Building Your Resilience: Finding Meaning in Adversity–Take a Free & Timely Course Online

The Great Courses has made avail­able a free and rather time­ly course–Build­ing Your Resilience: Find­ing Mean­ing in Adver­si­ty. Divid­ed into 24 lec­tures and taught by Mol­ly Birk­holm, the course gets intro­duced with the fol­low­ing text:

Recent research shows that we grow into our best and most joy­ful selves not when we avoid our prob­lems but when we embrace them, con­fi­dent that we are resilient enough to work through them to an appro­pri­ate res­o­lu­tion. Our prob­lems are an impor­tant part of our path.

Resilience is our abil­i­ty to phys­i­cal­ly, emo­tion­al­ly, and men­tal­ly bounce back from adverse cir­cum­stances. With­out it, we would be down for the count every time we ran into a prob­lem. Stuck in traf­fic and late for a meet­ing? It’s your resilience that allows you to make the nec­es­sary phone calls and keep mov­ing for­ward, con­fi­dent that you can han­dle this stress­ful sit­u­a­tion as it evolves. With­out it, you’d make a U‑turn and give up. Recov­er­ing from the flu or recent surgery? It’s your resilience that helps you take care of your­self appro­pri­ate­ly and look for­ward to a bet­ter future. Our capac­i­ty to thrive in life depends direct­ly on our resilience.

Shar­ing her own fas­ci­nat­ing jour­ney, as well as the lat­est research by neu­rol­o­gists and psy­chol­o­gists, trau­ma spe­cial­ist Mol­ly Birk­holm shows us how to gauge our cur­rent lev­el of resilience and improve from there. In Build­ing Your Resilience: Find­ing Mean­ing in Adver­si­ty, you’ll learn how all of our challenges—from every­day stress­es to life-alter­ing traumas—can bring wis­dom and growth. In 17 fas­ci­nat­ing class­es and 7 “hands-on” prac­tice ses­sions, you’ll learn about and expe­ri­ence the process of build­ing the inner calm and clar­i­ty of mind that cre­ate greater resilience. With Ms. Birkholm’s warm and opti­mistic demeanor, you’ll feel her encour­age­ment every step of the way as you move toward build­ing your best and most ful­fill­ing life.

Watch all 24 lec­tures above, or over on YouTube. Build­ing Your Resilience: Find­ing Mean­ing in Adver­si­ty will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Find more cours­es in The Great Courses cat­a­logue here.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Bud­dhism & Neu­ro­science Can Help You Change How Your Mind Works: A New Course by Best­selling Author Robert Wright

Pos­i­tive Psy­chol­o­gy: A Free Course from Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty 

What Are the Keys to Hap­pi­ness?: Take “The Sci­ence of Well-Being,” a Free Online Ver­sion of Yale’s Most Pop­u­lar Course

How to Find Emo­tion­al Strength & Resilience Dur­ing COVID-19: Advice from Eliz­a­beth Gilbert, Jack Korn­field, Susan David & Oth­er Experts