Resilient Summary

By Rick Hanson

How do you react when things don't go as planned?

Resilient gives us tools to build our resilience in a stressful world.

Resilience isn't just bouncing back from difficulty; it's also enhancing and
expanding our well-being. Based on neuroscience, positive psychology,
and ancient wisdom, we're provided with ways to access inner strength,
and connect with our needs so that we can thrive.

And isn't this precisely what the doctor ordered?

In this case, the doctor is Rick Hanson. Dr. Rick Hanson has the personal
and professional credentials to guide us on the journey towards long-
lasting resilience. Rick Hanson is a bestselling author, psychologist, and
senior fellow of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley. Resilient
combines honest personal anecdotes from Hanson's childhood, personal
experiences and journeys, and practical insights. The techniques and
philosophies provide us with practical wisdom backed by theory from
positive psychology, neuroscience, and ancient wisdom. Rick's son
Forrest co-authored the book, and is a consultant and writer.

Human beings have three basic needs. These are safety, satisfaction,
and connection. Feeling safe means being able to find shelter; both
physically and psychologically. Satisfaction comes from being able to
meet physical needs such as hunger, but also positive emotions like
contentment and gratitude. Our need for connection is fulfilled when
we're cared for, and care for others. It's crucial to identify when any of
these needs aren't met, so we can find ways to meet them. The "Four Rs"
are four pathways we can take to meet these needs. The Four Rs are:
recognizing them, resourcing what we need, regulating our thoughts
feelings and actions, and relating well to others.

This book provides us with practical tools to build these pathways. The
twelve inner strengths are explained by sharing mindfulness practices,
positive psychology tools, personal examples, and neuroscientific
explanations. Let's briefly dive into this a little more.

Our Basic Needs

Despite the numerous changes to the world, our three basic needs,
safety, satisfaction and connection remain. We need to identify when
these needs are not being met, and work out how to meet them.

Let's take a peek at our brains to understand where these needs come
from. Hanson has a handy description. He says that the brain is like a
house. The first floor is the brain stem, which focuses on keeping us safe.
This is the oldest, reptilian part of our brain. On the second floor, we find
the subcortex, including the hypothalamus, thalamus, amygdala, and
basal ganglia. This is our mammalian brain, which seeks satisfaction, like
food and comfort. On the top floor, we find some more recent, primate
part of our brain, which is the neocortex. The neocortex extends our
need from safety and satisfaction, to connection and logic. This is home
to empathy, language, planning, and compassion. Hanson says that it's a
little bit like having a zoo in our heads - a lizard who freezes when faced
with danger, a mouse sniffing about for cheese, and a monkey searching
for its tribe. Each floor wants its particular needs met.
However, this isn't as simple as we may think. Let's look at why this is, in
the following example.

How We're Wired

Our ancestral family members were often faced with survival choices.
They could believe there was a tiger in the bushes when there wasn't, or
they could think there wasn't a tiger when one was about to pounce.

We can see that the second scenario is about life-and-death. Our

ancestors generally opted for this frame of mind in order to stay alive.
Nowadays, although much has changed about the world, our brains are
still hardwired to expect danger. This makes us a little paranoid, prone to
negativity, and often very anxious. We might know that what we worry
about probably won't happen, but our brains ignore us. We also tend to
overestimate the danger, and underestimate the inner resources and
coping mechanisms we possess. The result of this is a lot of needless
anxiety, and less resilience.

This book offers four pathways to change this wiring and build our well-
being. Furthermore, we can learn and apply different inner strengths to
build each pathway even more. There are twelve inner strengths that we
can explore to help us on this journey.

Let's dig a little deeper.

The Four Pathways and Inner Strengths Linking

to Them

So we have four pathways, or "Four Rs," and twelve inner strengths. An

easy way of breaking this down is that for each pathway, we need three
inner strengths.

First, we should recognize our needs by applying the inner strengths of

compassion, mindfulness, and learning.

Then we should resource our inner strengths using grit, gratitude, and
confidence.

The third step is to regulate our thoughts, feelings, and actions. We do

this by being calming, motivating ourselves, and building intimacy.

Finally, relating to others can be achieved through courage, aspiration,

and generosity.

Hanson explores how we can take what appear to be mundane daily

experiences, and turn them into lasting internal resources that can build
our brains. If we can repeatedly activate neural circuits, we can actually
change our brains. This involves two steps. The first step is to know what
we want to grow. For example, we may want to develop feelings of
gratitude. The second step is to strive towards lasting change, by
cementing these feelings in the nervous system. This process is a lot like
building a muscle - use it a few times every day for a short time, and
these little efforts eventually pay off. A little bit of work equates to
significant results.

Let's apply this to each of the four Rs.

