How Hard Times Rewire the Brain: The Science of Durable Optimism & Self-Regulation

Ep 129. Human experience can feel overwhelmingly difficult at times, but not every challenge is a negative one. Some of the most painful moments in life become the source of our greatest strength, resilience, insight, and emotional intelligence. When we move through adversity, we gain hard-earned wisdom—the kind that becomes a powerful internal resource for future challenges.

Difficult experiences shape our perception, our reactions, and our ability to navigate the unknown. They can refine our judgment, sharpen our awareness, and create a more grounded and intentional approach to new situations. But without self-regulation, the mind can misinterpret environments and react impulsively, treating uncertainty as danger—even when no real threat exists.

The adaptive response starts not just in the body, but in the mind. Within 60 to 300 milliseconds, the brain interprets signals, evaluates context, and can even preserve social recognition—preventing us from harming or misjudging a familiar person in moments of stress.

When we integrate our experiences—both the uplifting and the harrowing—we build what psychologists call durable optimism. This is not naive positivity; it is embodied resilience that enriches our lives and enhances the lives of those around us. Through reflection, regulation, and integration, we develop the capacity to move through the world with clarity, compassion, and internal steadiness.

Take care and walk well.

Transcript

Welcome back folks to episode 129 of the Running Man Self-Regulation Skills Project Podcast with me, your host, Dr. Armando Dominguez, PhD in Health Psychology, licensed professional counselor, and an adjunct professor at a local community college. And what we're going to focus our discussion on today is what we'll call durable optimism. Now, the reason I'm going to focus on this is that it's a very important part in what it is that we call self-regulation skills.

that we develop over time and also how self-regulation skills can help us get to a point of durable optimism. And this is a very useful idea.

Now, you can be optimistic generally, you can be falsely optimistic, but flexibility and response is really what we're looking at. And also not overly identifying with a win, a loss, a success, or a failure, so to speak, whatever it is that my endeavor may be as an individual. So we'll start the discussion with the difference between what we call false optimism

and also what we'll call actual optimism. And then we'll look at flexibility and response, durable optimism over time and how that comes about and also how that serves us in the long term whenever we're seeking to become better at what we call our lives and

then we will move from there. to start the conversation, what we're going to do is point out, what is optimism? Well, generally speaking, if you look it up in the dictionary, has to do with a perspective that often gets exaggerated. It becomes hyperbolic in some senses, wherever people become

armando (02:27.692)
so positive in their verbiage and their behaviors, whether they believe it or not, and it becomes in some cases a practice of fake it till you make it, which I'm not a big fan of that term because often it is helpful to be able to go through the motions of doing things with confidence. And this is that optimism part that we're talking about, but one that is genuine and authentic, whether or not one believes what can do it or not, but understanding that the foundation of an

Optimistic movement forward regardless of what the endeavor is whatever we're trying to do or accomplish whether we're skilled and it added or not whether or not we're trying to land a sale or just encourage somebody to listen to a perspective that we have if we're doing a public speaking event or just talking to a family member whether it be about something we'd like them to help us with or maybe encourage them to Allow us to do for instance if we're children talking to parents It has to be based on the foundation that there's a sense

of can I can do this or this can happen. And, it doesn't necessarily mean that's all faith and hope, but rather understanding that there's a probability, whether it be low or high, and there's a possibility it can be done, not necessarily an imaginative thing. So optimism is based on a couple of ideas or sub ideas of what we'll call presuppositions for a moment without getting stuck in the jargon, but, understanding that optimism has a lot to do with also expectation and prediction.

So it's very closely tied to how our natural tendencies as human beings are that has to do with not only acquisition of skill, maybe acquisition of material benefit, whenever we're K people, maybe being able to get somebody to give us an extra apple that they have in essence, getting them to buy into, well, whenever I have an extra, I will get it back, or maybe I can help you with this instead, where there's a trade off. So optimism plays a large part in what we do on our day-to-day interaction.

social sense. So optimism is a positive thing. Yes, it's helpful to us, but it's not one that is the pop psychology idea of what we would call excessive or false or even toxic positivity. That has become quite the term that is rather laughable. But in application, whenever we have a sense of positivity, that there's a sense of can, a sense of probability known or presupposed before we take on an action, that this is what we're looking at. Now, what is

armando (04:57.042)
of

faith and hope type of probability, or maybe it's not so much that I believe, but rather that I hope things will work out, or I believe with a great deal of absolute expectation that things will work out. Well, there's a difference there. Now in the book, Primal Intelligence by Angus Fletcher, there is an idea here about the book that is a true honey across millions of people that have become very successful called Think and Grow Rich.

