Every year when Thanksgiving comes around, I remember gratefully a bit of wisdom handed to me when I was a young man. Having some stubborn difficulties in my life, I took them to an older and respected friend. “Why is it,” I complained, “that I can’t seem to cope with these problems?”

I remember his long, thoughtful glance. “Maybe,” he said, “it’s because you aren’t grateful enough.”

“Grateful?” I was astonished. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking,” he said, “about a law of living that you will discover someday. Focus on adversities, as you’re doing, and you’ll attract more of them. Be grateful for the privilege of living, and your life will grow increasingly bright. My advice to you is to be less of a complainer and more of a thanksgiver. Your troubles will become a lot more manageable, I promise you.”

Half a century of observing life and people has left me convinced that what my friend said that day is profoundly true: In some unfathomable way, the acknowledgment of past blessings seems to be the activator of blessings.

Over and over again I have seen the attitude of gratitude bring about extraordinary changes in people’s lives. I once knew a man—William Stidger—who suffered a shattering emotional breakdown. For months he was profoundly depressed, unable to work. No doctors seemed to be able to help him, but one day a friend challenged him to try what he called the therapy of thankfulness. “Many people have helped you in your life,” the friend said. “Pick any one of them—I dare you—and simply thank him.”

Pondering this, Bill Stidger recalled a schoolteacher, long retired, who years before had awakened in him an appreciation of poetry. He made himself write a short note, telling her what that act had meant to him. Soon a reply came back in the tremulous handwriting of an old lady. “When I read your letter,” it said, “my eyes were blinded with tears. Yours is the first letter of thanks I ever received from one of my students. I shall cherish it always.”

Bill Stidger wrote a note of appreciation to another person, and then another, until he had written over 500 such letters. By then, fully recovered, he was back at work. But he kept copies of those letters and the replies and in later years, whenever depression threatened him, he would reread some of them and let the therapy of thankfulness do its work.

Why is gratitude strengthening? Because it recharges the soul. Anyone who is grateful is focusing on what is good, and ultimately all good things come from God. This means that the thankful person is aligning himself with the most powerful force in the universe and is drawing strength from it.

Feeling thankful connects a person with a great spiritual dynamo, but before the power can begin to flow a second step must be taken: The gratitude you feel must be expressed. In a vivid scene in the New Testament, St. Luke tells how Christ once healed ten lepers. Of the ten, only one came back to express thanks. “But where are the nine?” asked Jesus. No one answered, but in that echoing silence every person present must have known that something was wrong, something was missing, some deep circuit was incomplete.

And so if at any time you feel a blast of appreciation or a sudden surge of gratitude, translate it into action. Write that note, make that phone call, send that small gift or flower. Act as if the impulse to act were a divine command.

When a group of people feel and express gratitude together, enormous power can come crashing through. A number of years ago Nikita Khrushchev, the formidable premier of the Soviet Union, visited this country. The mayor of New York gave a luncheon for him, and I was invited to attend. At Khrushchev’s entrance, the Soviet national anthem was played, and we all stood respectfully. We continued to stand as the orchestra played “The Star-Spangled Banner.” A bar or two went by; then somewhere in the vast crowd a little man started to sing the words. He had a thin, quavering voice, he sounded lonely and a bit foolish, but he continued to sing. Then another voice picked it up, and another, until suddenly with a great roar of sound everyone was singing. All the love, all the pride, all the gratitude we felt for this wonderful land came pouring through.

It is this healing power that we Americans seek and sense on Thanksgiving Day, something so beneficent that it’s like the touch of a great kindly hand on the fevered brow of the nation. You can’t measure or analyze it. It’s simply there, invisible, intangible, a glow of gratitude, an aura of thankfulness that strengthens us all, and strengthens our nation, too, because when you focus on the best in something, you want to preserve and defend it.

How can we maintain this attitude not just on Thanksgiving but on every other day? One way is to try to be more aware of the mystery and magic of life.

A simple device that I often use to heighten my sense of appreciation is one that I call my last-time technique. “Suppose,” I say to myself when I’m doing something particularly enjoyable or worthwhile, “suppose this were the last time you could see a sunset, or hear great music, or smell lilac or honeysuckle, or touch a loved one’s hand.” Just a mental trick, of course. But it seems to work.

It’s a step that each of us needs to take, because it completes a circle based on a profound yet simple spiritual law, the law that my wise old friend tried to teach me so many years ago, the law that says you will find what you look for.

In this life, if you steadfastly affirm goodness, goodness will be there. If you affirm love, you will find it. And if you affirm thankfulness, blessings will flow.