Recognizing Our Needs Using Compassion,

Mindfulness, and Learning

Compassion can sound like a fuzzy concept. However, when we feel

compassion, the brain's motor planning areas actually light up, and gear
up for action. We often treat our friends well, but don't make compassion
a two-way street; we also need to treat ourselves kindly.

A practical starting point is to write down a simple statement about self-

compassion, put it in a prominent place, and read it aloud every day. The
example we're given is, 'I am on my own side.' The idea is to repeat
experiences often enough for them to change the brain. We do this by
taking time to notice and expand upon small but positive experiences.
Such experiences can be as trivial as resting on the couch at the end of
the day. Furthermore, we can create a positive experience, and then
really enhance it by engaging with it more mindfully. After all, little things
can turn into big things.

Mindfulness is the ability to stay present in the moment. The difficulty is

that we need to remain mindful, no matter what's happening around us.
As is so often the way, we often lack mindfulness when we need it the
most.

We can use mindfulness to get the most out of positive experiences, and
reduce the effect of harmful ones. Mindfulness is a muscle we can build
by using it, even for brief moments throughout the day. One idea is to set
our phones at random times, reminding us to be mindful. We can use our
breathing to calm us when talking to others, or carrying out tasks. Finding
refuge also helps. In this case, refuge means a place like a library, or
drinking a cup of coffee, or activities like playing with the dog. Perhaps
refuge is less tangible - such as a memory of a place that felt safe when
you were a child. Maybe it's sacred or divine? It could even be an idea, or
knowing that someone loves you.

When you go to this safe space, the secret is to really notice how it feels,
and try to absorb it.

Here are three things we can practice. The first is just to experience
what's with us, and try not to change it, even if it's unpleasant. We can
also try to decrease the negative by looking at what's painful and trying
to let it go. Thirdly, we can try to increase the positive. The idea is to let it
be, let it go, and let it in. If we use the garden as an analogy, we can
choose to look at it, pull out the weeds, or we can plant flowers.

Mindfulness and compassion help us to respond rather than react. When

we feel that our three needs are being met, we feel more emotionally and
physically balanced. This is what's referred to as the green zone, which is
the responsive space. When our needs aren't met, we often react
strongly and move into the red zone, or the reactive mode. The reactive
mode wears us down, and the responsive mode builds us up. While some
difficulty is good for resilience-building, too much makes us anxious.
Hence, the reactive mode is useful when danger confronts us, but we
don't want to stay there indefinitely.

Recognizing our needs also involves learning. Learning is the superpower

of all superpowers. About 1/3 of our attributes are built into our DNA, and
the rest we learn. When it comes to learning, we need to know that it has
two crucial parts - activation and installation. We might have an
experience, but we have to repeat this often. Repetition is how we
hardwire the changes in our brains. For example, we may want to
improve our perseverance, so to do this, we must practice, build on, and
stick with a task to grow it over time.

We can entrench this learning neurologically by following four steps. Let's

look at the acronym HEAL in order to explain this.

H is to HAVE the experience and really notice it. E is to ENRICH it by

really feeling it and keeping with it. A is to ABSORB it and feel it internally.
And L Is to LINK it to more difficult feelings. Linking means to notice both
the positive and negative in yourself. Linking is actually an optional step,
because have, enrich, and absorb are sufficient for learning. What's more,
it's not always easy to engage with negative material.

The problem is that we have experiences, but don't install them.

Enriching an experience can involve noticing and staying with it
consciously for 5 or 10 seconds. We can further intensify this by
breathing more fully, looking for related feelings, and noticing what's new
or different about the moment. We can then value it by noticing why it's
important to us.
Then we absorb it. Here we should feel it sinking in, and identify what's
positive and hopeful about it. Linking can work as follows. Perhaps a
colleague says something hurtful to you. However, in this moment, you
could choose to remember something someone else once said that was
comforting and affirming. The brain learns through association, so if two
things are held simultaneously, they affect each other. However, we need
to make the positive side more powerful to affect neurological change.

Once we bring compassion, mindfulness, and conscious learning to

recognize and start meeting our needs, we can resource what we need
to build on this.

Resourcing Grit, Gratitude and Confidence

Grit helps us develop agency, which is the feeling that we're in charge of
our lives. Even when our options are limited, we can look for one small
thing that we can do. If we're caught up in a difficult argument for
example, we can decide what, or what not to say.

Grit requires determination, and determination requires vitality. Having

vitality means that we also have to take care of our bodies. A healthy
body helps us to generate positive thoughts, feelings, and actions.

