Linda Graham, MFT and author of Resilience and Bouncing Back, looks at the power of response flexibility, an important aspect of resilience.  It’s the ability we all have to shift our attitude in any moment, no matter what has happened.    
Reflective intelligence hones your perceptions and responses to any event, any issue.  You can uncover and examine complex patterns of “thinking” that could derail your resilience and rewire them if you wish to.
You can learn to pause and become present, notice and name, allow-tolerate-accept, observe – to increasingly complex objects of awareness – sensations, emotions, thoughts, patterns of thought, beliefs, assumptions, values, points of view, identities.  Mindfulness even allows us to observe the processes of the brain that creates those “mental contents” and shift them to something more flexible and “open-minded” when necessary.
Many people think of mindfulness as a kind of thinking or cognition. Not exactly. Mindful awareness is more about being with rather than thinking about – knowing what you are experiencing while you are experiencing it.  This awareness and reflection about experience (and your reactions to your experience) creates choice points in your brain.  You can respond flexibly to whatever is happening, moment by moment by moment.
Here’s my own story of shit happens, but shift happens, too, to illustrate mindfulness

Originally published at http://loveandlifetoolbox.com