Cognitive Reappraisal: What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger

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Part of the resilience prescription is what we call cognitive reappraisal, and that involves looking at the trauma that you have unfortunately experienced and reframing it. You assimilate it into your life view and you move on. In a sense it does become part of you, but by assimilating it into your life view you can even grow from it. We call that post traumatic growth. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, that is apparently a song now that is quite popular even though that was a quote from Nietzsche.

By reframing the trauma and assimilating it into your life view you can move on and not be stuck in the trauma, but along the way you will experience failure. There will be disappointments. You’ll still have some reminders and symptoms of the trauma, but that’s OK because you can grow from failure. In fact, you really can’t grow as a person and reach your full potential unless you fail.

Then you know you’ve been kind of pushing the envelope. Failure is good. You can grow from failure and then you work at it again. You never give up. You keep pushing forward.

60 Second Reads is recorded in Big Think’s studio.

Image courtesy fo Shutterstock.

The most counterintuitive, surprising, and impactful new stories delivered to your inbox every Thursday.