Life Is Tough. Deal With It.
The latest recipe for success tells us to rely on grit and to be fearless in the face of rejection. What’s left out is how to go about this if it does not come naturally.
Judi Ketteler thinks the idea of fearlessness is made up by motivational speakers. “I wonder, is being fearless even a real thing?” she asked. “Talking about being fearless covers up where people really are with fear,” Dr. Kerry Ressler, director of the Neurobiology of Fear Laboratory at McLean Hospital in Massachusetts, told The Times. “After all, fear is the most evolutionarily conserved behavioral reflex for survival.”
Fear helped us to survive as a species, motivated us to run from predators, and we still need it. “The question,” he said, “is how do you not let the emotional response of the fear reflex run wild?”
Facing our worst fears can build resiliency. After Missy Meinhardt, 51, of Cincinnati, lost her 18-monthold daughter to a brain tumor in 2006, she changed.
“In many ways, I am fearless now,” she told The Times. “I don’t care what people think about me the way I used to. I have a sense of freedom I didn’t have before.”
Some people become sick after facing adversity, while others are just fine, which puzzles Richard A. Friedman, a psychiatrist.
“We know that chronic stress can contribute to physical conditions like heart disease and stroke in some people, while others emerge unscathed,” Dr. Friedman wrote in The Times. “What makes people resilient, and is it something they are born with or can it be acquired later in life?”
The brain’s so- called central exec- utive network, which helps regulate emotions, thinking and behavior, may be key to this toughness, new research suggests. Dr. Friedman wrote that we can alter patterns in this network with mindfuness training, which helps us regulate our emotions and strengthen our self control.
In one study, two weeks of mindfulness training resulted in a 60 percent reduction in smoking, compared with no reduction in a group that focused on relaxation.
Huda Akil, a neuroscientist at the University of Michigan, offers this advice: “Active resilience happens when people who are vulnerable find resources to cope with stress and bounce back, and do so in a way that leaves them stronger, ready to handle additional stress, in more adaptive ways.”
Emily Winter should probably get a reward for her resiliency.
She made it her 2018 New Year’s resolution to get 100 professional rejections. As a comedian and a writer, it was not too difficult.
And if 100 seemed like a lot, she reflected on the lives of young adults these days, who change jobs and careers frequently, move more and need to find new friends.
“Today’s young adults are essentially rejection magnets,” she wrote. “It feels as if the only constant is change, and that means we’re forever at the whim of other people’s judgments, opinions and decisions. It’s unsettling at best. At worst, it’s crippling.”
By the middle of December, she had 101 rejections and 39 acceptances. But she also had successes, writing for new publications, writing jokes for a favorite comedians’ radio show and landing exciting guests for her podcast.
“I don’t regret committing to this masochistic rejection project,” Ms. Winter wrote. “It made me feel embarrassed, depressed, overwhelmed and self-indulgent. But I also felt that I was moving forward instead of standing still.”