Hey, I'm Karen Reivich and I want to welcome you to the Resilience course of the Foundations of Positive Psychology specialization. I'm the Director of Training at the University of Pennsylvania Positive Psychology Center. And I also teach here in the Master of Applied Positive Psychology Program. Much of my work focuses on resilience. What is it and how can we enhance it? I've been really lucky to work with a range of people including students and educators, soldiers in the US Army, business leaders, and the Oklahoma City Thunder. So thank you for joining me. This course is going to have four modules. The first module is an exploration of resilience. What is it, and what is the role of optimism in resilience? The second module, we're going to look at the cognitive skills that increase resilience. We'll explore when our thinking gets in the way of resilience. And how to challenge that thinking so that we're more resilient. In our third module, we're going to explore emotion. First we'll look at anxiety, and we'll talk about thinking styles that drive unhelpful amounts of anxiety. And we'll talk about some skills you can use to challenge that unhelpful thinking. We'll also talk about mindfulness, and how through practices of mindfulness you can manage your anxiety. We'll then go on to explore positive emotion. Why is positive emotion important in resilience? And we're going to do a close look at gratitude - the attitude of gratitude - and why gratitude is essential in enhancing our well-being and our resilience. Finally, our fourth module is going to explore character strengths. I'm going to ask you the question, who are you at your best? What are your top character strengths? Whether that be curiosity, or love, or playfulness, or humor. And then we're going to talk about how you can use your top character strengths to overcome challenges, to bounce back from setback. We'll also, in that last module, talk about the importance of relationships in resilience. I'm going to teach you a skill around communicating with other people around joy, and why that matters so much in resilience. Now, I don't want this just to be the science of resilience. A big part of the work I do, is teaching other people how to enhance their resilience. So as you go through this MOOC with me, learn the science, listen to the fantastic guest speakers we have lined up for you, but most importantly, try out the skills that I teach. Because that's how you're going to leave this course, not just knowing about resilience, but enhancing your resilience. Okay, so week one, let's get started. We're going to start by doing a deep dive into the concept of resilience. I want to talk about definitions of resilience, of course. And also, what are the variables that science tells us are critical in building resilience? And then, after we explore all of those variables, we're going to focus on optimism. And I hope to convince you that optimism is among the most important variables for resilience, for well-being, strong relationships. We're going to do a really deep dive into that.