Resilience
The Science of Freaking Out
Acute stress can be debilitating. It can cause professional baseball players to lose the ability to throw a ball 30 feet, something they’ve been doing since elementary school. In theater, it can cause stage fright, freezing, and forgetting lines that you’ve spent hours memorizing. The impact of stress isn’t just on our behavior, it can…
Read MoreThe Importance of Hardiness
Hardiness is a psychological trait that motivates you to respond to stressful circumstances in ways that produce resiliency. It is a key to cultivating the existential courage that facilitates the ongoing search for meaning in life. Hardiness has three major components. 1) Commitment Accept situation you are in and move forward anyway. Resist temptation to turn…
Read MoreThe Transformative Mental Health Benefits of Mastery
Throwing yourself into an activity and gradually pursuing concrete, tangible progress is good for your brain. Many people discovered this firsthand during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, as they took up gardening, baking, and exercise. What all of these activities share in common is that they afford the person doing them a path toward…
Read MoreThe Year of Stress and Resilience
2020 might just be the year of stress. What we need is its counterpart: resilience. We’re all facing chronic stress, whether it comes from the economy, the virus, the political situation, or the unending uncertainty and doom that the news cycle projects. Unease and anxiety push us toward feeling despair and maybe even hopelessness. We…
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