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Today’s guest blogger is assistant editor Daniel Kessel.

Have you ever noticed how certain smells bring up vivid memories from the past?

It’s a widely studied topic. According to Brown University neuroscientist Rachel Herz, the same part of the brain that forms new memories is also responsible for registering smell–that’s why the link between scents, emotions and memories is so strong. But as I recently learned, there may be more to this phenomenon than science alone can explain.

Last Tuesday after work, I pushed my way into a crowded subway car, tired from the busy day. I’d left the office around 6 PM, and with my 30-minute commute home ahead of me, I couldn’t wait to get back to my apartment and relax. I put my headphones in and held on as the train moved forward.

Within moments, a strangely familiar smell filled the subway car–a blend of wood, paint and flowers. At first, I couldn’t put my finger on why I recognized it. I looked around, expecting to find the source.

Someone holding a can of paint? A bouquet of roses? Both at the same time? But I saw nothing out of the ordinary. As I took the scent in, though, something clicked–and I felt overwhelmed with the memory of a place I used to live.

It was my first apartment after college, a three-bedroom, second-floor walkup in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. I shared the apartment with my friends Amanda and Joe, plus Joe’s cat, Lady.

The four of us became like a family–Amanda and I both had our first jobs, and Joe was finishing his final year of school. (Lady held down the fort.) We were all “words” people, so almost every weeknight we’d meet back at home, listen to music probably a little too loud and play word games.

That whiff on the subway brought me back. I closed my eyes and remembered the day we first moved into the apartment, when the walls were bare with a fresh coat of white paint and the hardwood floors were clear of furniture.

The aroma in the subway smelled just like our brand-new apartment–wood, paint, and a hint of something floral. We had to give the apartment up once our year-long lease ended, but I still missed living there with Amanda, Joe and of course, Lady.

The next day at work, during my lunch break, I logged into my Facebook account…and was surprised to read the first item on my news feed. “HELLO I MISS YOU JOE,” Amanda had written on Joe’s wall.

She linked to one of the songs Joe used to blast from our apartment’s speakers. Like me, they both missed our place and the good times we’d had there. I quickly “liked” the whole thread and started pitching into the nostalgia with some comments of my own.

I lingered over the post for a moment, reading our comment thread one more time. That’s when I noticed it—the timestamp of Amanda and Joe’s initial conversation: Tuesday at 6:24 PM. The same time I’d been down in the subway, overcome by a smell that reminded me of our Sunset Park home.

How about you? Has a mysterious scent ever jump-started your memory? Or do you have any recollections about a perfect home you’ve lived in? Share your stories with us!

The razzing began the moment Cal State Northridge forward Michael Lizarraga hit the basketball court. Fans of the home team, University of California at Berkeley, were all over the 6-foot-7 inch senior, chanting raucously whenever he set to shoot.

Lizarraga, who scored a career-best 15 points that night last November, never once got rattled although many of the fans never realized why. The 21-year-old is deaf, the nation’s only Division I college player who is unable to hear.

A star high-school athlete, he seemed an ideal recruit for Gallaudet University, in Washington, D.C., the renown liberal arts college for the deaf and hard of hearing. But Lizarraga didn’t want that.

“For me,” he told The New York Times, “the biggest dream was always to play for a Division I team. There were people who said I would never be able to do it. That made me more determined. I would say my favorite quote is, ‘Don’t tell me I can’t, because I will’.”

Lizarraga wasn’t offered a scholarship. He earned a spot as a walk-on, and fought hard to win a starting position during his junior year.

Bobby Braswell, Northridge’s coach, has come to be his greatest admirer. Braswell watched Lizarraga in practice, trying to absorb the intricacies of his position by sight alone, and marveled at his determination and iron will. When, in November, Northridge faced DePaul University—an opponent no team in the Matadors’ conference had defeated in five years—Braswell challenged his players to match Lizarraga’s mental toughness. They proceeded to beat DePaul, 88-66.

Afterward, senior forward Lenny Daniel told The Times, “When you’re around Mike, you realize you take a lot of stuff for granted. You can’t feel sorry for him because he doesn’t want you to. I’ve never met a guy like Mike in my life.”

Neither had Kendra Blessing, a fellow Northridge student with full hearing, who is majoring in deaf studies. She met Lizarraga last year at a bowling party. The two hit it off immediately.

Lizarraga proposed to Blessing in December. She didn’t need to sign her answer. He knew it from her loving embrace.

