Luminous English

As the Mann Gulch wildfire raced toward them, the smokejumpershad a decision to make. In an ideal world, they would have hadenough time to pause, analyze the situation, and evaluate theiroptions. With the fire raging less than 100 yards behind, there wasno chance to stop and think. “On a big fire there is no time and notree under whose shade the boss and the crew can sit and have

Part of the problem is cognitive laziness. Some psychologists point out that we’re mental misers: we often prefer the ease of hanging on to old views over the difficulty of grappling with new ones. Yet there are also deeper forces behind our resistance to rethinking. Questioning ourselves makes the world more unpredictable. It requires us to admit that the facts may have changed,

When people reflect on what it takes to be mentally fit, the first idea that comes to mind is usually intelligence. The smarter you are, the more complex the problems you can solve—and the faster you can solve them. Intelligence is traditionally viewed as the ability to think and learn. Yet in a turbulent world, there’s another set of cognitive skills that might matter more: th

Prologue After a bumpy flight, fifteen men dropped from the Montana sky. They weren’t skydivers. They were smokejumpers: elite wildland firefighters parachuting in to extinguish a forest fire started by lightning the day before. In a matter of minutes, they would be racing for their lives. The smokejumpers landed near the top of Mann Gulch late on a scorching August afternoon in

Holding these paradoxes with warmth and curiosity will help you on your journey to discovering and celebrating the terrain(physical landscape) of your own heart. Like any journey worth taking, there are no shortcuts. You’ll need to clamber (climb with difficulty) over many obstacles(setbacks), and find your sharp edges. Keep going. Lean into the messy stuff and contradictory stuf

And, like so many emotions, gratitude can be practiced, and learned. Keeping a gratitude journal, or taking a moment each day to name one thing that you’re grateful for out loud, trains your brain to look for more similar experiences. Key idea 8Become comfortable with paradox.Over the course of these chapters, we’ve traveled to two emotional places: where we go when we’re hur

Joy is also a bit unsettling(causing anxiety), even scary. Feeling joyful is so wonderful that it can make you feel vulnerable and afraid of losing that joy. Brené describes that experience as foreboding(a strong feeling that something terrible is going to happen) joy. It’s what happens when you watch your children while they’re sleeping, and feel an enormous stab of joy(a sud

Happiness and joy are not the same thing.On the other side of the spectrum(on the other hand), there’s happiness. We all know what that word means, right? After all, how many love songs have been written about it? Well, actually, even the most expert happiness researchers – people who spend their whole lives studying the emotion – can’t agree on exactly what it means. Most

When you’re feeling flooded by despair, stop to ask yourself the 3 Ps. First, personalization: if you’re taking it personally, ask yourself, “Is this situation really about me? What outside factors play a role that I haven’t accounted for(paid attention to)?” If it feels like the situation will last forever – which is the second P, permanence – do a quick thought expe

In order to strengthen your resilience in the face of (in front of) hopelessness and despair, there are a number of important and practical things you can do, which is what we’ll find out in the next chapter. Key idea 6Hope is a skill, not an emotion.To combat(fight) hopelessness and despair, let’s start with hope. We think of hope as being a warm and fuzzy emotion. But that’