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

by Rick Hanson

Listen to the longings of your heart. As you go through your day, be mindful of your needs for: Safety. Notice when you feel uneasy, irritated, or overwhelmed. See if any beliefs that may not actually be true are making you anxious. When it feels right, shift into letting go and letting in, such as finding refuges and settling as best you can into a place of peace. Satisfaction. Be aware of any feelings of boredom, disappointment, frustration, or loss. After you’ve explored this experience, you could think of things you’re grateful for or glad about. See if you can find a sense of contentment. Connection. Notice when you feel hurt, resentment, envy, loneliness, or inadequacy. Then recall times when you felt cared about—and times when you felt friendly or caring yourself. Rest in love flowing in and flowing out.

When we experience that needs are sufficiently met, there is a sense of fullness and balance. The body and the mind default to their resting state, which I call the Responsive mode, or “green zone.” The body conserves its resources, refuels and repairs itself, and recovers from stress. In the mind, there is a sense of peace, contentment, and love—broad, umbrella terms related to our needs for safety, satisfaction, and connection. This is embodied well-being.

On the other hand, when we experience that a need is unmet, there is a sense of deficit and disturbance: something missing, something wrong. The body and the mind are agitated out of their resting state into the Reactive mode, or “red zone.” The body fires up into fight, flight, or freeze reactions, shaking up its immune, hormonal, cardiovascular, and digestive systems. In the mind, there is a sense of fear, frustration, and hurt—umbrella terms related to our needs for safety, satisfaction, and connection. This is stress, distress, and dysfunction.

The Reactive mode tears us down, while the Responsive mode builds us up. Adversity is certainly an opportunity to develop resilience, stress-hardiness, and even post-traumatic growth. But for a person to grow through adversity, there must also be Responsive resources present such as determination and sense of purpose.

Adversity is to be faced and learned from, but I think people sometimes overrate its value. On the whole, Reactive experiences make us more brittle and fragile over time, while Responsive experiences tend to make us more resilient.

The Reactive mode evolved to be a brief solution to immediate threats to survival—not a way of life. Unfortunately, while we’re no longer running from saber-toothed tigers, our modern multitasking, racing about, and frequent stresses keep pushing us into the red zone. Then it’s hard to leave due to what researchers call the brain’s negativity bias.

if ten things happen to you during a day at work or in a relationship, and nine of them are positive while one is negative, what do you tend to think about most? Probably the negative one. Pleasant, useful, beneficial experiences happen many times a day—enjoying a cup of coffee, getting something done at home or work, snuggling into bed with a good book at night—but they ordinarily pass through the brain like water through a sieve, while each stressful or harmful experience gets stuck to it. We’re designed to over-learn from bad experiences while under-learning from good ones.

Unlike our animal cousins, who learn from their close calls but don’t obsess about them, we tend to keep going over worries, resentments, and self-criticism: “So many things could go wrong.” “How dare they treat me that way?” “I am such an idiot!” The thoughts and feelings we have while ruminating change the brain just as other negative experiences do. Running these loops repeatedly is like running laps in soft dirt, deepening the track each time we go around it—which makes it easier to fall into negative rumination in the future.

stages of evolution have shaped the ways that the brain tries to meet our needs. Our only choice is how we meet our needs: from the green zone or the red zone, with an underlying sense of peace, contentment, and love, or with a sense of fear, frustration, and hurt.

LET BE Be mindful of when you are starting to feel pressured, uneasy, exasperated, frustrated, stressed, or upset. Be with the experience and explore its different parts. Label them to yourself: tense … worried … annoyed … sad. This will increase activity in the prefrontal cortex (the part of the brain behind your forehead), which will help with top-down self-control. Naming to yourself what you are experiencing will also decrease activity in the amygdala—which functions like an alarm bell in the brain—and help you calm down.

Let feelings flow. As appropriate, cry, yell, grumble with a sympathetic friend, or simply sense that anxiety, irritation, and hurt are draining out of you. Be skeptical of the assumptions, expectations, or beliefs that made you worried, stressed, frustrated, or angry.

