330. Resilience

Link to Table of Contents

Resilient

by Rick Hanson, Harmony Books

Compassion
P16 “Bring to mind times you have felt cared about by people, pets, or spiritual beings, in your life today or in the past... Relax and open yourself to feeling cared about...” 

This, I suspect, is a huge part of the appeal of religion. I recognize it from my own childhood and I suspect it’s a factor in AA. 

Mindfulness
P26 “...you could set your phone to chime softly at random times to remind you to be mindful throughout the day. With a little practice, you will already be centered in the present moment the next time the chime sounds.”

This is a good idea but the times should be consistent, not varying day to day. This way you will learn to anticipate the chimes. Also, this would work for attempting to improve your posture as well. In fact it would be best if you combined these the physical with the mental.

P30 Taking Refuge - Some of my favorite refuges are books. The Hotel Paradise novels. Jane Austen, in particular Anne Eliot and Elinor Dashwood. Even “The Ship Who...” SciFi.

Learning
P50 This is true enough. It is a good description of how both good and bad things get almost hard wired into our brains. But it is a mistake to think that every person can “learn” the same things. And I mean that in a variety of ways. People with a spiritual or “philosophical” bent will learn certain things while people with other bents will learn other things and find it very hard to un-learn them. It is the same for learning music or dance or math or astrology.

P53 See the Jewels Around You - This is very similar to my position on Dog. Dogs are particularly good at noticing the ordinary jewels.

“Don’t dismiss enjoyable experiences as lightweight and trivial, and don’t think that grinding, wearing, stressful experiences are somehow the foundation of a good life. [This "grinding" was the position held in several of our books about “building character”] It’s the opposite: positive experiences fill us up, while negative ones wear us down...” 

The character building struggle also keeps you in the wrong so you are dependent on the grace of God to somehow struggle through even if you don’t excel.

P55 The process described here involving “facts” is similar to how people become addicted to conspiracy theories -- I can’t help pointing out.

P58 Enriching an Experience - This is a different way of looking at the life changing experiences of Zosima (and others) in The Brothers Karamazov.

P62 I wonder if he’s ever going to talk about “Satisfaction” as it is affected by aging? How to sustain satisfaction when you are no longer doing the things that have satisfied you in the past -- find new things to be satisfied by. (Not really.)

P67 I wonder how this technique would work with treating PTSD? You would need some pretty powerful flowers. It does sound like that’s the kind of thing he has in mind.


Grit
P84 “...you could remember that whatever you’re putting up with is likely a brief period in the larger span of your life.” Unless it is aging or death.

P85 Persistence - This is like my story of playing defensive center the last year I played football. Persistence (stubbornness) was my thing.

P86 Fierceness - Taking him at his word here, I can’t believe he got lost in this situation. I have a feeling I actually know this area and it should be hard to get lost -- unless you’re the kind of person who needs a trail. (You may be hiking a trail but you are moving through a terrain and should be able to orient yourself by the topology, and in this case, the river.) This may be more revealing than the author knows. I think he needs to be on “a trail” at all times. His orderly lists about how to do things is a way of creating trails for life.

P95 - Gratitude - “We tend to spend our lives seeking to feel good in the future, but this is stressful and tiring in the present. With gratitude, you feel good already...” 

This is an excellent point that all the talk about living in the present overlooks. The future isn’t here yet, and the present is the curse of a person with no short term memory. The past is really all we have.

This timing is good as his approach to reprogramming ourselves is just what I need to deal with the annoying aspects of my event greening work -- dealing with the vendors, event goers, and recycling thieves. If I can apply this I may not need to take as many mental health breaks because I’ve gotten fed up with dealing with these people. And if I can do this, I may want to bring it up with Mary as a staff-wide option.

P112 Confidence - Talking about the importance of the first year of a life reminds me that, while I attribute my self-confidence to my mother’s perhaps too attentive parenting style, she always claimed that I was calm and self-contained from birth. I believe this, too. I think nature and nurture combined here. But it is impossible to know for sure.

P150 - Calm - But really talking about Anger - It occurred to me after last weekend that I could use this guy’s process to deal with my losing my temper at the people I have to deal with while greening events. And this is the section that deals with anger -- though most of the psychological stuff doesn’t exactly apply. He tells the Zen story of the monk carrying the beautiful woman across the river and then says, “It you’ve grown preoccupied with the faults and failings of others, imagine how good it would feels to set these down.” This is exactly what I need -- a way to ritually set down my anger. While my first thought was to dig a hole and bury a particularly troublesome vendor or recycling thief in it -- perhaps I can think of something that won’t take so much time or require a shovel. 

P152 Well, shit, “This doesn’t mean not feeling angry. Anger is natural, and it indicates needs that don’t feel met. Suppressing it usually creates more problems than solutions...” Now I realize he is thinking of anger in relationships here, rather than in one-off interactions, but I also suspect he may have a point about completely suppressing these feelings. I suppose there needs to be some kind of balance here, or some way to compensate for the suppression without expressing it to the people who made you angry. 

P162 Motivation - Liking and wanting - This ignores the chemical aspect of hunger, for example. For people who are always ravenously hungry “wanting” isn’t exactly an option.

I’m disappointed this section on liking and wanting didn’t go into more neurochemical detail. This is a subject philosophy has been speculating about since the Greeks, especially Epicurus and the Utilitarians, but there are clearly aspects we can’t understand simply through reason. It seems that he gave less scientific info here than in other places. Is this because the workings of pleasure are more problematic?

Generosity - Forgiveness - Reminds me of The Sunflower. Though I can’t say it added anything new to that discussion.


The “fl” and “fi” situation in this typeface continues to bug me. I so wish there had been ligatures for these two letter combinations. I know I've seen this particular problem before and I don't know why it bugged me so much here.