Resilience is the new happiness!

Psychologist Anna Rowley believes resilience is the most important skill to cultivate, given the rapid rate of economic and technological change. Feeling good is all fine and good, but it’s fleeting. Learning to deal with difficulty, by contrast, improves your chances of feeling good again. That’s much more useful than clinging to an illusion.

A small May 2018 study from researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Healthy Minds, published in Frontiers for Psychology, found that as little as two weeks of “compassion meditation” made subjects more resilient in the face of human suffering, meaning they were able to look at struggle non-judgmentally and respond with compassion rather than becoming distraught themselves.

By the same token, creating “mindful moments” in the classroom that “honor” students’ emotional states while teaching them how to work with difficult feelings and shift them. This might mean allowing kids to reflect quietly, stand up and stretch, or share feelings. When the mindful moments are over, it’s easier for everyone to detach from challenging emotional states and focus on their work.

Source: Quartz Magazine

Photo: via @carla_cascales_alimbau