The Benefits of Cultivating a Psychological Toolbox

We, Steve Southwick and I, think that becoming a more resilient person enhances many different aspects of your life.  The obvious one is that if you’re unfortunately faced with a serious trauma you either avoid depression, anxiety, fear, substance abuse altogether or if you develop some of those problems you bounce back and you can better recover. 

We think in general even if you’re not facing a serious trauma, using the techniques that we have identified relating to resilience can help your life in a more general way to be more productive at work, not be bound by the usual disappointments and stresses and strains of life, and you remain very productive because you’re not getting demoralized, for example.  

We also think it has implications in how you raise your children because if you don’t challenge your children a little bit out of their comfort zone as you’re raising them, they’re not going to develop what we call a psychological toolbox that they can use when they are eventually facing some sort of challenge in their life, which we all do.

In Their Own Words is recorded in Big Think’s studio.

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