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Nantucket, a beautiful, 14-mile-long island off the coast of Massachusetts, has a 40-point resiliency plan to help withstand the buffeting seas surrounding it as climate change takes a toll. Perhaps we can all benefit from creating individual resilience plans to help handle the big and small issues that erode our sense of well-being. But what is resilience and how do you cultivate it?

What is resilience?

Resilience is a psychological response that helps you adapt to life’s difficulties and seek a path forward through challenges.

“It’s a flexible mindset that helps you adapt, think critically, and stay focused on your values and what matters most,” says Luana Marques, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

While everyone has the ability to be resilient, your capacity for resilience can take a beating over time from chronic stress, perhaps from financial instability or staying in a job you dislike. The longer you’re in that situation, the harder it becomes to cope with it.

Fortunately, it’s possible to cultivate resilience. To do so, it helps to exercise resiliency skills as often as possible, even for minor stressors. Marques recommends the following strategies.

Shift your thoughts

In stressful situations, try to balance out your thoughts by adopting a broader perspective. “This will help you stop using the emotional part of your brain and start using the thinking part of your brain. For example, if you’re asking for a raise and your brain says you won’t get it, think about the things you’ve done in your job that are worthy of a raise. You’ll slow down the emotional response and shift your mindset from anxious to action,” Marques says.

Approach what you want

“When you’re anxious, stressed, or burned out, you tend to avoid things that make you uncomfortable. That can make you feel stuck,” Marques says. “What you need to do is get out of your comfort zone and take a step toward the thing you want, in spite of fear.”

For example: If you’re afraid of giving a presentation, create a PowerPoint and practice it with colleagues. If you’re having conflict at home, don’t walk away from your partner — schedule time to talk about what’s making you upset.

Align actions with your values

“Stress happens when your actions are not aligned with your values — the things that matter most to you or bring you joy. For example, you might feel stressed if you care most about your family but can’t be there for dinner, or care most about your health but drink a lot,” Marques says.

She suggests that you identify your top three values and make sure your daily actions align with them. If being with family is one of the three, make your time with them a priority — perhaps find a way to join them for a daily meal. If you get joy from a clean house, make daily tidying a priority.

Tips for success

Practice the shift, approach, and align strategies throughout the week. “One trick I use is looking at my calendar on Sunday and checking if my actions for the week are aligned with my values. If they aren’t, I try to change things around,” Marques says.

It’s also important to live as healthy a lifestyle as possible, which will help keep your brain functioning at its best.

Healthy lifestyle habits include:

• getting seven to nine hours of sleep per night
• following a healthy diet, such as a Mediterranean-style diet
• aiming for at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity activities (such as brisk walking) each week — and adding on strength training at least twice a week
• if you drink alcohol, limiting yourself to no more than one drink per day for women and two drinks per day for men
• not smoking
• staying socially connected, whether in person, by phone or video calls, social media, or even text messages.

Need resilience training?

Even the best athletes have coaches, and you might benefit from resilience training.

Consider taking an online course, such as this one developed by Luana Marques. Or maybe turn to a therapist online or in person for help. Look for someone who specializes in cognitive behavioral therapy, which guides you to redirect negative thoughts to positive or productive ones.

Just don’t put off building resilience. Practicing as you face day-to-day stresses will help you learn skills to help navigate when dark clouds roll in and seas get rough.

About the Author

Heidi Godman, Executive Editor, Harvard Health Letter

Heidi Godman is the executive editor of the Harvard Health Letter. Before coming to the Health Letter, she was an award-winning television news anchor and medical reporter for 25 years. Heidi was named a journalism fellow … See Full Bio View all posts by Heidi Godman

About the Reviewer

Howard E. LeWine, MD, Chief Medical Editor, Harvard Health Publishing

Dr. Howard LeWine is a practicing internist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Chief Medical Editor at Harvard Health Publishing, and editor in chief of Harvard Men’s Health Watch. See Full Bio View all posts by Howard E. LeWine, MD

Pop quiz: what is Salmonella? If you’ve ever had a run-in with this bacteria, you know it can cause a food-borne illness called salmonellosis, a form of food poisoning. But you may not know that Salmonella bacteria sicken an estimated 1.35 million people and hospitalize 26,500 every year in the United States. What’s more, it kills more total people than any other type of food poisoning.

And Salmonella bacteria can be sneaky — not only by triggering unusual complications, but infecting people in startling ways, says Dr. Elizabeth Hohmann, an infectious disease specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital. One patient she treated showed up with an abdominal aortic aneurysm — a dangerous bulge in the lower section of the body’s largest artery — that looked infected. Testing revealed a culprit some would find surprising: Salmonella.

“It’s just an interesting organism and it can be kind of scary,” she says.

How do people get infected by Salmonella?

