what is success

© 2016 Finding the Midline, Ltd. www.findingthemidline.com

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What is Success? What does a truly successful life look like?

I. Introduction.

We want to be successful in life, but what does that mean? What does success look like? For many of us a successful life means financial security, perhaps a fancy home and nice cars, great schools for the kids, and maybe even a vacation home. However, particularly as we age, we begin to sense a vague feeling of emptiness, a desire for a seemingly indefinable “something more.” Experts in the field of behavioral psychology have studied this issue and have iden-tified what they call a life of well-being, a life that is flourishing. They’ve identified the “something more.” While there are various definitions, for our purposes a life of well-being consists of five attributes: 1) positive emotions; 2) engagement or flow; 3) meaning; 4) accomplishment; and 5) nurturing relationships. This talk focuses on these five attributes. We will see why a life rich in these attributes is a great way to measure whether a life is “successful.” In the talks that follow we will study how yoga practices and philosophy, when applied to our daily lives is per-haps an unparalleled way to create a life rich in these attributes, a life of true success. So, tonight we learn what a life of well-being looks like, and then we will spend the rest of this course, and beyond, learning how to manifest that life.

II. Finding a definition of a life of success.

As I reached a level of financial security I found myself increasingly haunted by a nagging voice telling me that something was missing. I found myself asking: “Am I making the best use of whatever time I have left on the planet? What have I accom-plished with my life? Will I leave any kind of positive mark on the world when I leave it?” The voice only gets louder as we age, certainly it did for me. Some time ago, in response to this sense that there is something more out there than just success at work, I began a search for an answer to the questions of what this “something more” might be and how could I attain it. A big part of my search included graduate work at St. Mary’s University in Minne-sota, and I received a Master’s in Human Development in 2005. In that program I focused on how yoga practices and philosophy can positively influence our behavior. This graduate study culminated in my final position paper: “The Role of Yoga in Personal Transformation” which eventually led to the release of my book Finding the Midline in 2013.1 In my book I use stories to explain how yoga can help us awaken

1 Dorigan, William (2013). Finding the Midline. Winter Park, CO: LuHen Publications, LLC.


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to life’s Midlines, which I describe as those opportunities life presents us that can lead to a richer, fuller life. I used my own experience as a stress-out but financially successful trial attorney as a basis for many of the stories. My graduate studies included an introduction to the field of positive psychology, a field devoted to the scientific study of the characteristics that allow individuals and communities to thrive.2 After receiving my Masters I continued my search, finding work by Dr. Martin Seligman, a past President of the American Psychological Asso-ciation (1998). That work, reported in his 2011 book Flourish, identifies the five at-tributes of a life of well-being: 1) positive emotions; 2) engagement or flow; 3) meaning; 4) accomplishment; and 5) nurturing relationships.3 I was so impressed with these five attributes that I included them in my book, Finding the Midline, re-ferring to them as “guideposts for finding our own Midlines.4 In this talk we explore those guideposts, the attributes of a life of well-being, and what each means. I give you resources for further study if you wish. Then we will turn to a study of how yoga philosophy and practices give us the knowledge and skill necessary to make these attributes your own, allowing you to create your own life of well-being.

III. The five attributes of a life of well-being. Let’s look in detail at each of the five attributes of a life of well-being.

A. Positive Emotion.

The first of the five attributes of a life well lived is the presence of positive emotions.

1. Positive emotions are feelings, such as pleasure, rapture, ecstasy, warmth,

comfort, and other emotions including happiness.5 Dr. Barbara Fredrick-son, a professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and Principle Investigator of the Positive Emotions and Psy-chophysiology Lab at that university has also studied positive emotion as part of her life’s work. In her 2014 book Positivity, Dr. Fredrickson dis-

2 University of Pennsylvania, Positive Psychology Center. Retrieved from www.ppc.sas.upenn.edu. 3 Seligman, Dr. Martin (2011). Flourish. New York, NY: The Free Press, at 16-17; 24-29. 4 Finding the Midline, at 28. 5 Flourish, at 11.


