One of my scientific heroes, positive-psychology researcher Barbara Fredrickson, published a study a few years ago showing that the largest variable in determining our level of life satisfaction is resilience – the ability to bounce back quickly from life’s small and large upsets. It wasn’t having a great boss or a happy family or regular vacations, but the capacity to get our emotional balance back when we are blown off balance by negative emotions.
Easier said than done, you say – “I just can’t seem to pull myself out of my frenzy, let alone quickly calm down.” Not surprising in today’s world. The way we live overloads and exhausts the brain’s CEO region, the prefrontal cortex which is the part that can calmly notice, assess and manage our emotions, and enables us to carry on.
