Brain Changer by David DiSalvo

Author:David DiSalvo
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781939529015
Publisher: BenBella Books, Inc.

18. Manifest Your Resilience

IT IS IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE GENUINE CONDITIONS OF OUR LIFE THAT WE MUST DRAW OUR STRENGTH TO LIVE AND OUR REASON FOR ACTING.

—Simone De Beauvoir

In his book The UltraMind Solution, Dr. Mark Hyman provides an excellent description of one of the most essential brain-changer tools in our arsenal, resiliency: “Resiliency is that hard-to-measure quality of adapting to change, shifting with changing tides rather than drowning, seeing the glass half full, or knowing how to turn lemons into lemonade.”21

Hyman uses the term “plasticity” synonymously with resiliency because, as he points out, the nature of the brain mirrors the nature of our thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes. “A stiff, rigid, ‘hard’ personality is reflected in stiff cells, hard, rigid plaques in the brain, and a general loss of resiliency and the ability to renew, remember, and repair.”

Hyman’s research leads us to a few conclusions about the power of resiliency, and why it’s among the most important tools in this section. First, adaptation itself is an ongoing form of resiliency. To say that we “pragmatically adapt” to the ebbs and flows of existence means, in part, that we do not allow ourselves to be psycho-emotionally overtaken by any challenge—past, present, or future.

Here we can add a complementary term: tenacity. Resiliency requires tenacity—the drive to push through, overcome, and step above anything that threatens to stop us. This isn’t a slogan for an athletic shoe; this is an evolutionary reality that affects everyone to varying degrees. And if your sights are set on achieving goals, it most assuredly affects you.

In consumerist cultures, resiliency loses much of its flavor because it is central to marketing campaigns spinning ultra-positive, ultra-individualist messages. Our brains adapt to these messages, and we’ve learned that in large part they are meaningless. We do not become more resilient or tenacious or focused by wearing the most successfully marketed brand of athletic shoes or tight-fitting gym shirts, or anything else of the sort.

We do become more resilient by realizing the adaptive advantages of resiliency and acting accordingly. Knowing that our brains respond well to flexible thinking and poorly to rigid thinking, for example, empowers us to work toward greater flexibility in our thinking. That, in turns, shows us the “proof of concept” (to borrow an engineering phrase) in the positive outcomes we begin experiencing in our lives.

BCP: Remember: flexibility promotes adaptive brain change. Resilience is all about flexibility, and you can’t harness your brain’s adaptive power without it.

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