Sue Wagaman

Positive Psychology

Review of book “The Resilience Factor”

February 12, 2008

1.  Resilience can affect performance in all areas of life including work, physical health, mental health, quality of relationships and is the key to satisfaction in life.  On page 11 in the book, the authors explain that more than 15 years of study at The University of Pennsylvania has found that resilience is essential to success and happiness in people’s lives.  The book states many times and in different ways that we can apply the skills of resilience to reach out and become the kind of person we want to be and have the kind of meaningful life we want.  This is basically done by becoming more aware of the kind of person you really are by examining your deep beliefs and values.  The book also helped me to realize again, how important our thinking process is to how we feel, who we think we are, and how we react to events in our life.  It also reminded me how important it is to be aware of my cognitive processes and the need to often check them and challenge them in order to become more resilient in life.  I found it interesting to think of our thinking processes as a “ticker-tape” running in our mind that can help or hurt us when evaluating life’s difficulties.  This ticker-tape can help or hurt our resilience.  It can also affect other areas in our life, such as our health.  In chapter 13 anxieties and stress and the negative effect on health are discussed.  It is interesting, once again, to see that studies find that resilience can a help our physical and mental health.  

I also found it fascinating that we accept and reject information based on what we believe to be true about ourselves or others. In other words, we throw out anything we learn that is contrary to our belief about ourselves and keep close those that are consistent.  A good example of this is in one of my daughters.  We were working on a problem that keeps reoccurring in her life.  I used the ABC’s and other skills set out in this book.  When it came to one of her “beliefs” she stated that she never finishes anything she begins.  As I worked with her to see the truth in this statement I realized that she was taking in only the facts that supported her belief and discounting everything that showed this statement false.  In fact, it actually became funny as she realized her list of finishing what she begins was much longer than the list of things she didn’t finish, but still she was persisting in believing the statement.  She keep minimizing the projects she finished and maximizing the ones she didn’t.   In fact, on the list of things she didn’t finish were only two things! 

           In order to change, we have to be very diligent in recognizing our thoughts and beliefs to combat the incorrect and damaging ones.  I had never heard the term “icebergs” before and found this analogy of an iceberg –only a small amount of ice showing above the water (or none) while the majority of the iceberg is hiding just below -- just as our true beliefs and feelings could be hidden just below our consciousness.  I especially found the author’s advice to search for “icebergs” when we find that we are responding (extreme anger, depression, etc) out of proportion to the actual circumstance.  I actually dealt with and “iceberg” of my own this last week.  It is a belief I knew I had and one I have tried to work on over the years.  The belief is “I must be perfect to be loveable.”  I had a manager at my place of work remind me to be early to class since she had noticed that I had been only 5 minutes early instead of the required 15 minutes. Since, I had been working on being early for about a month and I had been at least 15 minutes early to all my classes except this one, I felt blindsided by the criticism.  Even so, I was unnaturally upset by this.  Later, I was feeling very down and couldn’t figure out why.  When I tracked down when this feeling began I realized it began after I had been “reproached”.  I also checked out my self talk and found it “all or nothing”, “catastrophic”, “tunnel vision”, “magnifying”, etc.  I realized that I was falling into just about every one of the thinking traps I possibly could!  No wonder I felt depressed! I knew it was not really that big of deal that my manager talked to me about being late.  It was not that she was saying I was always late, or I would be fired or even that she thought it was that big a deal!  Why then was I making it so big? I realized that part of it was a reaction to trying very hard to change and not getting the recognition for all the 20 other times I was even earlier than the 15 minutes!  Also, and maybe more important was that I felt worthless since they had noticed I wasn’t perfect and called me on it.  I realized it was my old deep belief of needing to be “perfect to be loved”.  It surprised me that this old belief was at the bottom of it.  I also found that when I am “blindsided” by a problem that I don’t expect, and doesn’t seem fair my old beliefs are more likely to arise and I am more likely to react automatically without taking time to process it. Even more important, I realized that the situation was somewhat similar to how I felt in the past.  I was trying so hard to change, and instead of praise (from myself and others) I was getting criticism (from others and then myself) for the one time I was late!   I am glad that I didn’t let more than a few hour pass before I dealt with it.  Otherwise, I may have more problems to solve than just that one.  Once I realized that I had this deep belief I could understand why I over-reacted.  After challenging that belief I could do the ABC’s, and the necessary exercises to find a solution and solve the problem.  After this incident and noticing my self-talk more lately, I agree that resilience is a very important part of being satisfied in life and that we can increase our resilience.  This leads to the second major point I think this book is making.

1. We can increase/build our resilience in all areas of life by learning and applying the skills listed in this book.  I felt that this area really covered most of the rest of the book.  The author’s listed and expounded on seven skills to increase resilience.  These skills are divided into two groups.   Group One Skills:  Know Thyself Skills.  These are the ABC’s, Avoiding Thinking Traps and Detecting Icebergs and they encompass your beliefs, feelings and behaviors.  Group Two Skills:  Change Skills.   These will help to identify true causes of problems, accurately assess control, help keep problems in perspective and explain how to fight back against non-resilient beliefs. I found this part of the book to be very practical.  I also found that I have been doing some of it in some form or another for a few years.  Like I stated above, I found some of it to take so much time that I am not sure I would use it that often.  I will use the information on chapter 9 about solving a problem in real-time and I would like to use the other but I know I will have to practice it a lot to remember all the steps and do it correctly.  On page 213 the book outlines some pointers for using real-time resilience in life.  I thought those would be practical and useful as I am trying to master the skills.  I especially liked the idea of using their tag lines (“A more accurate way of seeing this is…”, “That’s not true because…”, “A more likely outcome is…and I can…”) to structure my response.  I also need to remember to stress to myself, effectiveness over speed.

The area where I could relate to in the Marriage chapter was “detecting icebergs to prevent gridlock”.  I would expound that statement to include the words...“and to help prevent misunderstandings”.  Many times, especially in the early years of our marriage, my husband and I would get into some very huge and very dumb arguments over a very small problem that just blew up because it “hit our buttons”.   I now see that those “buttons” were probably hidden “icebergs” we each had and have.  We learned to deal with it by really listening to each other and stating how we were feeling to each other.  I suppose, unconsciously, this helped us to detect our “icebergs” even though that was not our goal at the time.

The parenting chapter had good ideas of how to help children use the skills outlined in the book to help boost their resilience also.

 I thought the chapter on work had some interesting examples and, of course, it too had ways to apply the skills to the work environment that will be helpful.

Even though the last chapter of this book was entitled ‘Resilience for Life”, I found the entire book encompassed resilience for life.  This is a book I will read again and use.  There are many good points to think about and many more to actually “do” in life.  I know that the skills will help to build my own resilience and I would definitely recommend the book to others.

 I especially enjoyed the chapter about how to put it into practice quickly.  I had been wondering what to do if I did not have an hour to figure out the problem but only a few minutes.  I was glad they had a chapter on this.  Even so, I think these skills are great but take time to learn and put into practice.  As I mentioned above, I practiced it on a problem my daughter was having and on a few problems I came across.  I found it somewhat confusing to remember all the steps in order and how to actually come to the final conclusions or solutions.  It took longer then I thought it would.  It did help, though, especially my daughter’s problem.  I was wondering if I could get as much out of it if I just did more positive cognitive thinking, which I do somewhat automatically now.  In other words, if I suddenly feel bad about something I do the ABC’s in my head, quickly and usually I figure out what began my “bad” thinking.  I then dispute it, if needed or find a solution if it is something I need to address.  My question is…do we need such an involved set of questions, pie charts, etc. to get to the bottom of the problem?