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cusses ten most primary positive emotions: joy, gratitude, serenity, inter-est, hope, pride, amusement, inspiration, awe, and love: 6

a. Joy. Joy occurs when we feel safe, familiar, and things are going

our way. Joy often occurs when we receive an unexpected and pleasant surprise, which delights us; we feel playful.

b. Gratitude. Gratitude occurs when we realize somebody has gone out

of their way to do something beneficial for us, or has been kind to us or helpful. We can also feel grateful just for the comforts and pleasures of life, or whenever we appreciate that something came our way as a gift. It causes us to want to give back.

c. Serenity. Serenity arises when we are feeling safe and familiar, like

joy, but in a lower key than joy. This is a “mindful” state in which we find ourselves relishing the moment.

d. Interest. Interest refers to situations in which our attention is drawn

to something new or different. We become fascinated and our curi-osity is spurred.

e. Hope. Hope comes to us when our circumstances are troubling and

there is uncertainty that we will have a favorable outcome. There is the potential for despair.

f. Pride. We feel pride when we know we are responsible for a favor-

able outcome. g. Amusement. This occurs when something unexpected happens that

makes us laugh. h. Inspiration. We feel inspiration when we come across human excel-

lence and see potential for something better. i. Awe. Awe is related to inspiration but on a larger scale. We are

stunned and feel humble in comparison to what we witness. j. Love. Love includes all of the other positive emotions. What makes

an emotion turn into love is when the feelings happen within an in-timate relationship. In her 2014 follow-up book, Love 2.0,7 Dr. Fredrickson calls love the “Supreme Emotion,” that emotion which

6 See, generally, Fredrickson, Dr. Barbara (2014). Positivity. New York, NY: Three Rivers Press (Kindle Version: retrieved from www.Amazon.com,) Chapter 3. 7 Fredrickson, Dr. Barbara (2014). Love 2.0. New York, NY: Penguin Group (USA) LLC.


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makes us feel most fully alive and which is the most essential emo-tion “for thriving and health.”8 She defines love as a sharing of one of the positive emotions with another that creates a “positivity res-onance” from which arises a mutual desire to invest in each other’s well-being.9

Dr. Fredrickson makes it clear that these moments of resonance can be momentary and are not exclusive with just one other person; they can occur with strangers.10 Love is, she writes: “connection.”11

2. Work by Seligman convinced him that a successful life requires more,

though, than regular experiences of positive emotion. He stresses that pos-itive emotions work collectively with the other four attributes, each con-tributing to a life of well-being. 12

3. Dr. Fredrickson suggests that positive emotions are a springboard to “un-

leashing the flourishing possibilities” in our lives. For example, in Chap-ter 10 of Positivity, she suggests ways to change our view of life: by finding positive meaning (such as a “silver lining”) savoring goodness, being grateful, exercising kindness, following our passions, dreaming about our future, applying our strengths, connecting with others, connect-ing with nature, and opening our minds and hearts.

B. Engagement.

Engagement, or being in flow, is the second of the five attributes of a life of well-being. 1. When we feel engaged, we feel in a flow, a feeling of being in the mo-

ment. Time stops for us and we lose any sense of self-consciousness.13 2. When we are in flow, fully engaged in an activity, we feel merged with

the object of our attention; we are using all of our cognitive and emotional resources.14 The positive emotion triggered is that of doing the activity.

8 Love 2.0, at 10. 9 Love 2.0, at 17. 10 Love 2.0, at 16-17. 11 Love 2.0, at 17. 12 Flourish, at 13-15; 24. 13 Flourish, at 11. 14 Flourish, at 11.


