
for granted
Tool #4: Positive attention focus
• At the start of each day, make a commitment to look out for the positive things that happen
• Try general (positive things) or specific (e.g. kindness in others)
Tool #5: Positive self-talk
• Recognise when your negative inner voice is sapping your resilience

• Talk positively to yourself to counterbalance it
Compass Tools
Tool #6: Work on your moral courage
• Work through the 'Kidder three-step process', self-assessing values and beliefs and
performance against them before discussing with others and deciding the way forward
Tool #7: Vulnerability
• Watch Brené Brown's TED Talk on vulnerability, or her Netflix show

• Ask whether you could open yourself up more, to be stronger
54
Responses Tools
Tool #8: Circles of influence
• Draw a diagram of your circles of influence and concern

• List your options about the things you can influence and choose one
• Try to let go of active worrying about what's outside your influence
Tool #9: Body-mind feedback
• Force your mind to be calmer and suppress your stress response by doing things that make
your body relax, such as breathing deeply or sitting down
Tool #10: Channel physical responses
• Channel the physical stress response and use its positive aspects to your advantage
• Try to make a habit of this, whenever it’s not possible to reduce the response
Tool #11: Goal focus
• Set yourself a small number of clear goals for each day or week
• Express them positively in manageable chunks
• Link each to something you care about
Tool #12: Get more information
• When feeling threatened in a new situation, ask questions or do research to get more
information, buying yourself time and giving you a better chance of making good choices
Tool #13: Set your intentions
• Make a commitment to yourself to start each day intentionally by making a few notes of
what to focus on or look out for, what to avoid or ignore, and what behaviours in yourself
to aim for or avoid
Tool #14: Work with others
• For projects or situations where you feel your resilience may be affected by instinctive
reactions, choose trusted people to work with, or to share progress with
Tool #15: Fix negative thought patterns
• Make an effort to recognise negative thinking patterns

• When you notice a pattern, make a list of each time it happens and what prompted it
• Make an effort to step back from it and introduce more rational, balanced responses to
those situations
55
Habits Tools
Tool #16: Exercise
• Make a commitment to a moderate level of exercise (brisk walking) for thirty minutes a day
or two hours a week
• Or to vigorously exercise (running or sports) for fiteen minutes a day or an hour and a
quarter each week
• Make a plan of when this will happen
Tool #17: Improve your sleep habits
• Review your sleep patterns and habits

• If you get less than eight hours sleep regularly, or find yourself feeling tired in the day, make
a sleep improvement plan
• Focus on behaviours and habits that encourage good sleep
Tool #18: Hydrate
• Carry a water bottle and resolve to drink its contents 2-3 times over every day
Tool #19: Review your diet
• Keep a diary of what you eat

• Make a commitment to small, step-by-step improvements
• Always have one thing you're improving at any given time
Tool #20: Manage your working time
• Resolve to take a break every ninety minutes

• Set a timer and stick to it
• Fix your leaving time from work when you arrive, and stick to it
Tool #21: Focus with Pomodoro
• Download a Pomodoro Timer app for your phone or access one of the many website-based
ones
• Give it a try for a day
Tool #22: Mindfulness
• Try a mindfulness course today, by downloading Headspace, Insight Timer, or a similar app
• How does it make you feel?
• Can you feel any difference after a week of daily practice?
Tool #23: Lifelong learning
• If you’re not actively engaged in a course or learning opportunity right now, find one that’s
right for you and sign up
• As soon as it’s finished, plan your next one
56
Relations Tools
Tool #24: Grow and deepen your network
• Take conscious, deliberate steps to make new connections

• Make the effort to re-establish old ones
• Deepen your existing connections through time, exposure, and giving
Tool #25: Cultivate your best relationships
• Review who you spend time with, inside and outside work
• Ask yourself: who makes you feel best? Who influences your behaviour for the better?
• Cultivate those relationships with time and effort
7.2 FROM INTENTION TO ACTION

Making a commitment is great, but every January is littered with discarded of New Year’s
Resolutions that were made with fanfare and good intent. To make progress, you need a
plan of action. Take the two or three areas you’ve decided to start with, and ask yourself:
• Exactly when will I start them? What’s the first step?

• How can I make them fit in with my lifestyle? How can I make space for them?
• What might stop or distract me? How can I plan for this?
If you keep a calendar, put the actions in it. At the very least, set yourself a reminder to
review progress. If the action needs regular attention, put it in your diary as a recurring
action. If it’s something reactive (When x happens, I’ll do y), write a reminder to yourself
and review progress regularly. In short, do what you need to do to make it happen. Resolving
to do it is always much easier than actually doing it. Give yourself the best possible chance
by making a foolproof plan.
7.3 DAILY PRACTICE

You may find it easier to progress if you check in with yourself daily. At the start of the
day, it only takes a minute to ask yourself:
• ‘What do I want to put into action today?’

