3 secrets of resilient people

You will need this since your doctors and therapists HAVE NOTHING THAT WILL GET YOU 100% RECOVERED. You would think they would be responsible for that but ask them and you will get excuses and the tyranny of low expectations.

This is a great TED talk.

3 secrets of resilient people

So number one, resilient people get that shit happens. They know that suffering is part of life. This doesn't mean they actually welcome it in, they're not actually delusional. Just that when the tough times come, they seem to know that suffering is part of every human existence. And knowing this stops you from feeling discriminated against when the tough times come. Never once did I find myself thinking, "Why me?" In fact, I remember thinking, "Why not me? Terrible things happen to you, just like they do everybody else. That's your life now, time to sink or swim." The real tragedy is that not enough of us seem to know this any longer. We seem to live in an age where we're entitled to a perfect life, where shiny, happy photos on Instagram are the norm, when actually, as you all demonstrated at the start of my talk, the very opposite is true.

Number two, resilient people are really good at choosing carefully where they select their attention. They have a habit of realistically appraising situations, and typically, managing to focus on the things that they can change, and somehow accept the things that they can't. This is a vital, learnable skill for resilience. As humans, we are really good at noticing threats and weaknesses. We are hardwired for that negative. We're really, really good at noticing them. Negative emotions stick to us like Velcro, whereas positive emotions and experiences seems to bounce off like Teflon.

Being wired in this way is actually really good for us, and served us well from an evolutionary perspective. So imagine for a moment I'm a cave woman, and I'm coming out of my cave in the morning, and there's a saber-toothed tiger on one side and a beautiful rainbow on the other. It kind of pays for my survival for me to notice this tiger. The problem is, we now live in an era where we are constantly bombarded by threats all day long, and our poor brains treat every single one of those threats as though they were a tiger. Our threat focus, our stress response, is permanently dialed up. Resilient people don't diminish the negative, but they also have worked out a way of tuning into the good.

Number three, resilient people ask themselves, "Is what I'm doing helping or harming me?" This is a question that's used a lot in good therapy. And boy, is it powerful. This was my go-to question in the days after the girls died. I would ask it again and again. "Should I go to the trial and see the driver? Would that help me or would it harm me?" Well, that was a no brainer for me, I chose to stay away. But Trevor, my husband, decided to meet with the driver at a later time. Late at night, I'd find myself sometimes poring over old photos of Abi, getting more and more upset. I'd ask myself, "Really? Is this helping you or is it harming you? Put away the photos, go to bed for the night, be kind to yourself."

Three strategies. Pretty simple. They're readily available to us all, anytime, anywhere. They don't require rocket science. Resilience isn't some fixed trait. It's not elusive, that some people have and some people don't. It actually requires very ordinary processes. Just the willingness to give them a go.