And this is something that came about from the positive thinking and the human potential type thinking that was bordering on spiritual that came out during the 1890s and I'm certainly not disparaging the work I've read it before and I like it. It has a lot of good useful visualization techniques and methodologies for keeping one's perspective on how to go about bringing about money. So otherwise it shows you how to be positive, but also shows you how to be

durably optimistic. And I think some people may mistake this as wishful thinking. Now the wishful thinking that is pointed out, I think is really what I'm wanting to point out in this case. And when we start having this absolute faith in something that is going to work out, and it's not based on the foundation of probability, and that it can happen versus it will happen, are we setting ourselves up for delusion? Well, I would say no.

Because delusion is really something that is more of a clinical term having to do with believing things falsely or that are false rather that we take and react to as if they are. And that is more dangerous, so to speak, to an individual. Now, when people speak in the common colloquial about, they're delusional, usually that's thrown about rather flippantly. And really there are many times ideas that we speak that are uninformed versus truly delusional.

armando (06:57.318)
have identify the difference there because it is very salient to what we're talking about in self regulatory skills. Sometimes when people gossip and come across things and say things as if they believe them, they're emotional and really intense about it. They're actually firing off a lot of our social wiring, our, our, our neuroception that says, Hey, I belong, or I don't belong or that's different, or I need to line up with this leader, so to speak, as an identified power source, whom I must

with and that is where our social scheme starts to get hijacked. And that's probably going to be grist for a mill of another day that we'll have to discuss more deeply on the podcast. But just to make the point today is that often those sorts of

Commentaries that we will get when somebody is gossiping or passing information without evidence that often with an intensity there There's compellingness and belief quality that can shove us into the direction of believing something that is false Not delusory once again not delusional, but just the fact that often flippantly people speak and call that delusional thinking when an actuality is misinformed and Malbelief so to speak so from the perspective of what we're calling a durable optimism

Can you have an optimism based on no evidence?

Yes. Can you still be functional? Yes. Are you delusional as a result? Well, not necessarily. So the reason I'm pointing these out once again is that we need to differentiate for our purposes having to do with what this podcast covers and that's self-regulation. What does self-regulation have to do with durable positivity or optimism more correctly? Notice I use those terms. Part of that was on purpose. Now, why is it that we have a durable optimism?

armando (08:46.162)
That is something that is not anything we choose per se in the sense that I'm going to be durably optimistic, but rather it's something that arises naturally because we have overcome.

We have gone through a very difficult situation, whether it be traumatic, whether it be frightening, whether it be we survived a situation that otherwise, you know, would have caused someone myself or anyone else for that matter. That's with me that I'm in charge of my family and my little ones to have gotten hurt or lost or damaged or maybe incurred bad results as a result of a choice that we as individuals may make it were caretakers for instance. But whenever we come out of it, we come out a little wiser, a little more experienced.

And the experience point that I'm trying to make here is that the experience often will give us the knowledge of how things work out in that sense that we will generally extrapolate towards the rest of our lives and we will generalize it so to speak. And this is where the optimism may arise realizing that I can make it through that but it gives us perspective how things unfold and also gives us an idea as to well how I need to address things. How am I supposed to respond to things?

Do I freak out and get overly excited, get vigilant and start striking out in anything that moves? Do I start treating people and all things as if it's all threatened? Therefore we get really antsy, upset and what would look like panic or anxiety. This also kind of resembles what post-traumatic stress reactivity looks like. Maybe not PTSD in the sense of disorder level, but not so far from it in the symptomology that occurs within that.

is something that is very similar. And the only difference has to do with the time and how long they've experienced it. And why is this important to self regulatory skill? Well, optimism often will have to do with how well you respond to things that are difficult moving forward. And also how well you will durably respond to things flexibly respond without getting overly rigid in not only what you expect that you might get upset and go into fight flight mode,

armando (10:57.186)
overly rigid in belief in the sense that we think things are a certain way that we get angry or treat things as threat because they're not working out and we try to control or force falsely knowing or believing so to speak that we know that we can control things and then we start spiraling out of control. Now this uncontrolled spiral often happens whenever there is a high level of stress occurring often when events unfold very quickly too fast for a person to make sense of and it's not so much that a

is incapable in many cases of dealing with what's happening, depends on speed of presentation. Most things do not present at faster than 60 milliseconds where all things are deemed threatened. Therefore, we go into fight flight and strike out at even friends in that sense. But, I do mean physically, mind you, not just in the sense of verbalizing, because this is much faster than our word maker and it's at the perceptual level. But the point I'm making here once again is rarely do things unfold faster than that. But the critical point here is

What if I don't know what to do?

in situation. What if I am not prepared? What if I don't know or I haven't planned nor have I practiced the things that I need in a situation that may be immediately unfolding? And how do I feel? Often people feel very badly. They feel guilt and shame because they don't know. And those are remnants of the feelings that come up as a fight flight response. Once they get to the point of our prefrontal cortical area, well, we start judging and lending meaning to what's happening. And then we're creating this

Evaluation devaluation more correctly of self in the process and that happens within fractions of a moment now This often will play back to how we were reared how we were taught how we were coached and mentored or how we may have Observed how people were treated not only within a family within a group within a school within the team and even within a group of friends and how things were treated and there's of course power dynamics go along with that and that's going to deep into the weeds that we

armando (12:59.498)
We'll probably not cover right now, but it's enough to at least make a point as to what some of the sub dynamics are that are occurring there. Now what's important about this is that often whenever things do not work out well and I feel unprepared.

