How to Become Resilient

Drew Birnie and Mark Manson delve into how various factors such as exercise, sleep, and gut health significantly influence our overall resilience both mentally and physically.

Exercise Builds Resilience

Exercise and Challenges Enhance Brain for Better Stress Response and Emotional Regulation

Birnie shares that having a consistent exercise routine provided him with the energy needed to handle life's piled-up challenges. The anterior medial cingulate cortex, crucial for resilience, benefits from exercise because it deals with energy allocation and decision-making in stressful situations. This part of the brain acts as a hub, integrating information from sensory, motor, decision-making, memory, and brainstem areas.

By engaging in difficult activities, especially those we are averse to, our brains undergo structural and functional changes including increased gray matter and functional connectivity. The people most resilient show more potent connectivity between the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and other brain regions. Those who exercise have larger anterior cingulate cortices with higher gray matter density and more connectivity, which is essential to resilience.

Exercising this resilience "muscle" in the brain can also be enhanced through engaging in higher-level cognitive tasks such as reading, writing, and strategy games. The brain itself can grow even in adults due to exercise, pointing to a two-way relationship between exercise and brain structural development. The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis plays a role in resilience, where during stress, hormones spike and return to baseline once the stressor is addressed.

Birnie highlights the benefits of aerobic exercise and yoga for increasing heart rate variability, which contributes to an individual's resilience. He observes his own heart rate variability improvement during and after yoga sessions. Sedentary individuals have less heart rate variation, equating to less physiological and psychological adaptability. High vagal tone indicates better vagus nerve functioning, which can be improved through slow exhale breathing, promoting a calm state.

Birnie personally practices 150 plus minutes of moderate to aerobic exercise per week, including strength training. This routine, by presenting a controlled stress event, physically and mentally prepares one to better handle life's unpredictabilities. It provides "psychological reps," teaching oneself to remain engaged with challenges for extended periods.

Sleep Quality and Consistency Are Critical for Resilience

Sleep Disruptions Impair Stress Recovery and Adaptation

Although Birnie admits to challenges with perfecting his sleep routine, he recognizes its importance. Sleep disruptions, such as traveling across time zones, significantly affect the body's stress handling capabilities. Manson points out that poor sleep quality hurts heart rate variability. Birnie advises that sleep consistency is more crucial than duration—it is essential to go to bed and wake at the same time every day for better stress recovery and adaptation.

Light exposure, by resetting the circadian rhythm, contributes to better physical energy and resilience. Sleep is a baseline necessity for mental health and resilience; it’s fundamental but not sufficient on its own. Without adequate sleep, other resilience-building efforts become less effective.

Gut M ...

Resilience, often perceived as the ability to face and bounce back from hardship, is a complex interplay of emotions, reactions, and beliefs. It isn’t about being impervious to struggles or devoid of emotion; rather, it is the capacity to feel pain, confront it, and continue to act in alignment with one's values.

Self-Belief Is the Most Important Factor

Self-belief emerges as the cornerstone of resilience. Psychological research continually underscores the idea that believing in one's abilities significantly increases the likelihood of achieving goals. Mark Manson, for instance, cites the ultra-marathoner Dean Karnazes and military personnel as examples of humans tapping into a small fraction of their potential energy when exhausted. Identity plays a crucial role here—an individual can decide and cultivate a sense of self that fosters resilience and propels them toward change. Manson maintains that one's unwavering belief in the possibility of overcoming challenges is essential to actualize it.

Drew Birnie concurs, stressing the necessity of self-efficacy: if you do not believe you can accomplish a task, you will likely never attempt it. Resilience can be likened to a muscle that strengthens with consistent use. Those with a history of overcoming challenges can develop a reinforced identity of someone capable of facing and surmounting obstacles. Manson notes that surviving hard challenges reinforces this identity, creating a cycle that bolsters self-efficacy.

Reframing Challenges as Opportunities Increases Resilience

Resilient individuals often exhibit the ability to view challenges through a different lens. Mark Manson introduces the concept of a "Goldilocks zone of pain," suggesting that growth emerges from an optimal level of challenge. Perception plays a critical role; when difficulties are seen as achievable, it fosters resilience. Manson recounts signing up for a Tough Mudder race, a decision that tested the mindsets central to resilience.

Self-awareness, including recognizing counterproductive narratives, also enhances resilience. Birnie shares his experience of focusing on podcasting rather than self-promotion on social media, demonstrating a reframe of the challenge as an opportunity. Advice often deemed cliché can hold invaluable power within critical contexts—principles rooted in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). This therapy aims to restructure negative thoughts and narratives that often serve as psychological defense mechanisms.

While CBT is not directly mentioned, its principles are implied as helpful tools in the journey toward resilience. These include recognizing the false nature of negative narratives, understanding the thought-emotion-behavior loop, and engaging in mindfulness to gain dis ...

The importance of strong social ties and community connections becomes evident in the discussion on the resilience of individuals and society. The conversation reveals how closely knit communities, deep relationships, and inclusive cultural environments contribute significantly to an individual's capacity for resilience.

Strong, Supportive Social Relationships Are Critical for Resilience

Emotional Support From Friends, Family, and Community

Experts stress that even in the face of socioeconomic stress, the emotional support from family, friends, or teachers is critical for resilience. The social aspect of the brain may provide the will to live, implying the necessity of social connections in building resilience. Drew Birnie advocates for focusing on one to three quality friendships, suggesting that a single good friend can be more valuable than many acquaintances in building resilience. Shared emotional experiences, like laughter, strengthen these bonds, making close connections a high priority according to Mark Manson. This concept extends to resilience within a community and emphasizes the importance of maintaining a space for your community within that resilience framework.

Disconnection and Isolation Undermine Resilience

Experts are concerned about the modern prevalence of loneliness and its severe health consequences, comparable to the effects of smoking. Birnie points out the loneliness epidemic, suggesting that less social connection presently may influence a lack of resilience compared to the past. Economic development affords individuals more freedom, but social systems may lose the co-regulation they evolved for, eventually undermining resilience. As individuals engage in hyper-independent pursuits, they risk disconnection from their social networks, further isolating themselves from the supportive emotional relationships necessary for resilience.

Loneliness Has Severe Health Consequences, Comparable To Smoking

The lack of public health campaigns or policies addressing loneliness is surprising, given its comparable health effects to smoking. Birnie notes that loneliness is often viewed as an individual problem rather than a societal one, which could hinder addressing the issue collectively. Manson expresses that individuals cannot be the most resilient version of themselves without other people, highlighting the indispensable connection between social relationships and resilience.

Cultural and Environmental Factors Shape an Individual's Resilience

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