LET IN Start letting in whatever helps you feel that your needs are being met. Tune into a sense of determination and capability inside. Give yourself some pleasure: wash your hands in warm water, eat an apple, or listen to music. Pleasure releases natural opioids that soothe and settle the brain’s stress machinery. Think of things you feel grateful for or glad about, things that bring a little smile.

Most people experience the Responsive mode many times a day, but usually blow right by it before it has a chance to sink in. So look for opportunities to feel like your needs are being met. For example, while inhaling, notice that there is plenty of air to breathe. At least in this moment, you are safe enough—moment after moment after moment. As you finish one task or another—an email sent, a child’s hair brushed, a car’s gas tank filled up—stay with the sense of satisfaction. When someone smiles at you or you remember a person you love, keep feeling connected. Be mindful of green zone experiences, value them, and stay with them. Let them into yourself, taking half a dozen seconds or longer to help them begin hardwiring their way into your brain.

When faced with a challenge, be mindful of which particular need—for safety, satisfaction, or connection—is at stake. Deliberately call upon your inner strengths related to meeting these specific needs,

If you’re like most people, it’s the negative that stands out. Because of the brain’s negativity bias, painful and harmful experiences move to the front of awareness, while enjoyable and useful ones fade into the background. This may have short-term benefits in harsh conditions, but over time it causes much wear and tear on your body and mind. In effect, the brain is tilted toward survival but against long-term health and well-being.

Our experiences are built from five elements, and each element is a type of jewel you can weave into the fabric of your brain and your life. These elements are thoughts (e.g., beliefs, images), perceptions (e.g., sensations, sounds), emotions (feelings, moods), desires (e.g., values, intentions), and actions (the sense of posture, facial expressions, movement, or behavior).

Noticing enjoyable or useful thoughts, perceptions, emotions, desires, or actions that are already occurring is the primary way to have a beneficial experience. The experience is here, and it’s authentic and real. Why not gain something from it?

Additionally, you could create beneficial experiences, such as getting some exercise or thinking about someone who likes you. There are several ways to create these kinds of experiences. First, look for good facts. These are the things that support your well-being and welfare—and often that of others. You can find them in many places, including your current situation, recent events, ongoing conditions, the past, and the lives of others. You can also find good facts inside yourself; consider your talents, skills, and good intentions. You can even find them in hard times, such as seeing the kindness of others as you go through a loss. Second, produce good facts by taking action. For example, you could do something as simple as shifting in a chair to feel more comfortable. Or you could make something good happen in a relationship, such as by listening carefully to someone.

Once you’ve found a good fact, turn the recognition of it into an embodied experience. Know that the fact is really true; give yourself a sense of conviction about it and trust in it. Be aware of your sensations as you recognize the fact, with a sense of softening and opening in your body. Tune into your feelings and allow the experience to be emotionally rich.

Third, directly evoke a positive experience, such as relaxing at will, calling up a sense of determination, or letting go of a resentment. Because of experience-dependent neuroplasticity, repeatedly having and internalizing a particular experience in the past makes it easier and easier to evoke it in the present. It’s like being able to push a button on your inner jukebox and quickly get the song of a useful experience playing in your mind, since you’ve recorded it again and again.

Think of something—a fact—that you are glad about. It could be small or large, in the present or in the past. It could be a thing, an event, an ongoing condition, or a relationship. It could be a spiritual being or the entire universe. Be aware of your body and open to gladness … gratitude … comfort … happiness. There could be an easing of tension, a letting go of stress or disappointment. Explore different elements of the experience. Be aware of thoughts such as “I’m fortunate” … perceptions, especially body sensations … emotions like delight or quiet joy … desires, perhaps to give thanks … and actions such as a soft smile.

the essence of installation is simple: enrich the experience and absorb it. In your mind, enriching an experience means keeping it going and feeling it fully, while absorbing it feels like receiving it into yourself. In your brain, enriching is a matter of heightening a particular pattern of mental/neural activity, while absorbing involves priming, sensitizing, and increasing the efficiency of the brain’s memory-making machinery.

