In a 41-17 loss to the Minnesota Vikings football team near the end of the 2007-8 season, New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning threw four interceptions, three of them returned for touchdowns. But he would go on to lead the Giants through the playoffs and on to victory in Super Bowl XLII.

What accounted for Manning’s incredible turnaround? Psychologists would say it’s a trait called resilience. Resilience is the ability to bounce back after any kind of defeat and become a winner again. The ability to overcome adversity is considered a crucial element to success in life because troubles are something no one can avoid. When we know that circumstances can bend, but never break us, we gain the confidence to pursue difficult tasks with unreserved enthusiasm. We believe in ourselves. A lack of resilience is one of the chief causes of depression because it permits life to overwhelm us.

Clearly, having resilience is desirable. But is it something we can control? While some psychologists believe that at least a part of our ability to cope with life’s stresses is an inborn trait, most feel we can also cultivate resilience. Here are some ways how:

1. Recall past triumphs. When you are faced with a crisis as an adult, you can go back to your youth and think of all the adversities you were able to overcome. It could be anything from getting better grades to earning extra money selling lemonade. You’ll realize there were quite a few times when you let life’s difficulties temporarily get you down, but that you were eventually able to surmount them.

2. Remind yourself that life is cyclical. Even if you are at the bottom, you cannot stay there forever. Look at sports teams. One season, they are in the last place in the standings, only to make a slow ascent to the top in subsequent seasons. Before you know it, they are champs. Even if things appear static, they are always moving toward a different state. Remember—the only thing permanent is change, and a new day is coming.

3. Keep a goal for the future in mind. Try not to be passive let things happen to you. Instead, think of yourself as someone who can solve problems and learn from experience. If you are stymied, think about what you have to do to get over the hurdle. Have something you want to achieve and work towards it.

4. Cultivate your spirituality. The value of faith cannot be overestimated. Faith often gives us the strength to go on in difficult times. When you believe that “God’s will will never take you where God’s grace cannot protect you,” it can be extraordinarily reassuring. Even if you don’t believe in a higher power, you can put your faith in science and the remarkable ways in which nature sustains itself.

5. Seek out role models who are in the public eye. Perhaps it’s a politician who came back from defeat in one election to win another, or a celebrity who has overcome a drug addiction. Also, ask people you know how they were able to bounce back from difficult situations in their lives. This will give you hope and inspiration.

Resilience isn’t about being a tough or unfeeling. In fact, many resilient people reach out to others for advice and consul when they are going through rough times. It’s just a question of deciding that you are not going to dwell on and remain bitter about a life event, but are going to learn and grow from it. I’m sure that on his road to the Super Bowl championship, Eli Manning immersed himself in game tapes and studied his opponents carefully, so that he could adjust his own game and try new strategies. I’m also sure that after the Giant’s loss in the 2009 playoffs, Manning will be making adjustments you’ll see next season.

And that leads to my last point.

Perhaps the most important thing to keep in mind is that the cultivation of resilience makes taking risks and going outside your comfort zone imperative. Without taking on new challenges there is no possibility of growth. When you have mastered a new skill, for instance, your resilience is automatically enhanced. Psychologists like to say that resilience is an emotional muscle. Nurture it and you will have strength you never knew you had.

About the writer: Wendy Aron is the author of Hide & Seek: How I Laughed at Depression, Conquered My Fears and Found Happiness.

Then, one day I realized why it bothered me: I was jealous of their joyfulness and zest for life. Of course, I was once a child too, and played with my friends the same way these kids did. And I, too, approached life with spontaneity and amazement, as though it were a wonder to behold.

But something happened on the way to adulthood. Somehow I started to become burdened with obligations and responsibilities. I became regretful over decisions made and full of doubts about those that would have to be tackled in the future.  I became saddened by the bad things that happened to the good people I knew, and from reading about the misfortunes of strangers. Life simply was no longer fun.

I would hazard to guess that many adults feel this way. In between childhood and adulthood, things like work, marriage and family intervene and suddenly we become incapable of experiencing the pure, unadulterated happiness we felt when, as kids, we were free of all these things.

But is that the way it has to be? I say, no! There are several simple things you can do as an adult to reclaim the joy of youth:

Avoid the News

The other day I picked up my morning newspaper to see stories on the front page about the mounting job losses due to the recession, a fighter jet that had crashed and killed three people on the ground, a group of Guantanamo Bay prisoners who were going to plead guilty to the 9/11 attacks and a major newspaper company that was filing for bankruptcy.

