Authoring Your Own Life Story

Nurture your self-esteem.

Be true to yourself rather than trying to be what someone else expects of you. Focus on what you can do, tasks you can achieve, situations you can influence.

Take an active role in your community or in an organization or activity that helps others.

Develop a new skill: learn a language or a new sport or how to fix a car; take up knitting, cooking or woodworking; join a book club; try out for an amateur production; become a docent at a museum; help organizations that feed the elderly and infirm; volunteer your services at community groups like the local Y, school, library or park.

There are myriad opportunities; just look or ask around and you will find them.

Take a chance on change if jobs, habits or activities you've long pursued are no longer satisfying or efficient. Change is frightening to people who lack resilience, but those who try it usually find that they land on their feet, and that fosters resilience.

And if a new path does not seem to be working out well, change again.

Take a long, hard look at the people in your life and consider abandoning friends who drag you down or reinforce your negative scripts. For those - like family members - from whom you can't escape, practice ignoring their put-downs and not taking them so seriously.

Seek out activities that elevate your spiritual life and nurture your inner strength: for example, art, music, literature, religion, meditation, the great outdoors.

From Brooks and Goldstein, The Power of Resilience.