Last month I discussed a Working Paper about the topic of resilience that was published by the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child. It represented the impressive collaboration of a multidisciplinary team chaired by Dr. Jack Shonkoff, Director of the Harvard Center on the Developing Child and Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital. A key finding of the report was, “Resilience depends on supportive, responsive relationships and mastering a set of capabilities that can help us respond and adapt to adversity in healthy ways.” This statement resonated with my beliefs, given the emphasis I have placed on the power of the relationship in nurturing resilience and the importance of the development of a “resilient mindset” with accompanying skills (e.g., problem-solving, self-discipline, learning from and coping with setbacks and mistakes, enriching the well-being of others), in contributing to a more optimistic, purposeful, accomplished life. I had not planned to write a follow-up article about resilience this month but was prompted to do so by a couple of recent occurrences that focused on this theme. I’ve discovered that anytime I hear or read about ideas related to leading a meaningful, compassionate, resilient life, it reinforces my…
