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The 5 Characteristics of Incredibly Resilient People
Posted: 06/24/2014 7:59 am EDT Updated: 06/24/2014 11:59 am EDT Print Article

I remember the day I found out that my aunt had cancer. Although she was the most positive person I had ever met, I still worried about how she would handle such an overwhelming diagnosis.

Looking back, now that her cancer is in remission, she continues to be the most positive person I know. But even more than that, she is what I call an elegant spirit.

Cancer, in my aunt's world, was a small valley hidden amongst the many glorious peaks of her life. While she may have had some moments of despair as we all do when we find ourselves alone in our thoughts, unable to see the light at the end of the tunnel, she never showed this to the world outside.

She never complained. During her treatment, she continued to go to work and share her passion. She turned long days of chemotherapy in the hospital into a party with her friends where they would share stories, laugh and play cards.

Life threw her an arrow, and she, an archer herself, caught this arrow and created her bow. She knew that she could not control the fact that this arrow had come to her, but her bow could hold it stable. Instead of defeating her, the arrow ultimately strengthened her.

As a physician, I have met many such elegant spirits. Their resilience is awe-inspiring. They have the ability to handle even the most devastating diagnosis.

How then, do people cultivate such strength? And how can we do that for ourselves?

Here are five things resilient people have in common:

1) They practice mindfulness

Mindfulness is the art of paying attention to your life on purpose. Mindful people monitor the thoughts that come through them. However, instead of reacting to their negative thoughts, they observe them like a storm that is passing through.

Furthermore, they pay attention to what is right in their lives. They give it strength and value, thereby turning up the volume on the beauty that surrounds them.

They understand their role in the universal flow of life. They realize that they are a part of a divine cycle of life and death.

And in this understanding, they remain like the eye at the center of a tornado.

The world will continue to change around them. But at the center of this tornado, is their mind, where there is tranquility and calm.

2) They don't compare themselves to others

They don't spend their time feeling sorry for themselves. They realize that every soul has a different journey and therefore it is pointless to compare the path of your life with someone else.

They are continually trying to be the new and improved version of themselves. And as long as they are better than they were yesterday, they know they are on the right path.

They are their own measuring stick of success.

3) They understand that after every big setback is an even bigger transformation

I remember in medical school when part of our rotation was to learn how to deliver bad news to patients, I shadowed a physician who informed a young 40-year-old woman that she had stage four breast cancer.

Immediately, without missing a beat, this woman said, "I know one thing. After every big setback is an even bigger transformation."

Resilient people understand this. They see difficulties as stepping stones to a transformation.

4) They find humor in everything

Laughter, in its very highest form, is a spiritual practice. It connects us to the part of our soul that heals. When we laugh with others, we gain a sense of interconnectedness and belonging.

Laughter may help lower our blood pressure and increase our vascular blood flow. It can do wonders for our health.

Resilient people look for reasons to laugh. They find humor in the mundane. They understand that paying attention to the ordinary is what makes life extraordinary.

5) They do not try to control their lives

Gary Zukav wrote about elegant spirits like this:

The journey of a hawk depends on both the hawk and the wind. The wind is your life. It is all the things that happen from the time you are born and the time you go home. Elegant spirits don't know what will come up next, the same way that hawks don't know which way the wind will blow next.
This doesn't bother them, because they don't try to control their lives any more than hawks try to control the wind.
Resilient people do not try to control their lives. They surrender to the flow of the wind. They adjust their sails and ride the next wave of their life.

People that have overcome hardships, tremendous obstacles or disease often feel that life goes from black and white in the before to many beautiful colors in the after. The have turned up the volume of beauty in their lives. They practice mindfulness. They stop comparing themselves to others. They find humor in everything.

And they know that they have been transformed.

When we're asked what our ultimate life goal is, we often reply, "to be happy."

Happiness is certainly a worthwhile life goal, especially if by "happiness" we mean the Greek eudaimonia, which Daniel Gilbert, in Stumbling on Happiness, translates as "good spirit ... human flourishing ... [and] life well lived."

But do we ever ask, "Why pursue happiness?" The question itself sounds subversive, even anti-American.

Let me assure you I am emphasizing the verb, not the direct object, in that question.

Though we're obsessed with pursuing happiness, many experts would tell us that our very pursuit is what sabotages our efforts to find it.

In his classic work Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi writes, "It is by being fully involved with every detail of our lives, whether good or bad, that we find happiness, not by trying to look for it directly."

Happiness is a byproduct of an engaged, connected, and meaningful life. Yet we still pursue happiness as if it were the ultimate goal, as if it existed somehow in a vacuum.

In The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking, Oliver Burkeman challenges the conventional wisdom about happiness, as well as the advice of motivational speakers, for they continually persuade us to pursue pathways to happiness that are not borne out by the research. Burkeman advocates what he calls the "negative path" to happiness, in that it involves embracing the negative, as well as a more relaxed not-doing. He suggests several ways that we need to think differently about happiness.

1. Instead of positive thinking, practice mindful, nonjudgmental awareness of your thoughts.

Motivational speakers tell people to think positively and banish the word "impossible!" There's no room for negativity if you want to be happy!

But tell someone to think only positive thoughts, and what do they think about? All those negative thoughts running through their mind! In fact, putting effort into positive thinking only draws more attention to our negative self-talk, because we are looking for it... and then we get mad at ourselves for not being more positive!

