Resilient: How to Grow an Unshakable Core of Calm, Strength, and Happiness

by Rick Hanson

There’s a fundamental idea in psychology and medicine that the path your life takes depends on just three causes: how you manage your challenges, protect your vulnerabilities, and increase your resources.

You can’t always count on the world, other people, or even your own body. But you can count on durable inner strengths hardwired into your nervous system—and

True resilience fosters well-being, an underlying sense of happiness, love, and peace.

Changing your mind for the better means changing your brain for the better.

We all have needs. If they’re not met, it’s natural to feel stressed, worried, frustrated, and hurt, and to experience less well-being.

As you become more resilient, you’re more able to meet your needs in the face of life’s challenges, and greater well-being is the result.

Every human being has three basic needs—safety, satisfaction, and connection—that are grounded in our...

We meet our needs in four major ways: by recognizing what’s true, resourcing ourselves, regulating thoughts, feelings, and actions, and relating skillfully to others and the wider world.

If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? If not now, when? —Rabbi Hillel

Compassion is a psychological resource, an inner strength.

Think about what a typical day would be like if you were on your own side.

Who’s the one person you can affect the most? It’s yourself, both you in this moment and your future self: the person you will be in the next minute, week, or year.

As Leonard Cohen sang: “There is a crack in everything / That’s how the light gets in.”

Acceptance can sit alongside other reactions. For example, a person can be outraged by an injustice and accept that it’s a reality. Acceptance doesn’t mean complacency or giving up.

The whole self is like a big house, and not accepting all of who you are is like closing up some of its rooms:

What would it be like to open all the doors inside yourself?

Be aware of acceptance as an experience itself, an attitude or orientation toward things that sees without turning away, that receives without resisting. Let acceptance spread inside you.

If you’d like to be more motivated about certain things—such as exercising, eating healthy foods, or pushing through a tough project at work—focusing on what’s enjoyable about them will naturally draw you into doing them.

Enjoying life is a powerful way to care for yourself.

And no matter what is happening outside you, you can always find something to enjoy inside your own mind: maybe a private joke, an imagined experience, or recognizing your own warm heart.

There is a saying in Tibet: “If you take care of the minutes, the years will take care of themselves.”

What’s the most important minute in life? I think it’s the next one.

Little things add up over time. Many times a day, you can change your brain for the better.

The education of attention would be the education par excellence. —William James

Your nervous system is designed to be changed by your experiences—the technical term for this is experience-dependent neuroplasticity—and your experiences depend on what you’re paying attention to.

you—the person you are—gradually become what your attention rests upon.

We live in a revved-up, media-bombarding, multitasking, stimulation-chasing culture.

Mindfulness is the key to regulating your attention so that you get the most out of beneficial experiences while limiting the impact of stressful, harmful ones.

With mindfulness, you are recollected rather than forgetful, collected and gathered together rather than scattered apart.

mindfulness itself does not try to change your experience or behavior. It is receptive and accepting, not judging or directing.

Mindfulness is a kind of mental muscle, and you can strengthen it by making it a regular part of daily life.

In a sense, your attention is your property. As best you can, don’t let other people or the rushing world around you take it from you without your permission.

I think the best meditation is the one that a person will actually, consistently, do.

A refuge is anything that protects, nurtures, or uplifts you.

For many people, the sense of something sacred or divine is a profound refuge.

there is the key refuge of having faith in whatever is good inside yourself.

It’s like standing inside a sheltered place looking out at a storm. Eventually the storm will pass, as all experiences do, and the peaceful intact core of you will remain.

First, you can be with what’s there. Feel the feelings, experience the experience, the bitter as well as the sweet.

Second, you can decrease the negative—whatever is painful or harmful—by preventing, reducing, or ending it.

Third, you can increase the positive—whatever is enjoyable or beneficial—by creating, growing, or preserving it.

Imagine that your mind is a garden. You can tend to it in three ways: observe it, pull weeds, and plant flowers.

Try to accept your experience as it is without resisting it, even if it’s uncomfortable.

Challenge beliefs that are exaggerated or untrue by thinking of reasons why they are wrong.

Focus on thoughts that are accurate and useful, replacing those that are wrong and harmful.

sometimes things are just really hard and the most you can do is simply bear them.

at the bottom of every want is a healthy need.

Wanting is fundamental and inescapable. Consequently, a deepening awareness of your wants and needs—and your thoughts and feelings about them—can help you meet them more effectively and accept yourself more fully.

We need safety,

We need satisfaction,

We need connection,