Reading downbeat news like this can hardly make you feel happy. What I suggest, then, is to skip reading newspapers or news blogs, or watching news broadcasts for one week. In our 24-7 news–obsessed culture, this may be extremely tough to do, but it will pay off. Let’s face it, news organizations thrive on negativity because they think that’s what the public wants. Just think how serene you might feel if you were able to eliminate all of this pessimism from your life, even for just a short while.

Engage in Self-Care

There’s no doubt that our culture glorifies the rebel. In countless books and movies, we’ve romanticized those who have faced adulthood’s challenges by breaking the rules. However, the rebel also carries with him/her a certain self-destructive streak that can only lead to unhappiness.

The opposite of self-destruction is self-care. This means taking a little time out from each day to do something nice and comforting for yourself. Such activities can entail anything from buying new underwear to getting a massage to picking up flowers. You’ll see that when you take care of yourself properly, you’ll be much more joyful. Pampering yourself is also the first step toward being sensitive to the needs of others, and that can ultimately only help you feel more content.

Enjoy Entertainment that Makes You Laugh

When we were children, we were given permission to devote endless amounts of time to playing games, having fun and laughing. As adults, no one is giving us this permission, so we’ve got to give it to ourselves, without feeling guilty about it. We work hard, so why shouldn’t we be able to have some fun?

Make a point of bringing a little joy and laughter in your home by buying some of your favorite comedies on DVD and setting aside a weekend to watch them. The Marx Brothers and early Woody Allen movies never fail to delight. You can also get fun board games geared to adults like Pictionary, Trivial Pursuit or Monopoly. Hosting a murder mystery party with friends is another great way to unwind. It’s a cliché that laughter is the best medicine, but it is also true. Laughter has even been shown to help heal physical ailments when other forms of treatment have failed.

Smile More

Everyone morning at the same time I go to Dunkin Donuts to get iced coffee and every morning I am waited on by the same young girl. I am not a morning person and can generally find nothing to smile about before ten a.m. On one particular morning, however, I smiled at the girl and asked her how her weekend was. She immediately brightened and we got into a small chat. We’ve been friendly ever since.

The moral is: Never underestimate the power of a smile. The more you smile, the more people will smile back at you. And the more this happens, the greater your opportunity for making new friends, or even just nice acquaintances. But it all starts with a smile.–one simple, easy thing that so many of us, hurried and harried, often fail to do.

Reclaiming the joy of childhood is actually easier that it seems.  If you try some of these suggestions, you’ll be thrilled when the children playing outside your home rob you of your peace and quiet.

Do you have any suggestions for reclaiming the joy of childhood? Please share them in the comments below.

About the writer: Wendy Aron is the author of Hide & Seek: How I Laughed at Depression, Conquered My Fears and Found Happiness.

Image courtesy of Macieklew.

As humans, we have the unique ability to reflect on events and circumstances, and while that is a good thing, it carries with it, a risk– the way we think about things has a profound affect on how we feel. Negative thinking can adversely impact not only our mood, but our physical health, too. Therefore, it is imperative to examine what we are thinking and treat our thoughts as mere constructs that we have the power to harness with a little effort.

Analyzing our thoughts is particularly crucial for those of us who have the tendency to be depressed. This is because those of us who suffer from depression regularly form inaccurate thoughts that we convince ourselves are true. These irrational thoughts, which are repeated over and over again, are known to therapists who practice cognitive behavioral therapy as cognitive distortions. Mental health professionals disagree on whether cognitive distortions cause depression or whether depression causes cognitive distortions, but it is universally recognized that such patterns of thought make us feel terrible about ourselves.

Common Cognitive Distortions

There several different cognitive distortions or mind traps that we can fall into. Here are some of them:

Over-generalization: one negative thing occurs and you convince yourself that it is going to happen in all other similar situations.

Emotional reasoning: you feel a certain way, so you think it must be the truth.

All-or-nothing thinking: you see things in black and white. Either things are totally great or a disaster.

Mental filter: you only remember the negative things that have happened to you during the course of life and shut out all the positive things.

Should statements: you try to motivate yourself by dwelling on the things you think you should be able to do.

Mind-reading: you conclude that someone is thinking something negative about you.

Mental health professionals believe that there are about ten cognitive distortions to which depressed people repetitively subject themselves. But it’s important to note that you are not stuck and that these patterns of thought can be changed.