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3. Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the founder and co-director of the Quality

of Life Research Center at Claremont Graduate University in California describes the condition of engagement or flow as a feeling of such total concentration that there is no attention left over to think about anything else.15

4. Examples of being in such a state of engagement include: playing a game

like chess; participating in a sport, such as a pick-up basketball game; becoming engrossed in learning something new, a language, for example; taking on the challenge of increasing your proficiency in something; working on projects at work requiring total concentration; making music; rock climbing; dancing; art; and sailing.16

5. In Chapter 5 of his best-selling book, Flow, Dr. Csikszenthmahaly dis-

cusses the practice of Hatha Yoga – doing yoga poses – as an activity that corresponds nicely to his theory of flow and is a useful model for anyone who wishes to be in better charge of psychic energy. He refers to the eight-limbed path of yoga taught by Patanjali in which the first two limbs seek to straighten out consciousness before attempts at mental control begin. These are the Yamas and Niyamas, ethical rules for living in the world and treating ourselves, discussed later in this course and at length in my book, Finding the Midline.17 Dr. Csikszenthmahaly describes how hold-ing poses for long periods of time to build stamina, both mentally and physically, as well as breathing exercises helps us overcome temptations brought to us by our senses.18 He also discusses how systems of martial arts meet the definitions of flow.

6. He then discusses the last four limbs of yoga and concludes that the sim-

ilarities between Yoga and flow are “extremely strong,” concluding that Yoga, with its emphasis on control over consciousness, is one of the old-est and most systematic methods of producing the flow experience.19

7. Dr. Csikszentmahaly also discusses how we can learn to flow through our

senses, finding joy through what we observe in nature, through poetry or

15 Csikszentmihaly, Dr. Mihaly (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, (Kindle Version; retrieved from www.amazon.com), Chapter 4. 16 Flow, at Chapter 4: “Flow Activities.” 17 Dorigan, William (2013). Finding the Midline. Winter Park, CO: LuHen Publications, LLC. 18 Flow, at Chapter 5: “The Ultimate Control: Yoga and the Martial Arts.” 19 Flow, at Chapter 5: “The Ultimate Control: Yoga and the Martial Arts.”


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other reading, art – anything where we allow our senses to find delight.20 Later in Chapter 5 he makes the same point regarding our ability to hear and taste, and in Chapter 6 he goes beyond the senses and describes flow in our thoughts. This use of the senses and the mind is a key point in our use of the Yoga teachings of the Tattvas, discussed in this course.

8. Dr. Csikszentmihaly suggested a goal to experience flow as often as pos-

sible, thereby improving the quality of our life and, in fact, true quality of life requires that we live in engagement or flow. 21

9. As with Drs. Seligman and Fredrickson, Dr. Csikszentmihaly concluded

that pleasure, while important, does not bring happiness; we need flow in our lives.22

10. Dr. Seligman concluded that we go into flow when our highest strengths,

what we are best at, are deployed to take on tasks that come our way.23 11. To assist us in identifying our top strengths and virtues – who we are –

Seligman offers free evaluation of our twenty-four strengths and virtues through the Center’s website, specifically the VIA Survey of Character strengths evaluation. This is one of a number of free evaluations available through the Center at its website.24

12. The 24 character strengths are divided into six categories as follows:

a. Wisdom and Knowledge: creativity, curiosity, judgment, love of

learning, and perspective; b. Courage: bravery, perseverance, honesty, zest; c. Humanity: love, kindness, and social intelligence; d. Justice: teamwork, fairness, and leadership; e. Temperance: forgiveness, humility, prudence, and self-regulation;

20 Flow, at Chapter 5: “Flow Through the Senses: The Joys of Seeing.” 21 Flow, at Chapter 2: “Order in Consciousness: Flow.” 22 Flow, at Chapter 3: “Pleasure and Enjoyment.” 23 Flourish, at 24. 24 www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/testcenter; the list can also be located at www.viacharacter.org/www/Character-Strengths/VIA-Classification (“Character Strengths” link to “VIA Classification of Strengths” page)


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and f. Transcendence: appreciation of beauty and excellence, gratitude,

hope, humor, and spirituality. 13. Much of this course will be directed to awakening to our own special gifts

and talents, our strengths and skills. It is difficult to see how our lives can be rich if we live them unaware of our true potential.