Or I go into situation, knowing where I'm going for the most part, far as locale and what I'm verbalized as to what I'll be experiencing. If I'm directed to go by a manager or a team leader, especially in the military, if you have somebody in charge and they tell you, go do this, the military is very good at training people to go in and knowing largely what to expect, but not necessarily moment to moment, specifically what events going to happen within a situation, but rather within a realm of expectation. And the foundation is going to be the skill.

We always fall to our lowest level of training and that does not mean that our levels of training no matter how skilled are the lowest but rather we can't expect to Do new skills that we have not trained thousands of times to come out

easily as whenever we're doing things that we have done multi thousands of times. And the study was done in the 1950s regarding repetition to the point of unconscious competence in the 50s. And that military study has been touted through many, many, almost innumerable studies about repetition and skill building and also how well things happen. Some of the things we learned from that is that you start getting past about 1500 repetitions and then you're getting pretty good. You've gotten out of the

of

armando (14:57.722)
ingrained into our nervous system as far as how we're supposed to respond. And that's incredibly powerful to stop very hard, but it's very fast as a result. becomes what we call second nature, the closest thing to reflex that we have first nature being a reflex, so to speak. So why is this important? The importance is that whenever we start doing things at about 500 repetitions, we gain it well enough to work and think our process through, but it's not slow thinking and it's not the highest level of skill where we have

unconscious competence in wherever your hand reflexively almost comes up without thinking so to speak and there's this sensor that space of quiet that you've done this so often so well that your mind disengages so to speak not that you're not there but disengages from the mechanical process of it because your body already knows it's just got it down and you don't have to necessarily waste energy doing cognitive process to step a step b step c while you're doing step a through c is a fluid motion

So this is an efficiency or natural tendency to save energy. So how is this applicable to self-regulation skill? Well, we're self-regulating at the neurological level without necessarily having to try to self-control. Your body does that autonomically and that's important. Now, whenever we start looking at what we would call durable optimism, often when we go through things, especially if we allow our body to do what it needs to do, we've trained it, we have planned and we've prepared and our chances of getting

that guilt shame coming up or much lower as a result of our potential for success. And we're not engaged with our social mind at that level to wherever it's a matter of valuation. Now, it's not so much that our social mind is gone, it's there, because we still have to interact with team members if it's a military thing, or if it's basketball or football, we're working together towards a common goal, making a goal, that sort of thing. And yes, points on the board are not survival, but it makes the point a little more relatable, because

whenever it comes to survival, things are very similar in the way we unite. But also there are dynamics there that can kind of model what it is we're doing right now. And I'm looking at more so the individual while we're discussing this right now. So the individual and durable optimism, how does that arise? Whenever we make it through a situation that we have planned often, that gives us a chance to look back and use that as a reference point. It doesn't have to be a positive experience. It can be a very negative one. But if we've lived through it, survived it,

armando (17:27.309)
and somehow come away with experience, it can become wisdom in the sense that, the old adage that says once bitten, twice shy. That means next time you run the risk of getting bitten, you're going to be twice as protective, have twice as much distance. And you'll probably twice as much not be there, which is a good thing. And that's really one of the things that arises, but it doesn't necessarily have to take us down a path of dark and, and, and the, the discomfort and the negativity that may arise of.

a result of remembering that event. may remember the bite from the horse of the scar from the stick that poked me or whatever, but we don't necessarily have to go into a full blown emotional breakdown as a result. at the very least, next time we're around situations similar, we'll be much more careful and we'll be much more able to predict what may be able to happen if we don't care or guard ourselves as a result of not being careful or not planning. So we become better planners.

Now the last podcast I talked about planning and how the Special Forces had become incredibly good planning masters in the sense that

The way we respond better is by planning better. Planning means you try for every contingent, but that means that you're actually extrapolating on every possible result that you can muster. doesn't mean you will every perfect one. Absolutely not going to happen, but you can get to the point where you can plan. And what if that happens? What if this breaks down? What if my gun breaks down? If I'm in the military, what are my shoe falls off when I'm running a marathon? What if I'm out here and I'm driving, delivering food and I get held up?

