in the brain that might be enlarged af-
ter a trauma and trigger flashbacks of
anxiety and panic.
Because being thankful may help
lower anxiety levels, the Army in-
structs soldiers to “hunt the good
stuff ” by keeping gratitude journals.
Studies at the University of California,
Davis, show that grateful people not
only report being more content with
their lives but also have fewer medi-
cal symptoms and more energy. Just
as important to the Army, cultivating
gratitude tends to make people more
social and willing to help and work
with others. So every day, soldiers jot
down three things they were grateful
for in the previous day.
To help them learn from their good
fortune, they write about each event
using the following prompts: Why has
this good thing happened? What does
this good thing mean to me? What can
I do tomorrow to enable more of this
good thing? How did I or others con-
tribute to this good thing?
If pen and paper aren’t handy, GIs
are encouraged to blot out feelings of
self-blame with a tactic known as de-
tecting “icebergs”—beliefs and values
that fuel out-of-proportion reactions.
For instance, if an action causes
a soldier to feel shame, he or she is
instructed to work through it by ask-
ing these questions: What is the most
upsetting part of the situation to me?
What thoughts are triggering the emo-
tions and reaction that I’m having?
Identifying our own precepts as ice-
bergs allows us to recognize whether
they’re true obstacles to helping our-
selves or relating to others, and learn
how to steer around them.
One of the most important findings
about resiliency is also one of the
most basic. Resilient people have one
trait in common: a sense of optimism,
says Cornum, who retired from the
service as a brigadier general in 2012.
As she told medium.com, “They be-
lieve a problem is in a time frame and
not forever, and that there is some-
thing you can do about it.”“I became a better
doctor, a better
parent, probably a
better person.”yes! magazine (september 3, 2018), copyright © by yes!
media, reprinted with permission, yesmagazine.org.120 june 2019 | rd.com
Reader’s Digest The Genius Section
Don’t You Be My Neighbor
I’m quiet and not great about confronting neighbors,
so I renamed our Wi-Fi “Everyone Hates Your Rooster, Greg.”
@lizhackett