C. Meaning.

Dr. Seligman identifies meaning as a third attribute of a life of well-being. He describes a life of meaning as one in which we belong to and serve something bigger than the individual self.25 Simply experiencing positive emotions and being in flow isn’t sufficient to create a life well lived.26 We desire a purpose; we want our life to mean something. In his earlier book, Authentic Happiness, Seligman concluded that our deepest joy comes from finding how, each day, we can offer our strengths in a way that serves others.27

1. Society has created the structures that allow us to create a meaningful life.

These structures include religion, politics, working for causes such as the environment, community activities, and family, among others.28

2. These structures give us vehicles for identifying and then creating a life

filled with meaning. Viktor Frankl, a noted psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor beautifully described in his 1959 book Man’s Search for Mean-ing29 how his experience surviving in a Nazi prison camp during World War II taught him what it means to live a meaningful life.

a. His experience as a prisoner helped form the basis for his work as a

therapist after the war. He wrote that meaning varies for each of us because we each have our own particular mission in life based on our own uniqueness. It is up to us to examine what we have to offer and how the world can benefit from that offering.30

25 Flourish, at 17. 26 Flourish, at 17. 27 Seligman, Dr. Martin ((2002). Authentic Happiness. New York, NY: Free Press, at 260. 28 Flourish, at 12. 29 Frankl, Dr. Viktor (2006 ed). Man’s Search for Meaning. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. 30 Man’s Search for Meaning, at 113-116.


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b. Dr. Frankl explained that we find meaning in three ways: 1) creat-ing a work or doing a deed; 2) experiencing something or encoun-tering someone and 3) through attitudes we take in the face of suffering. Opportunities for finding meaning occur throughout life as situations needing our contribution arise.31

c. We can easily see how creating meaning through a project or a deed

can occur. Writing a check to St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital, for example, or helping somebody get their truck out of a snow drift constitute meaningful acts of service. Being a teacher, for example, or just being nice to somebody who looks sad is a meaningful act.

d. Dr. Frankl explained that finding meaning through experience oc-

curs literally by “experiencing something” such as goodness, truth and beauty. From this we can see that paying attention to our posi-tive emotions gives us the ability to realize such experiences as, for example, looking at the sky and feel the wonder of a beautiful sunset or the magnificent color show that autumn provides in many parts of the world.

e. We find meaning through encountering another person by “experi-

encing another human being in his very uniqueness – by loving him.”32 He describes how, when we truly experience another per-son, we seek to become fully aware of the very essence of another person, finding that person’s essential traits and features, that per-son’s potential. Then, through love, we find a way to make that per-son aware of that potential so that it can be actualized – we make him or her aware of “what he can be.”33

f. Finally, Dr. Frankl wrote that even in suffering and pain we seek to

find a way to search for some meaning; asking how does this serve something or someone other than me? Our main concern ought not be gaining pleasure or avoiding pain, but, instead, finding meaning in our lives; how have we served, given what we have to offer?34

3. Influential psychologist Dr. Rollo May wrote in 1975 that the highest

level of human health comes from creatively engaging life in a meaning-ful way. We do this by fulfilling our own being in such a way as to expand human consciousness through creating a harmonious link between society

31 Man’s Search for Meaning, at 115. 32 Man’s Search for Meaning, at 115. 33 Man’s Search for Meaning, at 116. 34 Man’s Search for Meaning, at 116-119.


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and ourselves.35 We create the highest form of ourselves and then find a way to contribute it to a greater whole.

4. There are a number of books by popular authors and lecturers geared to-

ward helping us find a life that is meaningful, including books by the Da-lai Lama,36 Ekhart Tolle,37 and Stephen Cope,38 to name just a very few.

