On the Road to Increased Emotional Resilience

When life becomes a problem to be solved, you know you took a detour!

I think we can all agree that life brings many problems or, if you prefer, challenges. Tragedy, hardship, loss, and illness can produce anxiety, fear, depression, and many other negative emotions. These problems can leave us overwhelmed and unable to bounce back to a life of emotional balance.

Much of my life was invested in attempting to solve problems. You might ask, “How’s that working for you?” Well, sometimes it works, but not as a lifestyle. Why doesn’t focusing on solving problems work very well for us as a long-term strategy?

If we look at our families, friends, or jobs as a problem-solving task, we are very likely to miss healthy life-giving relational connections. Focusing on problems can bring exhaustion and loss of connection. On the other hand, focusing on relationships and the joy of those connections teaches us emotional resilience. Resilience is our ability to recover from stress and overwhelm. If adults or children have sufficient emotional resilience they are able to handle stress and disappointment and bounce back from problems and hardship to a life filled with joy and peace. But if I cannot do that with any level of skill …my life becomes a list of problems to be solved and I am in danger of missing the best life has to offer. And because we can never run out of problems to solve, life can begin to look and feel like a hamster wheel.

I have been known to possess an affection for lists and for the satisfaction that comes from checking items when completed. Now there certainly is nothing wrong with lists, especially as an organizational tool for survival when needing to accomplish many tasks. But they are more a survival tool than a recipe to thrive.

Please excuse the simplicity of this explanation but scientific study of the brain teaches us that we have 2 distinct hemispheres within our brain. Left hemisphere’s primary function is process and expression of information and words. Right hemisphere, the faster to process and respond, is interested in emotion and experiences. So what is the right hemisphere prescription for low emotional resilience?

In their recently published book, Building Bounce, Marcus Warner and Stephanie Hinman state, “Thanks to the latest brain science, we now understand that there is a secret to emotional resilience. It can be summed up in one word-joy.”

Joy is produced in our right orbital prefrontal cortex as dopamine, oxytocin, and other chemicals. But even if we can’t remember that information, knowing that we actually have a ‘joy center’ and that we have control over whether that center grows can be very motivational.

This ‘joy center’ is built over a lifetime and indeed can grow until the very end of life. The stage is set as an infant as we are welcomed, enjoyed and responded to in loving ways. All this is accomplished as caretakers make eye contact containing that ‘glad to be with you’ message. But remember that even if that experience didn’t happen for you in your youth, the great news that you can start today brings hope and connection.

Simply stated, if we are interested in a thriving lifestyle, investing time and energy to increase our level of joy will result in the wonderful benefit of greater emotional resilience.

Instead of focusing on solving problems try these simple suggestions:

Increase self-awareness of how many times you focus on problem solving instead of relationship and make a different choice.
Be thankful for relationships in your life by practicing the appreciation skill to remember, savor, seek, share relationships in your life. (See joyopolis.org blog post Appreciation: Why My Brain Needs It? November 9, 2022)
Cultivate relationships with people who are glad to be with you and you with them.* Take the time to make eye contact while speaking with them.
Have a smile for each person you encounter. Smiles go a long way to increasing our chances of making positive connections with others, often especially appreciated by others that are already distressed.
Honor others by slowing down and providing adequate time for connection and transitions in your daily routine.