“The good news is that positive construal can be taught. “We can make ourselves more or less vulnerable by how we think about things,” Bonanno said. In research at Columbia, the neuroscientist Kevin Ochsner has shown that teaching people to… — Maria Konnikova Copy Share Image
“One of the central elements of resilience, Bonanno has found, is perception: Do you conceptualize an event as traumatic, or as an opportunity to learn and grow? “Events are not traumatic until we experience them as traumatic,” Bonanno told me,… — Maria Konnikova Copy Share Image
The cognitive skills that underpin resilience, then, seem like they can indeed be learned over time, creating resilience where there was none. — Maria Konnikova Copy Share Image
If you are lucky enough to never experience any sort of adversity, we won't know how resilient you are. It's only when you're faced… — Maria Konnikova Copy Share Image
We don't appreciate luck in life when things are going well. No matter how smart I am and how I prepare, there are things… — Maria Konnikova Copy Share Image
I'm capable of just putting my butt in a chair and spending nine hours a day studying poker. I took it as a full… — Maria Konnikova Copy Share Image
Creativity requires novelty. Imagination is all about counterfactuals and untested possibilities that don't yet exist. — Maria Konnikova Copy Share Image
One of the things that women really excel at is reading and reacting to subtle cues. We've always had to do that because men… — Maria Konnikova Copy Share Image
To a child, 'The Little Prince' is the story of a boy who falls from the sky, meets lots of funny people on his… — Maria Konnikova Copy Share Image
It's strange, when you think about it, that we spend close to a third of our lives asleep. Why do we do it? While… — Maria Konnikova Copy Share Image
Fraternities breed leaders. That, at least, is what most any chapter website will tell you, in not so many words - and the message… — Maria Konnikova Copy Share Image
Las vegas shouldn't exist. The incongruity hits you from the moment you first glimpse it from the airplane. First mountains, then desert, then neat… — Maria Konnikova Copy Share Image
“a failure to use all senses equals a scene not seen to its full potential, attention that has not been allocated properly, and subconscious… — Maria Konnikova Copy Share Image
It's not at all a far jump to think that overall perceptions of gender - and what is and is not important in gender… — Maria Konnikova Copy Share Image
“We are terrible at seeking evidence that challenges our own beliefs, but other people do us this favor, just as we are good at… — Maria Konnikova Copy Share Image
All too often, when it comes to our own minds, we are surprisingly mindless. We sail on, blithely unaware of how much we are… — Maria Konnikova Copy Share Image