5. If we have difficulty determining how to contribute our strengths, to cre-

ate meaning, we might consider Dr. Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, presented in his 1954 book Motivation and Personality.39 Based on his theories of human motivation, Dr. Maslow identified five catego-ries of human motivation: 1) physiological needs (basic needs for sur-vival, such as water, food, clothing, sex); 2) safety needs (stability, freedom from fear, the need for law and structure, job security, health); 3) belonging and love needs (family, friendships, intimate sexual relation-ship); 4) esteem needs (confidence, self-respect, a desire for mastery and achievement, prestige, status, fame); and 5) self-actualization needs (the need to be true to our own nature, doing what we are “fitted to do,”40 a desire to be everything we can be).41

a. While this hierarchy is typically depicted as a pyramid, with physi-

ological needs at the bottom and self-actualization at the top, Dr. Maslow was clear that people, as an integrated whole, could expe-rience needs from different levels in any order and in combination.

b. If we are lost in our effort to figure out how to do something mean-

ingful for others, we can use this hierarchy of needs as a roadmap for how to direct our efforts to be, for lack of a better term, “mean-ingful.” For example:

35 May, Dr. Rollo (1975). The Courage to Create. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., at 39-40; 134; 140. 36 Dalai Lama (2002). How to Practice: The Way to a Meaningful Life. New York, NY: Pocket Books. 37 Tolle. Ekhart (2005). A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose. New York, NY: Penguin Group. 38 Cope, Stephen (2012). The Great Work of Your Life: A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling. New York, NY: Bantam Books 39 Maslow, Dr. Abraham H (1970 ed). Motivation and Personality. New York, NY: Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. 40 Motivation and Personality, at 46. 41 See, generally, Motivation and Personality, at 35-46.


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If we contribute to our neighborhood food shelf, we are helping oth-ers meet their most basic physiological needs.

When we volunteer for training and service on our local F.A.S.T. (First Aid Stabilization Team) or fire department, we are helping contribute a sense of safety to our community.

One way to meet others’ needs for belonging and love is to offer our friendship and attention. By paying attention to others, we find op-portunities to bolster their esteem needs; their need to feel confident and significant. Recalling Dr. Frankl’s suggestion that we try to help others find their own specialness, when we do this we are helping that person (and ourselves) meet the need for self-actualization.

D. Accomplishment.

The fourth of the five attributes is a sense of accomplishment. Dr. Seligman’s work found that people whose lives are truly flourishing choose to be involved in tasks for their own sake. Tasks are chosen and undertaken without regard to anything other than accomplishing the task they’ve chosen to do in the mo-ment.42

1. When people seek to accomplish an objective, the successful completion

of the task is what they seek, even if no positive emotion or sense of a greater meaning and purpose is involved.43

2. Examples include the pursuit of wealth where the satisfaction comes from

accumulating wealth, as opposed to being able to do things with the money, or the accumulation of things for the sake of gathering more toys.44 Another example would be playing a game only to win and not for the joy of playing.

3. At first it might seem that accomplishment doesn’t belong on the list of

indicators of a life of well-being because it doesn’t necessarily involve a greater purpose. Seligman makes clear that accomplishment, the “achiev-ing life,” in its pure form, i.e., without regard to any greater purpose of service, belongs on the list because it is the nature of humans to seek, when free of coercion, to assert mastery over their environment just for the sake of doing so.45

42 Flourish, at 10; 14; 18. 43 Flourish, at 18. 44 Flourish, at 19. 45 Flourish, at 19-20.


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4. It is no surprise, then, that we often feel good after cleaning the closet,

weeding the garden, or some other mundane task. We’ve accomplished a task and, according to Dr. Seligman, the sense of accomplishment we feel is part of what creates a life of well-being.