• ‘What dangers or opportunities should I look out for today?’.
57
You may find it the best-spent minute of your day if it leads to a chance to lock a resilience
habit or skill further into your routine.
And the end of the day, why not ask:
• ‘How did I do today?’

• ‘Did I do what I set out to in terms of improving my resilience?’
• ‘If not, what can I do better next time?’
Write your answers to the questions down: in your diary, in a notebook, in a note-taking
app. It doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t matter if you don’t make progress every day. What
matters is the daily focus. You may be surprised how much progress you can make if you
just think about it for a few moments each day.
7.4 GETTING HELP

It can be much easier to keep on track of commitments if you talk to others about them.
So, as well as noting progress down, enlist the help of trusted friends, family and colleagues
whenever you can. Tell them what you’re trying to do. Ask them to check in with you.
You could even nominate an ‘accountability partner’ if you know anybody else who is
making similar (or even unrelated) changes – accountability partners meet regularly to
discuss aims, and progress against them. Like an annual review at work, but you get to
completely set the agenda.
7.5 YOUR FIRST STEP

‘If you always do what you’ve always done, you always get
what you’ve always gotten.’
– Jessie Potter
It’s easy to decide not to make a change, or to defer deciding. Easy to slip easily back into
the unbroken rhythm of your days as they’ve always been. Decide on your first step to build
better resilience now. When you’ve done it, decide on your next.
Rinse. Repeat.
Good luck!
58

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Tool #1 Review your Explanatory Style

Tool #8 Circles of Influence

Tool #15 Fix Negative Thought Patterns

Tool #22 Mindfulness

1.1 DEFINITIONS OF RESILIENCE

Resilience is about how you respond to life’s difficulties

Resilience is about bouncing back from adversity

Resilience is made up of lots of different behaviours and approaches

Different stresses and difficulties call on resilience differently for all of us

Resilience can be learned

1.2 RESILIENCE IN ACTION

Case Study 1: Victor Frankl

Victor Frankl was held in concentration camps by Nazi

Frankl’s experiences in wartime remind us that through only

Case Study 2: Helen Keller

Helen Keller became blind and deaf before the age of

Her faith sustained her through many of her difficulties,

Case Study 3: J. K. Rowling

1.3 RESILIENCE FACTORS

2.1 BENEFITS OF A POSITIVE OUTLOOK

Figure 2.1: The Survival-Growth Spectrum

1. The ability to positively reframe challenges and find opportunity in adversity,

2.2 BARRIERS TO A POSITIVE OUTLOOK

As we noted in the last section, our hardwiring for danger

Maybe partly because of the above, bad news sells better

Attention Bias and Confirmation Bias

We all tend to build up an attention bias over our lives. We

We often believe our memories are like a video camera,

If we repeatedly experience bad things happening that

Clinical Depression, Anxiety and Related Factors

Thoughts and emotions are caused just as much by chemicals

2.3 YOUR EXPLANATORY STYLE

• Personal (whether we explain events by focusing on internal or external causes)

Aspect or scale Pessimistic end of scale Optimistic end of scale

Blames negative events on internal Explains negative events via

Explains positive events as Explains positive events as stable

Generalises negative events as Dismisses negative events as local

Figure 2.2: Pessimistic and Optimistic Explanatory Styles

Analysing your explanatory style

Tool #1: Review your explanatory style

Reframing Problems as Solution-Seeking

Great solution frames include:

• Focusing on strengths you could use

Tool #2: Reframing problems as solutions-seeking

2.4 OTHER TOOLS FOR MORE POSITIVE EXPECTATIONS

Tool #3: Gratitude/achievement list

Positive Attention Focus

• The good things about my actions/behaviour

Tool #4: Positive attention focus

Tool #5: Positive self-talk

• Recognise when your negative inner voice is sapping your resilience

3.1 MORALITY AND RESILIENCE

1. Actively identifying your core values

3.2 MEANING AND RESILIENCE

• What do I find fulfilling and worthwhile?

‘Life is asking me to fill the space in which I happen to

3.3 TOOLS FOR ALIGNING AND TRAINING YOUR COMPASS

Conscious Development of Moral Courage

Tool #6: Work on your moral courage

Tool #7: Vulnerability

• Watch Brené Brown's TED Talk on vulnerability, or her Netflix show

4.1 HOW INSTINCT WORKS AGAINST US

Figure 4.1: The Conscious and Unconscious brain