The Stress-Proof Brain Quotes

“When outcomes are uncertain, most of us spend a great deal of energy ruminating, worrying, and second-guessing ourselves. Not only is this a waste of time, but it makes us less likely to succeed”
― Melanie Greenberg, The Stress-Proof Brain: Master Your Emotional Response to Stress Using Mindfulness and Neuroplasticity

“Positive emotions and mental states may make people more resilient to stress, like sturdy tree branches that bend but don’t break when battered by a storm”
― Melanie Greenberg, The Stress-Proof Brain: Master Your Emotional Response to Stress Using Mindfulness and Neuroplasticity

“When we begin to feel stressed, we create mental stories of worry and regret that compound our mental suffering. We get caught up in negative beliefs about ourselves, regrets about the past, or worries about the future, taking us out of the present moment”
― Melanie Greenberg, The Stress-Proof Brain: Master Your Emotional Response to Stress Using Mindfulness and Neuroplasticity

“The skill of mindfulness allows you to remain grounded in the present moment even when you face difficult stressors, so that your stressful feelings feel more manageable..”
― Melanie Greenberg, The Stress-Proof Brain: Master Your Emotional Response to Stress Using Mindfulness and Neuroplasticity

“Grit is about stamina and having realistic expectations. It’s about seeing failure as an inevitable part of life, rather than a disaster.”
― Melanie Greenberg, The Stress-Proof Brain: Master Your Emotional Response to Stress Using Mindfulness and Neuroplasticity

“How you think about your stress is important. Your prefrontal cortex has the ability to ramp up your amygdala with panicky, negative thoughts or calm it down with calming and optimistic thoughts.”
― Melanie Greenberg, The Stress-Proof Brain: Master Your Emotional Response to Stress Using Mindfulness and Neuroplasticity

“You learned that self-compassion is a coping strategy for stress and an attitude toward life. Having self-compassion means being kind to yourself and realizing you’re only human, so you don’t have to be perfect.”
― Melanie Greenberg, The Stress-Proof Brain: Master Your Emotional Response to Stress Using Mindfulness and Neuroplasticity

“How you view your stressor is just as important as your actual circumstances when it comes to long-term effects on your health and happiness!”
― Melanie Greenberg, The Stress-Proof Brain: Master Your Emotional Response to Stress Using Mindfulness and Neuroplasticity

“Being willing to experience stressful emotions helps you get used to them, know their course, and become familiar with them. This allows your brain to see them as less dangerous or scary and more manageable and temporary. You begin to drop your aversion to them, and this makes it less likely they can lead you into a downward spiral of panic and fearful or angry reactivity”
― Melanie Greenberg, The Stress-Proof Brain: Master Your Emotional Response to Stress Using Mindfulness and Neuroplasticity

“Replace fear of your own inner experience with a curious, gentle, welcoming attitude—free of judgment, self-blame, and aversion.”
― Melanie Greenberg, The Stress-Proof Brain: Master Your Emotional Response to Stress Using Mindfulness and Neuroplasticity

“By observing your judging mind, you can avoid automatically buying into these negative judgments...This transforms your experience of stress by taking the terror and panic out of it.”
― Melanie Greenberg, The Stress-Proof Brain: Master Your Emotional Response to Stress Using Mindfulness and Neuroplasticity

“Your brain may be signaling that situations such as those listed above are threats to your survival and readying you for extreme action that isn’t necessary or appropriate to your day-to-day challenges (Sapolsky 2004).”
― Melanie Greenberg, The Stress-Proof Brain: Master Your Emotional Response to Stress Using Mindfulness and Neuroplasticity

“curb unhelpful responses such as avoidance, rumination, and fearful thinking; gain clarity and focus; restore your sense of control and a growth mind-set; use grit and self-compassion to motivate yourself; and live a healthy and balanced life in the face of stress.”
― Melanie Greenberg, The Stress-Proof Brain: Master Your Emotional Response to Stress Using Mindfulness and Neuroplasticity

“Your prefrontal cortex can also rein in your amygdala. It can tell your amygdala to relax—”
― Melanie Greenberg, The Stress-Proof Brain: Master Your Emotional Response to Stress Using Mindfulness and Neuroplasticity

“know what their priorities are and keep their long-term goals in mind,”
― Melanie Greenberg, The Stress-Proof Brain: Master Your Emotional Response to Stress Using Mindfulness and Neuroplasticity