The taxi driver deposited my bags and boxes on the sidewalk in front of my new building, slammed the trunk and drove off into the autumn night. I watched the cab disappear down the street, relief washing over me. Whew! I’d finally gotten all my things out of my old place across town. It wasn’t until I lugged the last box upstairs to my new apartment that I realized what was missing. My laptop.

That spring I’d left my full-time job to work on an idea I had for a book. I’d taken odd jobs and part-time gigs to support myself while the proposal took shape. At last I was ready to send it off to publishers. But all my research, my working notes, my drafts—everything I’d sweated over for the past six months was on that computer! I hadn’t backed anything up on disk. Panicky phone calls to the taxi bureau got me nowhere. My laptop—and my incredibly labor-intensive book proposal—were gone.

It’s in circumstances like this that we discover what we’re made of. Do you have what it takes to rebound from adversity—whether it’s a relatively minor setback like mine (of course, it didn’t seem that way at the time) or a major tragedy like Hurricane Katrina, which left thousands of people with their entire lives upended? Are you resilient?

Call it grit, hardiness, fortitude or inner strength. By whatever name, it isn’t so much your experience or training, it’s your level of resilience in the face of stress that determines whether you succeed or fail, according to a recent issue of the Harvard Business Review. Or as psychologist Al Siebert, Ph.D., author of The Resiliency Advantage: Master Change, Thrive Under Pressure and Bounce Back from Setbacks, puts it, “Resilient people decide that somehow, some way, they will do the very best they can to survive, cope and make things turn out well. They expect to bounce back. They have a knack for creating good luck out of circumstances that many others see as bad luck.”

You read that right. Resilience is a choice. Researchers have done more than 600 studies on the topic, and there’s a general consensus: The ability to bounce back from hardship isn’t a trait that a person is either born with or not. Resilience is a set of skills that anyone can learn and build on at any point in her life. Anyone!

Ask for help.
I’d thought I was a pretty resilient person, but my reaction to losing my book proposal didn’t show it. “I guess it wasn’t meant to be,” I moaned. My friend Patrick wouldn’t let me wallow in self-pity. “Your work was on that laptop, but the idea for your book is still in your head,” he said. “It’s a great idea, too! You can’t just abandon it because of one unfortunate incident.” With Patrick cheering me on, I started over. Within a year, I’d rewritten my proposal, sent it out…and landed a contract with a major publisher!

Wouldn’t it be nice if every time life knocked you for a loop you had someone like Patrick standing there to lift you back up? But your friends and family are busy with their own lives, and you can’t expect them to read your mind and automatically sense when you’re feeling down. One of the conclusions experts have come to about what it takes to be a survivor and thriver: Resilient people know they need support, and they’re humble enough to ask for it.

Take octogenarian Grace Kanner of Queensbury, New York. Several years ago, she slipped on a patch of ice and broke her hip. This active and independent senior citizen had spent her youth dancing on the stages of New York City. “I had never fallen down before, not once,” Kanner says. The idea of asking for help didn’t come easy, but during her recovery, she leaned on her family both physically and emotionally. Without them, she says, she might not be walking on the treadmill and going about town like she does today. “But in the end,” Kanner points out, “you have to make the effort yourself” to get up and go on after any kind of tumble.

A big part of that effort, researchers agree, is mental.

Expect good things.
While resilience itself isn’t hard-wired, we do pick up certain beliefs from our parents that can affect our level of it. “From birth, we are actively processing our environment and forming our beliefs,” says Andrew Shatte, Ph.D., coauthor with Karen Reivich of The Resilience Factor: 7 Keys to Finding Your Inner Strength and Overcoming Life’s Hurdles. “Research shows that our beliefs largely reflect those of our parents.”

Kanner is a case in point. “My mother was a strong woman who always looked on the bright side,” she says. “If she wanted to accomplish something, she sat down and thought about it in a positive way. And nine times out of ten, it came to fruition.”

What if your mom and dad don’t happen to be of the glass-is-half-full variety? You can work around that and learn to see life your own way. “If you grew up believing that good things aren’t supposed to happen to you,” says Shatte, “it’s time to begin challenging that notion.” (Hey, good things are supposed to happen to all of us!) Not only will you pump up your resilience, you’ll also find “it is empowering to realize you are capable of changing your old ways of thinking.” Shatte breaks it down into A, B, C. “When Adversity comes up, it doesn’t lead directly to a Consequence. In between is your Belief,” he says. “We teach people that what they believe affects what they do, which leads to the final outcome.” Change your thinking about a setback—view it as an opportunity, for instance—and you can change its consequences.