E. Positive Relationships.

The fifth of the five attributes of a life of well-being is positive relationships. Seligman writes that in order to experience positive emotion fully, profound meaning and purpose, or pride in an accomplishment, we need other people. 46

1. Being in relationship with others, even if for a moment, is vital to our

health and well-being. Research has found that being of service to others, or being kind, produces the most reliable momentary increase in well-being of any exercise tested.47

2. Research has also shown that there is a direct correlation between loneli-

ness and a lower life expectancy.48 3. Dr. Rollo May concluded that the ultimate joy occurs when we can create

harmony and connection in our relationships and in the world.49 4. Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi wrote that we are programmed as humans

to seek relationship and that the quality of our life increases when we can learn to create harmony in our relationships.50

5. Dr. Csikszentmihaly writes that ideally friendships are not static but, in-

stead, offer ever new emotional and intellectual stimulation, helping us be in flow for a lifetime.51

6. The Harvard Study of Adult Development (originally called the Grant

Study), has been ongoing for over seventy five years, tracking the lives of college men as they age in an attempt to identify the conditions that

46 Flourish, at 20. 47 Flourish, at 20. 48 Flourish, at 21. 49 Courage to Create, at 134; 140. 50 Csikszentmihalyi, Dr. Mihaly (1990). Flow. The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York, NY: HarperCollins, at 3; 164 (Print version). 51 Flow, at Chapter 6.


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promote optimal health.52 In 2012 Dr. George E. Vaillant, M.D., the Chief Investigator of the study from 1972 to 2004, published his impressions of the study’s key results, in a book entitled Triumphs of Experience. 53 After initially considering what would likely indicate a life of well-being, such as being listed in Who’s Who in America or earning income in the nation’s top quartile,54 Dr. Vaillant concluded that our lives are shaped by our re-lationships.55

7. Our lives can be enriched not only from taking care of those relationships

we already have, but also from opening our minds to the potential for new and interesting relationships with others different from ourselves. In Chapter 19 of Finding the Midline I describe how a visit to an art museum with a friend of mine opened my eyes to view the world from a totally different perspective, a perspective that even today positively informs my every day experiences. Dr. Douglas R. Brooks teaches that getting to know people different from us is a key to fully appreciating life. They offer us new perspective and viewpoints. They expose us to ideas that we might not otherwise consider. Dr. Brooks suggests that people who are different from us are not threats to who we are – they are clues to what we can become.56

8. When considering what relationships we wish to develop and grow, we

can consider again Dr. Frankl’s suggestion that we seek to be mirrors for others; showing them their potential and then helping them to realize that potential.57 Dr. Douglas Brooks reminds us, “we become the company we keep, so keep great company.”58 We want people in our lives that nurture us in this way, showing us our potency in a way we can’t see for ourselves, and then supporting us as we strive to grow into that potential.

9. We can benefit from recalling Dr. Barbara Fredrickson’s definition of

love as engaging in a positivity resonance in which we share a positive emotion, such as awe, hope, interest, or inspiration, with another.59 These

52 Vaillant, Dr. George E. (2012). Triumphs of Experience. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, at 1. 53 Triumphs of Experience, at 64. 54 Triumphs of Experience, at 30-44. 55 Triumphs of Experience, at 52. 56 Finding the Midline, at 79-81. 57 Man’s Search for Meaning, at 116. 58 Brooks, Dr. Douglas R. Public Lecture. Howard, Colorado. July 14, 2011. 59 Love 2.0, at 17.


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are the types of people that make life richer, who help us expand our dreams and attain them.

