because they were inspirational; somehow, these people (and animals) beat the odds. We saw their strength at the forefront of their resilience, but if we had only looked a little closer we might have seen something else. Our paperback “chicken soup heroes” were, more often than not, positive people.
Many believe resilience is a personality trait: you’re either born with it or you’re not. However, I believe that it’s actually a dynamic learning process, and the research backs me up. The more optimistic you became about yourself and your life, the more you are able to not sweat the small stuff and the better you’ll make it through the big, scary, heart-pounding stuff. You must learn to logically analyze situations in moments of stress and place whatever crazy incident you’re experiencing in the context of the bigger picture. This will help keep you focused and allows you to understand the actual importance of the whole episode versus the catastrophic story that unmitigated shock automatically tells you is going on.
Plus, even in life’s crummiest, saddest, and most devastating moments, there is usually a silver lining. Drawing on skills such as problem-solving and self-assessment, you have the opportunity to learn and grow from each negative event instead of focusing on how utterly unbearable the situation is making your life in the short-term. When you do this, each stumbling block becomes an opportunity to grow and evolve.
Improved resilience isn’t just as simple as looking on the bright side when bad things happen. Let’s say I am having a really amazing day—one of the best days of the year. I’ll tell my best friends and maybe my parents. Perhaps, I’ll mention it in conversation with others if it comes up, but it’s just a short mention, a blip on the timeline of the day. Conversely, if I have a bad day…I tell everybody. I explain every single gory detail of that rotten day, ad nauseam. I’ll tell you every single detail: what people were wearing, the looks on their faces, what the cafeteria was serving that day…I may even provide sound effects to help orchestrate the terror of it all. I can talk about it for hours. Heck, years down the line I might even revive that story to tell again in all its awful glory. Want to hear about a bad day I had in November, 2002? I am more than willing to tell you, but I’ll spare you.
Barbara Fredrickson, a professor of psychology and modern leader in the study of positivity, found that previous positive activities prepare us to better manage future stressful situations effectively. Negative events take up more of our brain space. Fredrickson found you need at least three positive experiences to counteract one negative incident. You need these positive experiences to serve as a buffer; otherwise, negative emotions will keep you from problem-solving and long-term thinking. If we haven’t built a solid bank of positive events and actions, we are more likely to be overcome by negative ones.
I didn’t realize just how much building my positivity bank account had improved my ability to cope until my apartment flooded earlier this year. I came home to find my entire living room drenched, my filming equipment ruined, and some priceless heirlooms demolished. In this moment of chaos, I found myself surprisingly calm. I realized that getting stressed-out or angry over it wasn’t going to fix it. It also wasn’t going to give me any of the answers I needed. So even though I definitely felt stressed-out (stress is somewhat inevitable in these types of situations), I kept that sensation to a minimum. I instead found myself investing all that extra nervous energy into finding solutions. When I spoke to my building manager, I remember his response. “Usually people get very angry and that just makes resolving the situation even more challenging.” Pause. Not only does useless negativity wear us out, it keeps us from moving forward.
How to Build a Positivity Bank Account
Keep track of positive things that happen in your life in a journal or spreadsheet. When stressful things happen you’ll have a premade list of positive things in your life to draw on to help you through.
Positive Thinking Helps You Recognize Opportunities
In one of my favorite episodes of the popular documentary series The Experiments, Darren Brown does a series of experiments to better understand what makes people lucky. In one of these tests of kismet, Brown creates several “lucky” situations for a supposedly unlucky individual, Wayne. First, Brown sends a fake scratch-off prize card to Wayne in the mail. If Wayne would just give that lucky card a scratchety-scratch, he’d find that he’s won a brand spankin’ new TV. What does Wayne do? He throws the scratch card in the garbage. Next a fake interviewer is placed on the street offering a cash prize to anyone who could answer “today’s special question.” Brown designed this question specifically for Wayne. It would have been a piece of delicious, free money-cake for him to answer. However, Wayne pushes off the interviewer claiming he’s “too busy” and quickly moves on. In the final test, fifty dollars is left smack dab in the middle of Wayne’s path home from work. Wayne manages to walk home but completely ignore the money—even though it was directly in his line of sight.
I found this whole series of events fascinating, and a harsh reminder of one truth: “You create your own destiny.” Through our actions and choices, we start to perpetuate the reality we think we deserve. In Wayne’s case, he assumed unpredictable situations can only have a negative result. Therefore he avoided anything that wouldn’t be a guaranteed success. Wayne no longer looked for opportunities, because he had convinced himself they didn’t exist. When you take on negative attitudes, you restrict your access to life’s advantages on a day-to-day basis by refusing to acknowledge your potential skills, engage with the community, and/or take risks. Simply put, you can’t expect to fly, if you’re afraid to leave the ground.
In another experiment, the impact of positive emotions on the brain were tested. Subjects were divided into five groups and shown different clips of people that were each chosen to trigger a specific emotion. After viewing the clips, they were asked to imagine themselves in a similar situation and write down how they would react. Those who were exposed to clips showing positive emotions wrote down significantly higher number of actions they could take. Now this area of research is fairly new, but it goes to show that if we recognize and experience more happy things each day, we’ll also recognize and acknowledge additional opportunities. You’ll reach a little bit harder for the stars, because they simply won’t feel so far away. I look at it this way: your ability to achieve a goal is directly related to how much you believe that goal is attainable.
When I was a teenage rebel, I focused on the negative. I didn’t believe I was able or capable of becoming anything more than what I was. My own fear held me back from recognizing not only opportunities, but also my own talents. I believed I was worthless, and as a result that’s what I became. It’s amazing how in a few short years I was able to completely turn my life around, create lasting meaningful relationships, and find myself on a journey to the best me I could be. It wasn’t because I was destined to be a special story to be told in a Chicken Soup for the Soul storybook, it was because I worked hard to create a more positive lifestyle. In the following chapters, we’ll address how you too can build positive habits to help you live your happiest, healthiest, and most fruitful life.
Identity: Realizing You’re Different and Becoming Self-Aware
“Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt
At age six, I remember sneaking into the kitchen and stealing some cookies to snack on before dinner. My father had told me several times that under no circumstance was I to have any of those sweet, chocolate morsel-filled biscuits before dinner. What he didn’t know couldn’t hurt him, right? As I found my way to the staircase, there were only a few carpet-covered wood stairs separating
