Learning to strengthen your inner scientist, inner filter and inner hero

3

ways to build your resilient life

No matter where you are in life, and no matter where you want to go in the future, the road ahead rarely looks smooth and unvarying. Fortunately, you have three “success coaches” embedded within yourself who can help you surmount any challenge and create solutions where none existed before.

Your inner scientist

You may have heard when you were at ASU, “Now is the time to experiment … to learn about yourself … to get out of your comfort zone … to see life from new points of view.” While studying at a New American University can definitely help on the “getting out of your comfort zone” part, this inner self is one you don’t have to shelve after graduation. You really do get to be the experimenter in your own life.

That’s why it’s important to explore your life as a scientist would. Your inner scientist is the part of you that is curious, eager to learn and conducts experiments. By approaching your decisions as a series of experiments, you can observe the results or natural consequences with some emotional distance.

Your inner filter Your inner hero

Your inner filter

Humans experience stress when presented with information that conflicts with what they believe to be true. This is called cognitive dissonance. We all experience this at times. The stress can be mild or severe, depending on how much you identify with being right. But like most things in life, what matters most is what you do with that discomfort.

Your inner filter is the part of you that seeks truth, is skeptical of easy answers and knows when to listen to your gut.

Leverage your inner filter by first accepting the fact that nobody knows everything — it’s perfectly acceptable to not know the answer to a question. Second, when making decisions, work toward a balance between relying on outside information and relying on your gut. You need both.

Your inner hero

Remember when you graduated from college? Interviewed like a boss and landed that dream job you’d been chasing? Your inner hero is the part of you that faces your fears, does the hard work and makes bold decisions to achieve a brighter future instead of a pretty good “right now.”

The trick with keeping your inner hero happy is to continue to challenge him or her with new adventures. Your challenges will be unique to you, and that can seem intimidating at times, but you are also uniquely equipped to overcome them.

Adapted from a post on ASU’s Adulting 101 blog authored by Aaron Krasnow, a licensed psychologist who is the associate vice president of ASU Health Services and ASU Counseling Services, and Michelle Duah.

For more, visit adulting.asu. edu.

v: to completely change in appearance or character; to evolve into something better

Transform

THE BIG PICTURE Building better

campuses is a bit like rethinking education. You bring in the new ideas, inspire the builders and keep trying new things, mapping out a brighter future. What comes out of it can be something entirely new.

The velocity of change

How President Crow got us here and what’s next.

28

New blueprint, new places

A showcase of campus construction during the Crow era.

38

Nature as inspiration

This robot is smart — and pretty cute.

40

Campaign ASU 2020

Highlights from the record year.

42