We can also resource gratitude. Gratitude might sound like a typical self-
help mantra, but researchers have noted how it builds optimism,
compassion, better sleep, and greater resilience. We tend to rush past
pleasure, and this is something that needs to be actively resourced. The
suggestion is to keep a pleasure diary of all the little things that bring
pleasure and build gratitude.
Confidence is influenced by the attachment we formed with our
caregivers during our first two years of life. The good news is that even if
our attachment isn't what we needed, we can find more security as
adults. We need to develop a realistic account of what happened when
we were young, but this may take a long time. Nonetheless, we can begin
building healthy attachments by treating others as we would like to have
been treated in earlier relationships.

Buddha talks about the first and second dart. The first dart we might
receive is some pain or discomfort that we cannot avoid, such as being
criticized at work. The second dart is avoidable because it's the
unnecessary one we throw at ourselves. We hold onto resentment and
grudges. As luck would have it, our inner critic is an excellent dart
thrower.

To get to grips with this, notice what your inner critic says, and see if it
reminds you of anyone familiar. Perhaps you heard someone say
something similar when you were younger? At this point, you could try
the "L" in HEAL. Remember linking? Well, perhaps you could visualize an
internal "caring committee" that consists of people who represent
different kinds of support you've received throughout your life. These
could even be fictional characters. This exercise will help you recognize
that you're a good person, and others have also seen this in you.

To meet our needs, we also have to learn to regulate ourselves.

Regulating Through Calming, Motivating

Ourselves, and Building Intimacy

Pema Chodron said, 'You are the sky. Everything else - it's just the weather.'

So often, we react in a fight, flight, or freeze response. This response

involves the parasympathetic and sympathetic systems, which form part
of our autonomic nervous system. These systems are like the brake and
accelerator of a car. The parasympathetic, or "rest and digest" system,
slows our heart rate and helps our body to refuel. It is the brake. Our
sympathetic activity, on the other hand, is like the accelerator. It gets us
going, speeds up our heart, and releases adrenaline and cortisol. It's
helpful when it's combined with positive emotions, but when it's linked to
negative emotions we get stressed. Unfortunately, the modern world
often pushes us into sympathetic nervous system mode. The two
systems work a little bit like a seesaw - when one goes up, the other
goes down, and we need to help them balance out a little more.

To help how we respond in such cases, we can practice slow breathing.

Slow breathing allows us to engage the parasympathetic nervous system.
We can also try progressive relaxation by focusing on our feet, and
gradually moving up to our heads, relaxing tension in each part of the
body. Biofeedback and movement like yoga and t'ai chi can also help.

The sympathetic nervous system provides us with much-needed energy.

However, to use this positively, we need to be motivated. We all differ in
terms of the rewards we need to keep us going. If we're sensitive to the
rewards we need, we can keep our motivation up.

Hanson explains that 'to get the most out of "we," we need to stay
centered in "me."' He points out that fences make for good neighbors,
and that paradoxically, a strong sense of autonomy can create a depth of
intimacy. If we look after our own needs, it's easier to be open to the
needs of others. He asks if we can be autonomous when people want
things from us, are upset with us, try to dominate us, or don't respect our
boundaries. This depends both on our innate temperaments and how our
environment affects us. We need to think about how easy it is to fully
express our thoughts, state what we want, and trust our judgment if
others disagree with us.

How do we build this? Maybe we could imagine a physical boundary

between ourselves and another - like a line drawn on the ground.
Perhaps it's a good idea to recall when you felt strong, and decide when
you have to put up with something, and when you don't. Maybe it's time
to call on your own internal "caring committee" and turn up the volume of
what they say to you.

However, we also need to build our empathy because it helps us to

understand and interact with others more effectively. It means shifting
our own perspective, and increasing our cultural competence. We also
need to track micro-expressions in others, and be sensitive to their
suffering.

Regulating ourselves then helps with the final "R."

Relating Skillfully to Others, Using Courage,

Aspiration, and Generosity

It takes courage to stand up for ourselves. It means speaking from the

heart to prevent things from being left unsaid. It may require "talking
about talking" before we start crucial discussions, and compiling a list of
do's and don'ts before we navigate a conversation. We also need to
establish facts, know our values, and make requests as opposed to
demands.

Hanson urges us to "lean into the future" so that we can aspire to achieve
what's important to us. We also need to remember that the more willing
we are to fail, the more likely we are to succeed. This may require us to
work out what's ours to do and what belongs to someone else. We also
need to embrace generosity, see ourselves as givers, be generous with
forgiveness, and take others' perspectives.

On a broader level, we can try to widen our "circle of us," by avoiding

sorting people into two clusters - those who are like us, and those who
are not like us.

In Conclusion

Being resilient allows us to thrive, and building the skills of everyday

resilience is something that we can all benefit from. To change our lives
for the better, we need to understand how we can change our brains. As
they describe it, the authors show us 'the practical how of experiencing,
growing, and using key mental resources for resilient well-being.'

So, with resilience, 'R' you ready to lean into the future?