IV. The need for resilience.

So far we’ve developed a working definition of what constitutes a life of well-being. We’ve explored each of the five attributes that make up such a life. Our foundation, though, is not quite complete. We still need to discuss the subject of emotional resil-ience; the way we respond or cope with those things life puts in our path. From his analysis of the data in the Harvard Study of Adult Development, Dr. Vail-lant concluded that emotional resilience was “indispensible” to a life of well-being,60 and pointed out that work was underway by others studying how the brain’s coping mechanisms work.61 A. Drs. Karen Reivich and Andrew Shatte provide a very helpful discussion of

such work in their 2002 book, The Resilience Factor.62 The authors are psy-chologists specializing in helping people develop resilience. They identify four primary areas in which humans need to develop emotional resilience: 1) over-coming childhood obstacles, such as abuse or poverty; 2) dealing with everyday stresses such as arguments with friends, problems at work, and financial pres-sures; 3) working through life-altering events such as death of a loved one, loss of a job, or a divorce; and 4) applying resilience to “reach out so that you can achieve all you are capable of.”63

While the first three categories pertain to how we respond to adversity in order

to protect ourselves, the fourth relates to a proactive way of seeking opportuni-ties to explore and grow our potential so we can create greater meaning, con-nection and richness.64 This is a primary focus of their book and a value to us in creating a life of well-being, particularly because it teaches skills that help us identify how our patterns of thinking can get in our way. These patterns can cause us to say or do things that inhibit our connection to others and to the

60 Triumphs of Experience, at 370. 61 Triumphs of Experience, at 290-291. 62 Reivich, Dr. Karen and Dr. Andrew Shatte (2002). The Reslience Factor, 7 Keys To Finding Your Inner Strengths and Overcoming Life’s Hurdles. New York, NY: Three Rivers Press. 63 The Resilience Factor, at 15, citing work by Ann Masten, Karin Best, and Norman Garmezy: Masten, A., Best, K. & Garmezy, N. (1990). “Resliience and development: Contributions from the study of chilrdren who overcome adversity.” Development and Psychopathology, 2(04):425-444. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/231892870_Resilience_and_Development_Contributions_from_the_Study_of_Children_Who_Overcome_Adversity 64 The Reslience Factor, at 15; 26-27.


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potential of the moment – the Midlines life invites of us to partake.

B. Drs. Reivich and Shatte report that the top roadblock to developing emotional resilience is not our genetics (our biological wiring) or our childhood. Rather, the primary obstacle to maximizing meaning and connection is “our cognitive style.” Our method of thinking, our interpretations of what we think we hear or see, can lead to self-defeating patterns of thought and behavior. 65

C. To help us change the way we think, the authors developed four principles (“pil-

lars”): 66 1. Life change is possible. We aren’t bound by our childhood trauma or pat-

terns of thought and behavior we’ve developed over the years. This was also a key finding by Dr. Vaillant in the Harvard Study of Adult Devel-opment: People can change and grow and childhood is “neither destiny nor doom.”67

2. Changing our process of thinking is the key to building resilience. The

authors report that our thoughts and emotions are the core of who we are and we can identify and change inaccurate belief systems based on these thoughts and emotions.

3. Learn to accurately and realistically process information. Here the authors

discuss how we need to avoid unsupported exaggerated evaluation of facts, even our own strengths. They refer to problems associated with un-realistic optimism. On the other hand, they also caution not to hide from or repress truly negative aspects of our experience. We need to learn ac-curate perception.

4. We must identify and embrace our strengths so that we enrich life’s ex-

periences. The authors refer specifically to the character strengths devel-oped by Dr. Seligman and discussed above under the “Engagement” section (Para. III. B.)68

D. Based on these four principles, or pillars, Drs. Reivich and Shatte created seven

skills of resilience, explained in detail in their book: 1. Learning to pay attention to our thoughts before acting so we have time

to catch any mistake in processing the information attributable to our thinking biases.

65 The Resilience Factor, at 11-12. 66 See, generally, The Resilience Factor, Chapter 3, at 48-62. 67 Triumphs of Experience, at 52. 68 The Resilience Factor, at 58.