Plan for bumps in the road.
Having an optimistic outlook doesn’t mean living in a dream world. “People tend to think they are entitled to an easy life and continual comfort, but that’s not realistic,” says Salvatore Maddi, Ph.D., author of Resilience at Work: How to Succeed No Matter What Life Throws at You. And realism, he notes, is a key ingredient in the resilient mindset.

Siebert concurs: “People who are good at resilience have trained their brain to be in the habit of looking quickly and accurately at a situation. They go into a state of rapid reality-reading and can respond effectively.”

Like my dad, Steve Rovito. He’s in sales, and in his late fifties, the company he’d worked at for nearly 10 years started layoffs. The lowest sellers went first, then the new hires. Soon not even the top sellers were safe. “I didn’t think negatively but I did try to anticipate what could go wrong,” he says. “And then I got prepared.” He developed a plan to live frugally and enjoy an early retirement. He didn’t have to use it because he was offered a job with a competitor not long after being laid off, but he was ready for that bump in the road.

Still, hitting the bump can be jarring. Don’t worry if you can’t immediately pick yourself up and march on. Take time to process the situation. “Instead of wallowing, go into problem-solving mode,” says Shatte. That works for my dad. “When things don’t go my way, I go in my cave and pout,” he says. “But I also use that time to write an action plan. It might have two steps, it might have 10. But if I write it down, there’s a much better chance that I’ll stick with it.” (That’s one thing that runs in the family. My dad recently came across one of my old notebooks. Inside was a list of my goals. On it: “Write a book.”)

Practice making lemonade out of lemons.
To Maddi, writing down an action plan shows two hallmarks of resilience: You’re committed to making lemonade out of the lemons life dumps in your lap and you view the juicing process as a challenge you’re well-equipped to take on. “If you’re strong in commitment, you believe that no matter how bad things get, it is best to stick with it until the end, rather than avoiding the problem or running away,” he says. “And if you’re strong in the challenge area, you are able to see stress and change as a normal part of life. You use it as an opportunity to grow and develop.”

Joanne K. Hill of South Bend, Indiana, has had to deal with more lemons than most. In a four-year span, she lost a dozen family members, beginning with her husband and ending with her son. “A lot of people say to me, ‘You have such a positive attitude.’ I tell them, ‘It’s a process; you can learn it too.’ If you do it, and do it enough, you will always be able to do it—in the best and worst of times.” She believes so strongly that you can learn to cope positively with crisis, she wrote a book about it, Rainbow Remedies for Life’s Stormy Times.

This goes back to what researchers have found: Anyone can develop resilience, with time and practice. And the willingness to work hard at it. Leslee Spencer of Desert Hot Springs, California, knows that from fighting and beating cancer. “I didn’t let myself fall apart at the idea that I had cancer. I went into resourceful mode: What can I do? What’s my next step?” Treatment sapped her strength, and she couldn’t return to her job as a massage therapist. Spencer took a skills test, found she had an aptitude for math and now has another job she really enjoys, tutoring high school students. She and Hill are great examples of what expert Al Siebert has noticed: “Resilient people allow themselves to feel grief, anger, loss and confusion, but they don’t let it become a permanent state. They expect to rebuild their disrupted lives in a new way that works for them, and the struggle to overcome adversity develops new strengths in them.”

Choose to change the things you can.
Siebert has seen time and time again that “faith has a place in resiliency.” One man he knew successfully battled skin cancer only to be diagnosed with leukemia soon afterward. “I asked him how he was handling it all, and he replied, ‘I do what I can with the things I can control: I get a lot of rest and keep my health up. Then I accept that there are other things that are out of my hands. After that, I have faith.”

Echoes of The Serenity Prayer? It’s part of Andrew Shatte’s resiliency training program for corporate clients. He uses the famous 12-step prayer to empower people and remind them they “can develop the courage to go after those things that they can change.”

And the grit. Grace Kanner’s broken hip cut her muscles and the hospital had her in physical therapy from 9 am to 4 pm every day. A grueling regimen. When she faltered, she’d repeat something a young therapist told her—”Grace, you’re in charge. Not the muscle.”—and push on toward her goal of being active again.

“Some people remain resilient because they hold to the firm belief that they are indeed capable of influencing things for the better,” Siebert says. Joanne Hill, for whom faith is a powerful weapon against adversity, adds that knowing you’re not alone in your struggles can give you the strength to persevere, as can believing that your setbacks are part of a greater plan. “There is a blessing in everything that happens to you,” she says. “You need to make the decision to find it.” Now that is choosing resilience!

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