There are five ways to enrich an experience: 1. Lengthen it. Stay with it for five, ten, or more seconds. The longer that neurons fire together, the more they tend to wire together. Protect the experience from distractions, focus on it, and come back to it if your mind wanders. 2. Intensify it. Open to it and let it be big in your mind. Turn up the “volume” as it were by breathing more fully or getting a little excited. 3. Expand it. Notice other elements of the experience. For example, if you’re having a useful thought, look for related sensations or emotions. 4. Freshen it. The brain is a novelty detector, designed to learn from what’s new or unexpected. So look for what’s interesting or different about an experience. Imagine that you are having it for the very first time. 5. Value it. We learn from what is personally relevant. Be aware of why the experience is important to you, why it matters, and how it could help you.

You can increase the absorption of an experience in three ways: 1. Intend to receive it. Consciously choose to take in the experience. 2. Sense it sinking into you. You could imagine that the experience is like a warm soothing balm or a jewel being placed in the treasure chest of your heart. Give over to it, allowing it to become a part of you. 3. Reward yourself. Tune into whatever is pleasurable, reassuring, helpful, or hopeful about the experience. Doing this will tend to increase the activity of two neurotransmitter systems—dopamine and norepinephrine—that will flag the experience as a “keeper” for long-term storage.

This is not about holding on to experiences. The stream of consciousness is constantly changing, so trying to cling to anything in it is both doomed and painful. But you can gently encourage whatever is beneficial to arise and stick around and sink in—even as you are letting go of it.

Bring to mind someone you naturally care about, such as a friend, child, partner, or pet. Help yourself have a sense of warmth, liking, appreciation, compassion, or love. Once you are having an experience of caring, start to enrich it. Lengthen it by disengaging from distractions and coming back to it if your mind wanders; keep it going breath after breath. Open to this experience, letting it fill you, becoming more intense. Expand it by exploring different aspects of caring: thoughts … sensations … emotions … desires … actions (such as putting a hand on your heart). Bring an attitude of curiosity to help the experience stay fresh and vivid. Consider how the sense of caring could be important for you, relevant, and valuable. Then focus on absorbing it. Consciously intend to receive this experience into yourself. Sense these warm feelings spreading inside, becoming a part of you. Look for what feels good about being caring: how it is enjoyable, heart-opening, and rewarding. Sink into caring as it sinks into you.

These are major mental resources for the basic needs, and we’ll explore each one of them in these pages: Safety: being on your own side, determination, grit, sense of agency, feeling protected, clarity about threats, feeling all right right now, calm, relaxation, peace Satisfaction: gratitude, gladness, pleasure, accomplishment, clarity about goals, enthusiasm, passion, motivation, aspiration, feeling of enough-ness already, contentment Connection: compassion for others and oneself, empathy, kindness, self-worth, skillful assertiveness, forgiveness, generosity, love

To repeat, you can enrich the experience by staying with it, letting it fill your mind, opening to it in your body, exploring what could be fresh or new about it, and recognizing what is relevant or important about it.

The remnants of the past affect you in the present, and you can use Linking to reduce and even replace them. When negative material is reactivated from memory stores, it becomes unstable and open to positive material that’s also present in awareness. Then the negative material goes through a neural process of reconsolidation that can incorporate those positive influences.

FEEL IT Next, if you feel comfortable doing so, you could have a felt sense of the negative, such as some loss and mourning from losing a parent. Remember to keep this material smaller, dimmer, and less active than what’s positive in awareness. If the negative starts to draw you in, refocus on the positive. GO INTO IT Last, you could imagine or sense that the positive is contacting and penetrating the negative material. This is the most intense way to engage it; consequently, it may be the most effective, but it is also the riskiest. So be careful and pull attention away from the negative if it’s too much for you.

