Building resilience may be easier than you think, Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Resilience. Many of us want more of it, especially now as the pandemic continues to rage and stability seems far away. Karen Swartz, a psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins, says you can build your own resilience muscle by engaging in simple practices based on a study of easy techniques pioneered by Martin Seligman.

Swartz: His team did a study of over 400 individuals, where he had one group doing one of three possible positive psychology exercises. The first was to identify three good things in their life every day. The second was after completing a survey to identify strengths, to try to use one of their strengths in a new way each day, and the third was completing a gratitude exercise. Once a day when the participant wrote about at least three things they felt grateful for.  :28

Swartz says embarking on a personal program first using one of these strategies, then perhaps adding another, may initially help you feel more in control, and then help you reframe your experiences and improve resilience. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.