“Research (Kobasa 1979) suggests that resilient people have three important characteristics—commitment, challenge, and control. Commitment involves having a passion for what you do that allows you to stick with it when things get rough. Challenge involves viewing your stressor as a challenge, rather than a threat (which helps your amygdala calm down and generates positive emotions, such as hope and excitement). Control involves investing your time and energy in changing the things you can control, rather than trying to change the unchangeable.”
― Melanie Greenberg, The Stress-Proof Brain: Master Your Emotional Response to Stress Using Mindfulness and Neuroplasticity

“Thinking that stress is harmful creates avoidance that interferes with the opportunity to learn new skills. In one of the studies reported in Crum, Salovey, and Achor’s (2013) article, participants given a speech task who had a “stress is beneficial” mind-set were more likely to want feedback that could improve their speaking skills. Those who considered stress to be harmful reduced their exposure to stress by choosing not to get feedback, which inhibited their learning and personal growth.”
― Melanie Greenberg, The Stress-Proof Brain: Master Your Emotional Response to Stress Using Mindfulness and Neuroplasticity

“A recent study (Brooks 2014) showed that interpreting your feelings of anxiety as excitement may actually help your mood and performance more than trying to calm down.”
― Melanie Greenberg, The Stress-Proof Brain: Master Your Emotional Response to Stress Using Mindfulness and Neuroplasticity

“They found that, by midterm, students who were classified as more optimistic maintained higher numbers of cells that protect the immune system, compared with their more pessimistic peers. When we’re able to look on the bright side, it’s easier to maintain the hope and balanced perspective that keeps us going for the long haul.”
― Melanie Greenberg, The Stress-Proof Brain: Master Your Emotional Response to Stress Using Mindfulness and Neuroplasticity

“Positive emotions and mental states may make people more resilient to stress, like sturdy tree branches that bend but don’t break when battered”
― Melanie Greenberg, The Stress-Proof Brain: Master Your Emotional Response to Stress Using Mindfulness and Neuroplasticity

“positive psychology” (Fredrickson 2004) suggests that creating or focusing on positive emotions can have three important benefits. These benefits could potentially help us deal better with stress. First, positive emotions help us recover physiologically from stress. Second, they encourage us to engage—to explore, be curious, and take reasonable risks, rather than fleeing, fighting, or freezing. This can lead us to new information and resources that may help us deal with the stressor. Third, positive emotions can help us think more broadly about our stressors, which increases our chances of finding a novel and creative solution.”
― Melanie Greenberg, The Stress-Proof Brain: Master Your Emotional Response to Stress Using Mindfulness and Neuroplasticity

“Ironically, harsh self-criticism seems to create an inner rebelliousness that makes us want to give up on our healthy goals. Self-compassion acknowledges the reality that it’s an unhealthy moment, not an unhealthy life, and you have a choice what the next moment is going to be. And it motivates you to make a healthy, compassionate choice.”
― Melanie Greenberg, The Stress-Proof Brain: Master Your Emotional Response to Stress Using Mindfulness and Neuroplasticity

“Emotions are passing mental and bodily events, and if you can acknowledge them without shoving them down or letting them sweep you away, they’ll begin to pass. But how do you feel your emotions without identifying with them? Mindfulness-based practices can help you learn to direct your attention toward or away from your emotions in a flexible way. Mentally imagining yourself in an anchored or grounded state can also help you tolerate strong negative emotions or bring you back from a state of panic”
― Melanie Greenberg, The Stress-Proof Brain: Master Your Emotional Response to Stress Using Mindfulness and Neuroplasticity

“mindfulness corner” where you keep objects with interesting colors, textures, smells, or sounds.”
― Melanie Greenberg, The Stress-Proof Brain: Master Your Emotional Response to Stress Using Mindfulness and Neuroplasticity

“Mindfulness is both a skill and an attitude toward living that originated thousands of years ago as part of Buddhist philosophy. According to the Buddha, mental suffering (or inner stress) occurs because we cling to positive experiences, not wanting them to end, and we strive to avoid pain, sadness, and other negative experiences. This effort to control our mental and bodily experiences is misguided and out of touch with the reality of living. We can never escape loss and suffering, because these are natural parts of life. Our experiences are always changing. Living things wither and die, to be replaced by new living things. The forces of nature are beyond human control.”
― Melanie Greenberg, The Stress-Proof Brain: Master Your Emotional Response to Stress Using Mindfulness and Neuroplasticity