What kind of things do I do? What are my options? Being prepared sometimes means carrying things and these tools can be for self-defense, could be a beeper, could be, if anything, pepper spray for those of you that know what I'm talking about, just to make sure that you create some sort of distance between whatever threat and protect your life. If it's a life protection thing, why does it always have to come to survival and life protection? Because really, and this is the reasoning, most of the responses that we have that have to do with how I manage

armando (19:36.598)
stress.

how my stress response is has to do with the fight flight response that we use when we protect our lives. And at that level of stress, it doesn't always have to be balls to the wall fight for my life, but the same mechanism, the amygdala reaction, also the anterior mid cingulate cortex is the structure that grows in size whenever we finished doing things that are more difficult. And it also makes us more capable of going through things that are difficult after the fact with the

lessened level of resistance, so to speak, to whatever signal to decide to do those things. And that's very closely tied to our prefrontal cortical structure that is a motor cortex control that tells us we can do or allows us to move our muscles in direction of whatever goal we're trying to achieve. So durable optimism. What is this?

Well, this is wherever we arrive at a situation as a result of prior experiences and knowledge and knowing that things can be done. And the more we plan, the more we are aware of all the existing possibilities that I'm aware of. The lower the chance that I'm going to fail at whatever it is I'm going into, it doesn't mean an absolute zero, but what if plans fail? Then you have another plan. You have another option. There's another way. There's a workaround. That is an old problem that

you have to find a new solution for. So our perspective shifts our way of approaching changes, but also the quality of how I approach the possibility.

armando (21:13.857)
the probability and the idea that we call can is applied versus this absolute sense of it's always going to be like this and it's never going to be like that, which is more indicative of a fight flight response. Whenever we start thinking more simply in binary black and white, absolute reasoning, and we're able to entertain the fact that, this could fail, but it doesn't mean that it's an absolute failure. this way of doing things does not work, it's not an absolute failure. It's just, okay, failed experiments.

work around failed experience and we have what we have possibly an opportunity to develop an answer to an old question by going around it work around looking at it from a different perspective so durable optimism what is this it's something that arises as a result to our ability to adapt and it is an adaptive response false optimism absolute optimism and hopefulness in the sense that things are going to work out no matter what whenever we know that

no matter what could come up and chances are it might not then

we're looking at the difference between a false hope and also false optimism versus actual flexibility response that is a durable optimism founded on probability and the potential of this can work. It can also not work, but it doesn't mean it's the only way it's going to work out if it works out at all. So once again, perspective shift. So this is what we're going to do today. And we're going to think about, well, what can I do? This is rhetorical thing. What can I do whenever I'm a

this idea and if I've come up to an impasse

armando (22:52.343)
How else can this be done is a good question to ask. And I'm encouraging you all to rhetorically, once again, consider this in your mind whenever you're looking at an old problem that maybe is difficult and see, well, how have other people solved this? Can it be solved differently? It's okay to be wondering. It's okay to be curious. These are the things that are created adaptability, flexibility, response, and what we would call the ability to survive, thrive, and win. Once again, not points on the board, but a standing above ground sucking wind breathing.

That's the one so we can work another day, love another day and just be your PG selves another day, which is really kind of cool and which I hope y'all do just a little information. It was Thanksgiving yesterday, just a few hours ago. This is about four in the morning here in West Texas, probably awake a lot earlier than I should be, but I just want to tell you, I want to tell you thank you because I'm grateful and thankful for the fact that you're all my listeners and that y'all are sharing this and passing this around, letting people know about the self-regulation.

podcast, just a couple of bits of useful information. The first volume of the running man, human stress model will be coming out soon and it'll be on the way to publish within a short period of time. And I will let y'all know when that hits the scene. And I'm really excited about it. It's a very comprehensive model that actually goes above and beyond what the average stress and trauma perspectives are. And it's not jargon heavy. It's all applicability, how to use this.

Now how does this affect me down? I could make better now and it's not just something that you apply whenever things are stressful, but it's also a long-term. How do I make my life better approach by virtue of self-regulation skills? And the reason I'm doing this, and this is a venture close to my heart because many of our younger folks that have come up in broken families and situations that are very difficult and also things going on with our current political scene that don't encourage if anything,

self-regulation but rather self dissipation and that's a shame because the children as much as what we're building in our future Presently those of us that are in charge so to speak our children are going to inherit some difficult times and we need to get them to be not only resilient but self-regulatory in a positive sense so that they can become one not only more resilient but more effective of being a greater team and Go team human is what I'm saying here and I certainly look forward to hearing from you all of you

armando (25:22.369)
have any concerns, questions or feedback, please send them to the Gmail, running man get skills project at Gmail. I'd love to hear from you and you take care and I'm hoping that your optimism is durable. Take care. Walk well.