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 is no way to manage it. The stress reaction is physiologically built into us so it is impossible to manage it. It’s like trying to say that we can manage gravity which is a physical imperative.

Instead our true biological response to stress is to look for ways to combat it, overcome it and grow from it. This is our resilience advantage.

Gaining this approach to the challenges in our lives also means that we put ourselves in position to take on new adventures and challenges. One of my clients was telling me about his new workout routine at a Cross-Fit Box. It’s like no other workout he’s ever done and while its tested his physical and mental toughness, he’s feeling stronger and more confident as a result. Stressful, yes. Rewarding, even more so.

Of course, not all challenges are ones we are looking for but even seeing these as opportunities for growth means that we move from just trying to just merely manage our life to embracing our life. It’s the difference to being a victim to our life events to being in control of our life events.

© Richard Citrin, All rights reserved, 2015