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2. Avoiding built-in presumptions that cause us to incorrectly assess blame

or jump to false conclusions. 3. Identifying deeply held beliefs that can, on occasion, interfere with our

ability to make sound choices. 4. Learning to efficiently process thoughts that arise in response to adver-

sity. 5. Creating perspective so that we stop wasting energy on things that have

not yet happened or may not happen. 6. Learning to calm ourselves in the face of stress and properly focus our

energy. 7. Developing a method for stopping unhelpful thinking in real time.

E. The Resilience Factor is a powerful resource for developing emotional resili-

ence. In addition to an in-depth discussion of each skill and methods for devel-oping the skills, the authors provide a test for the reader to measure his or her resilience. They also provide chapters focusing on special advice for develop-ing resilience in relationships, parenting, work, and life in general.

F. Another excellent resource for understanding and developing emotional resili-

ence is Mindsight,69 by Dr. Daniel J. Siegel, M.D., a psychology professor at UCLA and founding co-director of UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Cen-ter. In Mindsight Dr. Siegel uses his experience in brain science and psycho-therapy to show the reader how to recognize and avoid the mental “traps” that get in the way of a life of well-being. He describes the various parts of the brain and how each has its particular role in our thoughts and behavior.

1. Dr. Siegel explains neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to grow neural con-

nections and neurons. He explains that the brain can reinforce existing connections between parts of the brain, as well as build new ones. He discusses how ill-serving patterns of thought can be resolved through an intentional focus of attention, “a form of self-directed experience,” that stimulates new patterns of neural firing and linkages in the brain.70 He references functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) that measure activity in the brain.71

69 Siegel, Dr. Daniel J. (2011). Mindsight. New York, NY: Bantam Books. 70 See, e.g., Mindsight, at 5; 39-43. 71 See, e.g., Mindsight, at 29.


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2. In the book Dr. Siegel uses examples of work with various patients to

demonstrate how he was able to create these new patterns and linkages between parts of the brain (“integration”) to help the patients overcome their own mental traps. Examples include:

a. A rage filled, depressed high school sophomore, possibly bipolar.

Dr. Siegel shares the psychotherapy approach he used to teach this young man mindful awareness, gradually expanding the middle pre-frontal areas of the brain, growing calming fibers. 72

b. A 92 year old attorney who, because of a cold, uncaring childhood,

had never developed access to the part of his brain responsible for social connection. Dr. Siegle describes the therapeutic program of brain focus he used to stimulate neural growth necessary to re-en-gage this part of the brain, resulting in the attorney learning how to feel love and passion.73

c. A married couple in their thirties, who, after ten years of marriage,

were filled with contempt and anger towards each other. Dr. Siegle describes the exercises he used with them to awaken portions of their brain and learn to calm down other parts that were getting in the way of saving their marriage.74

These two books are resources from which we can learn to recognize and tame those patterns of thought and behavior that hold us back, causing us to create rift instead of connection, making us reject love and friendship instead of reach-ing for it, or cause us to remain unfulfilled even in the face of opportunity. Perhaps more importantly, these books offer us ways to use and grow the power of our brains to enrich our lives in ways even we can’t yet see.

V. Conclusion.

We now have a blueprint for what a life of success, a life of well-being, looks like. We also see that keys to creating such a life include identifying our own underlying strengths, our unique package of gifts and talents, and then finding meaning by using them in service of something other than ourselves. As Dr. Seligman found: “Deploy-ing your highest strengths leads to more positive emotion, to more meaning, to more accomplishment, and to better relationships.”75

72 Mindsight, at 79-101. 73 Mindsight, at 103-119. 74 Mindsight, at 210-231. 75 Flourish, at 24.


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We also see that many of us might have some work to do in terms of understanding how we view the world. What judgments do we make involuntarily? What triggers cause us to respond in ways that get in our way? Many of us could improve our emo-tional resilience, learning how to recognize what is really going on and giving our-selves the mental space to react (or not react) in the best way possible. Starting in our next talk we will begin the process of studying how the lessons of yoga are tailor-made for helping us on our path to a life of well-being.

what is success

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