Instead of banishing negative thoughts (which is nigh impossible), we should bring our mindful awareness to them, examining them with calm indifference. We cannot overcome our negative thoughts by simply denying or repressing them -- mindfulness teaches us to acknowledge them, but not be driven by them.

2. Instead of setting audacious goals for success, practice non-attachment to the outcome of your actions.

Burkeman cites several corporations that have abandoned goal-setting, after finding goal-odicy often had unintended consequences, such as diverting resources away from other important work and ignoring (or even covering up) evidence of failure.

Goals can also be limiting. Ever wonder why it's so hard to get a taxi in New York City when it's raining? It's not just supply and demand. Taxi drivers work to meet a quota each day; when they've hit their goal, their day is done. On a rainy day, they hit their goal sooner, so most decide to end their shift early, and there really ARE fewer cabs on the street! Often, our goals limit our pursuit of maximum happiness (additional income and dry commutes for all).

If we ask people to focus instead on form, and not on the end result, they actually perform better. Burkeman argues we're better off if we don't "strive too ardently for any single vision of the future."

3. Instead of seeking stability, dance with uncertainty and even failure.

So much of our pursuit of happiness consists of seeking stability and permanence, when those things don't really exist. Buddhism, and biology, teach us that we are a constantly shifting collection of cells, thoughts, emotions, breath, sensations, and form. We are impermanent. We are always changing, flowing just like that river we can never step in twice. So why do we pursue something that doesn't exist? Burkeman advises, "The point is not to 'confront' insecurity, but to appreciate that you are it."

If you fail, embrace it. We need to think like scientists, who learn as much from the experiment that fails as the one that succeeds. Dance with your uncertainty.

And be wary of those books that identify all the criteria of "successful" people (risk-taking, goal-setting, teeth-brushing, etc.) -- those things probably characterize unsuccessful people, too. But researchers usually don't study them.

4. Instead of envisioning your completely satisfied self, consider the worst possible scenarios.

This seems to fly in the face of the advice of many popular self-help titles in which people are told to envision themselves holding their ideal job or completing the great American novel. While daydreaming can have positive psychological benefits, researcher Gabrielle Oettingen has found that "spending time and energy thinking about how well things could go ... actually reduces most people's motivation to achieve them." Visualizing the good outcome produces relaxed and happy thoughts, which, to the brain, feel just like actually having accomplished it!

Burkeman instead recommends envisioning the worst case scenario. This will likely will remind us that 1) we can find a way to cope with the negative outcomes, and 2) most often, things rarely go as wrong as we fear they will. Daniel Gilbert writes, "anticipating unpleasant events can minimize their impact.... [F]ear, worry, and anxiety have useful roles to play in our lives ... [and] motivate people to engage in prudent, prophylactic behavior."

5. Instead of waiting for inspiration, just do it!

If, as Daniel Gilbert writes, happiness comes through "being effective -- changing things, influencing things, making things happen," and, as Csikszentmihalyi states, it occurs "when a person's body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile," then we need to take action.

Burkeman claims that the problem with much of the self-help literature, and with motivational speakers, is that they're about "how to feel in the mood for getting things done." But feeling like doing something, and actually doing it, are two different things. If, instead of waiting for inspiration, we take "a non-attached stance towards procrastination," we'll discover that our "reluctance about working isn't something that needs to be eradicated or transformed into positivity.... [We] can note the procrastinatory feelings and act anyway."

This negative path to happiness suggests we abandon our pursuit, and instead practice mindfulness, embrace uncertainty and insecurity, drop our obsession with goals, and take inspired action. That sounds pretty positive to me.

How Giving Back Can Lead To Greater Personal Success
The Huffington Post  | By Alena Hall
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Posted: 06/17/2014 4:43 pm EDT Updated: 06/17/2014 4:59 pm EDT Print Article

As we strive to achieve our various goals in life, we encounter countless opportunities to help others succeed simultaneously. And according to Adam Grant, taking the time to give back in these situations is what will make us truly successful.

Grant -- the youngest tenured and highest-rated professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, author of Give and Take, and the inspiration behind our Go Giver series here at The Huffington Post -- joined HuffPost Live host Caroline Modarressy-Tehrani today to discuss why we should all include giving when we envision the modern American dream.

"When I think about people who are givers, I would just define them as being the kinds of people who enjoy helping others and often do it with no strings attached,” says Grant. "And nobody does that every single moment of their lives. On the other end of the spectrum, even the people who are the biggest takers still have moments of concern for others. … I think we all have roles that call out our more generous sides.”

While many think that one must achieve success before acting charitably toward others, Grant’s research actually suggests the opposite.

“There are some people like Bill Gates who succeed first and then start giving back, but the majority of successful people out there began giving long before they achieved greatness,” he says. “I would love to redefine success to say it’s not just what you achieve, it’s also what you help other people achieve.”

How does Ken's garden grow on Father's Day?

You will like hearing this famous Hawaiian piece.  Shot entirely in Hawaii, it showcases legendary island musicians, and the scenery is spectacular.  The editing is awesome.  Old time Hawaiian music -- a song of the overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom and annexation to the U.S.

The slideshow below begins with the planting stage in early May until today, June 3.