Julia Shaw

It's called cognitive restructuring.

When you actively, deliberately change an aspect of a memory, usually for some therapeutic outcome, so to be happier, to be better in some way.

Hmm.

Yeah, it totally works.

I mean, I do it all the time.

Again, it's about thinking about experiences you've had, positive or negative.

Usually the negative are the ones we need to work on more.

And thinking instead of, wow, how terrible was that?

Thinking, what did I learn from that?

What has this given me that other people haven't experienced?

What is it that it taught me about?

Who are my friends?

What are these insights that I've won from this experience?

And so I think that is an important part of resilience that we ideally need to celebrate and teach more than the opposite, which is hanging in the negatives.

Well, with relationships, one of my favorite research on memories is that if you ask people in relationships who does most of the housework or who does most of certain things, the numbers that they give you.

So like someone will say, I do 60 percent.

The other person will say, I do 50 percent.

And you add them up.

That's more than 100 percent.

And that's basically always the case.