How Well Do You Weather Life's Storms?

Willa Cather wrote: "There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm." How well we weather the tempests in life, how quickly we bounce back from adversities and calamities, depends largely on our level of resilience.

Research on resilience has shown us that people who cannot deal with their emotions may become more narrow-minded and rigid in their view of themselves and their place in the world. A lack of understanding of our personal histories -- what Aristotle called the habits that serve us and the habits that don't serve us -- keeps us from adapting when new stresses affect us. We fall back on old thought patterns, old behaviors that keep us spinning our wheels and stuck in the muck and mire of dysfunction. You know the scenario: Different situation, different set of circumstance, same old lousy outcome.... (Read full blog at The Huffington Post and AOL Healthy Living.)

Live's Little Annoyances (Don't Let Them Get To You)

Critical, and sometimes life-altering, situations can happen that throw us totally off kilter: losing one's job, developing a serious illness (oneself or a loved one), or natural disasters such as floods, paralyzing snow and/or ice storms, hurricanes or tornadoes. How well we weather these devastating, out of our control circumstances depends on the strength of our resiliency.

Resilience, as defined by the American Psychological Association, is the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or even significant sources of stress. It is the ability to "bounce back" after a major disruption in our lives.

Yet, there is another realm of situations, also out of our control,... (Read full post at The Huffington Post and AOL Healthy Living.)

8 Ways To Bring Stillness Into Your Life

Deepak Chopra wrote: "Silence is the great teacher, and to learn its lessons you must pay attention to it. There is no substitute for the creative inspiration, knowledge, and stability that come from knowing how to contact your core of inner silence."

Noise is a prime environmental cause of stress. Noise pollution triggers the body's stress response, releasing stress hormones into your autonomic nervous system. In recent years, stress hormones such as adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol have been used in noise studies to gauge the association between noise exposure and heart disease, hypertension and stress. (Read full post at The Huffington Post and AOL Healthy Living.)