Many of the foods Salmonella bacteria lurk in are raw or undercooked. Breaded raw chicken products like nuggets and chicken Kiev are one way it may reach your table. But a variety of foods have been implicated — including organic basil, cantaloupes, ground beef, nut butters, raw cookie dough, eggs, raw or unpasteurized milk, and flour.

Even small pets such as turtles and frogs, along with dog food, have contributed to Salmonella outbreaks in recent years.

You can also become infected by handling contaminated food and spreading the bacteria from your hands to your mouth. Additionally, you can spread it to others on your hands or even on your clothes without becoming sick yourself.

“It’s a bug that’s carried in stool and animal feces and is also present in the environment,” Dr. Hohmann says. “So it can set up shop in lots of different inanimate objects, soils, and machinery, especially in moist environments.”

What symptoms can Salmonella cause?

Most of the time, Salmonella infection leads to gastroenteritis, usually causing just an upset stomach, abdominal cramps, and diarrhea. These symptoms can start as soon as six hours after ingesting the bacteria. Typically, symptoms resolve on their own within two to three days.

Some people have such mild symptoms they’re barely noticeable. “The classic case might be a college student who eats a burrito from a sketchy place, gets sick for a couple of days, gets better, and doesn’t think anything of it,” says Dr. Hohmann.

Sometimes symptoms are more serious, such as severe abdominal cramping and bloody diarrhea, or unexplained high fever and marked fatigue. These symptoms require a call to your doctor.

How is salmonellosis treated?

Most people will get better on their own without any medicines. Replacing lost fluids by sipping water or electrolyte drinks to avoid dehydration will help.

Call a doctor if you have

• diarrhea and a fever higher than 102° F
• diarrhea that doesn’t improve after three days
• bloody stools
• vomiting so severe it prevents you from keeping liquids down.

Treating the infection with medicine comes with an annoying paradox, Dr. Hohmann says. If doctors decide to prescribe antibiotics, the person taking the medicine may shed the organism for longer than if they were never treated. “Then that person may have the opportunity — either through poor personal hygiene, sex, or working as a food worker — to spread it to others,” she explains. “It’s challenging.”

What complications can Salmonella lead to?

Some people get sicker with salmonellosis than others, with seemingly no rhyme or reason. But certain folks are especially vulnerable to serious infection, including:

• adults 65 and older
• pregnant women
• children under 5
• people whose immune systems are weakened by diseases (such as cancer) or treatments (such as immunosuppressing drugs).

A small percentage of those infected can have Salmonella in their blood, which can spread the infection to other parts of the body such as the urinary tract, bones, joints, or central nervous system (brain and spinal fluid).

And, like Dr. Hohmann’s patient with the abdominal aortic aneurysm, on rare occasions Salmonella can lead to unusual blood vessel complications in people who already have atherosclerosis, blockage of the arteries caused by plaque buildup.

“It’s not that common,” she says. “Many physicians are aware of it, so they take special care if Salmonella is found in a person with vascular disease.”

What steps can you take to avoid Salmonella?

While new USDA rules that take effect in 2025 may help fuel recalls of certain foods, we all can take steps to avoid the food poisoning, illness, and hospitalizations that Salmonella exposure can cause.

Dr. Hohmann and the CDC suggest these strategies:

• Using hot water and soap, wash cutting boards or plates on which you cut into raw foods — including vegetables and fruit — before using those surfaces for other purposes. If possible, use separate cutting boards for produce, meat, and fish.
• Refrigerate or freeze foods that are perishable, prepared, or left over within two hours to thwart salmonella growth.
• Always wash hands well with soap and water before preparing food and after contact with animals, using the toilet, or changing diapers.
• If you have a sick pet, take extra care handling its feces and wash your hands thoroughly afterward.

Take additional steps to help more vulnerable people stay healthy:

• Don’t let young children touch high-risk animals, such as turtles, frogs, chickens, or ducks. “And if you’re taking young children to a petting zoo, they should not be petting animals unless you can disinfect their hands immediately afterward,” she says.
• Older adults and those with compromised immune systems should take extra care to wash and cook foods thoroughly.
• People who have had a transplant (such as a kidney transplant) should not keep reptiles or amphibians as pets.

“You hate to make people paranoid, so that we’re washing our lettuce leaves with soap, but it’s worth thinking about these things, particularly if you have people in your household who are susceptible — which is an increasing number of people,” Dr. Hohmann says.

About the Author

Maureen Salamon, Executive Editor, Harvard Women's Health Watch

Maureen Salamon is executive editor of Harvard Women’s Health Watch. She began her career as a newspaper reporter and later covered health and medicine for a wide variety of websites, magazines, and hospitals. Her work has … See Full Bio View all posts by Maureen Salamon

About the Reviewer

Howard E. LeWine, MD, Chief Medical Editor, Harvard Health Publishing

Dr. Howard LeWine is a practicing internist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Chief Medical Editor at Harvard Health Publishing, and editor in chief of Harvard Men’s Health Watch. See Full Bio View all posts by Howard E. LeWine, MD