People usually laugh when I suggest that stress can be good for you. “Oh yeah, tell me more…Not” Stress has gotten such a bad name and we feel so powerless over it that all we want to do is avoid it. This is what creates our victimization mentality to stress situations. Research completed by Anthony Mancini and his colleagues indicated that even people subjected to even significant traumatic events might thrive given the right support. Their recently released research study...

With my book, The Resilience Advantage due to be released in early 2016, I wanted to begin sharing with you some of the ideas that I’ll be discussing in the book. Of course, as you know from these posts, my resilience work has focused on creating a new paradigm for how we view the stress in our lives. The “stress management” model, which is how we’ve been taught to address stress is inherently flawed since, as a biological imperative there...

In a 2011 New York Times article, author John Tierney called Thanksgiving the most psychologically correct holiday. Not politically correct, but psychologically correct. His rationale is clearly related to gratitude. Gratitude is a pillar of personal resilience in that it helps us appreciate all we have to be grateful for in our lives. No doubt, last Thursday we all went around the Thanksgiving dinner table speaking about what it was we are grateful for in our lives. Hopefully nobody was...

Resilience will be a buzzword over the next several weeks as we watch the citizens of Paris recover from the horrific events of last Friday. Already we hear of their courage as they venture out back into the streets honoring the victims with flowers, tears, and moments of silence. Soon this will be replaced with children playing, tourists sightseeing and lovers hugging. La résilience is inevitable. The healing begins immediately with a call to arms—our fight response—justifiably derived from our...

Last week’s column on criticism struck a nerve with lots of folks and several asked me to discuss conflict in the workplace. If we think about what is a major cause of stress at work, dealing with conflict has to be near the top of the list. Thinking resilience in the face of conflict will help resolve the matter efficaciously and help keep your stress level down. Conflict is more than unavoidable; it’s desirable. Leading team building researchers say that...

Odds are you are going to get criticized this week. It may be your partner, a colleague, or your workout coach. There is almost certainly something that you will do wrong, someone will notice and want to make sure you know you screwed up and then to add insult to injury, they will want to point out how to do it better next time. Afterwards, you’ll feel bad about yourself for messing up and then feel worse for taking in...