When you do Linking, be resourceful and creative. Stay on your own side, helping whatever is beneficial to prevail in your mind. Use your imagination and go with your intuition. For example, one time when I was doing Linking, an image came to me of waves of love lapping on the shore of my mind, with a rising tide.

exploring agency, the sense that you can make things happen rather than being helpless.

With agency, you are active rather than passive, taking initiative and directing your life rather than being swept along. Agency is central to grit, since without it a person can’t mobilize other internal resources for coping.

It typically takes many experiences of agency to compensate for a single experience of helplessness, another example of the brain’s negativity bias. To prevent helplessness in the first place or to gradually unlearn it, look for experiences in which you are making a choice or influencing an outcome. Then focus on and take into yourself the sense of being an active agent: a hammer rather than a nail. In particular, look for experiences in which there is a vigorous sense of making something happen or pushing something forward.

The less power we have “out there,” the more important it is to exercise agency “in here.” When you make deliberate choices inside your mind, try to recognize that fact and register the feeling of being the chooser.

We may not be able to directly create something we want, but we can still encourage the underlying processes that will bring it into being. Knowing this brings a sense of both responsibility and peace.

Take some time to consider major areas of your life, such as health and relationships, and look for simple realistic things you could do that would cause them to improve. For example, it might make a real difference to have a solid breakfast, stand up from your desk at least once an hour, and get to sleep at a reasonable time most nights. Slowing down and just listening to a friend can help a relationship. Seemingly little things often cause big results.

Challenging things happen to every person, and determination is the steadfast fortitude we draw on to endure, cope with, and survive them.

Determination has four aspects to it: resolve, patience, persistence, and fierceness.

To get an embodied sense of what resolve feels like, think about times when you’ve been serious about a goal. What’s the look on your face when you are absolutely committed to something? When you mean business? There could be a gravity about you, a quality of steely intent. When you have an experience of resolve, stay with it for a dozen seconds or longer to help yourself become even more resolute and determined.

Patience might sound like a modest virtue, but it’s the essence of two primary factors in mental health and worldly success. The first is delay of gratification, the willingness to put off immediate rewards for the sake of a greater future reward. The second is distress tolerance, the capacity to endure a painful experience without making a bad thing worse,

What, inside yourself, could help you be more patient? You could focus on the feeling that you are still alive, still basically OK, even when you’re not getting what you want.

When you experience patience, use the Absorb step in HEAL to receive it into yourself, with a sense of actually becoming more patient. Try the Link step to hold both patience and frustration in your awareness, and to use patience to ease and calm any tense or irritated places inside.

It’s usually the small, undramatic, sustained efforts over time that make the most difference.

keep on leaning. Is there something important in your life that would be good to keep leaning into? Perhaps regular exercise, meditation, or gradually mending a relationship with a spouse or a teenager, one brief positive interaction at a time. You can accomplish big things by persisting with small actions.

Sometimes the most important things to persist with are your thoughts and feelings.

The sense of that fierce will to endure has stayed with me, and I’ve drawn on it many times. Paradoxically, just knowing that I can go there if need be has helped me turn the other cheek in certain situations, in effect using something feral to stay civilized.

Think of a good experience you’ve had of being fierce and strong, perhaps while standing up for someone, moving through wilderness, or handling an emergency. Imagine what it would feel like and how it might help to bring some of that determined intensity into a challenging situation today.

If a person doesn’t like his or her body, it’s harder to take good care of it; then vitality declines, and with it, grit and resilience. We need to accept, appreciate, and nurture the body, and treat it more like a friend than a disposable beast.

To have more acceptance of your body, start by bringing to mind some people you like and respect. How much does the way they look matter to you? Probably very little. Also think about meeting new people. How long does it take to get past how they look to a deeper sense of them? Probably less than a minute. We worry about what others are thinking about how we look, but usually they are thinking about it about as much as we are thinking about their appearance … not much at all! What does it feel like to know that how you look is not important to most people? What does it feel like to know that in fact how you look is just fine to them?