Changing Your Thoughts

One of the most helpful things you can do is to give all of your negative thoughts a reality check. For instance, if your partner has just ended a romantic relationship and you think that you will never be loved again, you can ask yourself, “What evidence do I have that I will never be loved again?” Since you’ve been in romantic relationships before this one, there should be no reason why you won’t find another partner who will love you when you are ready. In addition, you can think of all the friends and family members who still love you. In this way you can realize that you are committing the cognitive distortion of over-generalization because you are taking one event and magnifying it to apply to all situations.

Another way to battle cognitive distortions is to engage in reframing an event. Perhaps something negative happened to you, but you must ask yourself if anything positive came out of it. In the case of the end of a romantic relationship, you can tell yourself that you learned many new things from your ex-partner that have made you a much more interesting and well-rounded person and that you can bring this to your next relationship. If you can think along these lines, you might not feel as though you are at a dead end, but at the precipice of a new beginning.

Training your mind to challenge irrational thoughts and replace them with more accurate thinking is extremely difficult, particularly for people who suffer from depression. But the reward justifies the effort you will have to put into it. Instead of walking around feeling unhappy and that the world is out to get you, you’ll have a different outlook on life—one that will fill you with enthusiasm for the day at hand and not affect your mood when things don’t go exactly your way.

About the writer: Wendy Aron is the author of Hide & Seek: How I Laughed at Depression, Conquered My Fears and Found Happiness.

I was sitting in my car in bumper-to-bumper traffic and I was not happy about it. I was due into my office for a 9 a.m. meeting and I knew I would never make it on time. All sorts of thoughts started to run through my head. Wasn’t I a fool for not leaving enough time for my drive? What if my boss reprimanded me for being late, or worse yet, fired me? Why shouldn’t I be on time when my co-workers were going to be? As my mind raced from one thought to the next, I started to get a headache. My heart was thumping and the back of my neck was beginning to sweat. All in all, I felt terrible.

We’ve all been in situations where things don’t go according to plan. But that’s not what is important. What is essential is the way we talk to ourselves about these situations. Talking to ourselves negatively, like I was doing, can make us feel awful about ourselves and make a difficult situation worse. What if I had accepted the fact that I was going to be late and instead of worrying about the consequences and beating myself up over it, turned the experience into something positive? I could have switched on a news radio station and had something interesting to discuss with my co-workers when I arrived. I could have used the time to think about the things I was going to contribute to the meeting, so that I would have had something to tell my boss if I did arrive late.  Or, I simply could have put on some music that I enjoyed and did some deep breathing while listening to it.

What’s the best way to flip from negative to positive self-talk? The first step is to recognize what we are doing. Far too often, our thoughts pass through our minds without us even being aware that we are thinking them. When we really listen to what we are telling ourselves, we will see that the negative self-talk falls into four basic categories:

1. Criticizing ourselves (i.e. I’m horrible at such and such. My friends are much better than I.)
2. Giving up and saying that things are hopeless (i.e. I’ll never be able to do such and such.)
3. Worrying about the future (i.e. What if such and such happens? Won’t that be terrible?)
4. Concluding we should be perfect (i.e. I should be able to do such and such. If I can’t, I’m a complete failure.)

Once we have recognized that we are thinking in one or all of these ways, it’s time to battle our negative self-talk. The best way to do this is by countering each thought with an opposing, positive statement that questions or refutes the original thought and then rehearsing the counterstatement over and over again until it becomes second nature.  For example, while sitting in traffic, I worried, What if my boss reprimands me? I could have countered this negative thought with the statement, So what if my boss reprimands me? It’s not so horrible. She’ll get over it and so will I.

If we have the opportunity to write down our counterstatements, that’s even better because it makes rehearsing them that much easier. As difficult as challenging our own self-talk may seem, it is essential if we are to take control of our lives. With responsibility comes ownership and with ownership comes the possibility of greatly reducing anxiety and enhancing self-esteem. It’s no secret that those who suffer from depression and anxiety disorder report that negative thinking is a big part of the reason why. And studies have shown that when negative self-talk is eliminated, depression lifts.

There are many obstacles we face in life that are out of our control. Our self-talk is the one thing that we, alone, can regulate. Why make things more difficult for ourselves than we have to? If we can master our thoughts, then we can master life.

By the way, my boss and several co-workers hit the same traffic jam as I did and all arrived late for the 9 a.m. meeting. When we got to the office, we laughed about it.

About the author: Wendy Aron is the author of Hide & Seek: How I Laughed at Depression, Conquered My Fears and Found Happiness