How to Stop Drowning in Good—and Not So Good—Advice
We don’t need to follow every piece of advice for well-being and resilience.
Posted May 29, 2026 | Reviewed by Lybi Ma
We now have many evidence-based approaches to helping people thrive, even after experiencing trauma and adversity. In recent years, we’ve made great strides in figuring out more strengths-based (and less symptom-focused) approaches to resilience .
That’s all great news, but sometimes it can feel like we are drowning in good advice (often mixed in with the not-so-good advice, which may be communicated even more loudly).
What’s lacking is some overarching framework that can help you, your clients, and your students. If you already jog five miles a day, will you get that much of a psychological boost from adding yoga to your routine? Or would you be better off investing in close relationships, developing your sense of purpose, or spending more time in nature?
The resilience portfolio framework provides that kind of guide . Based on studies with more than 20,000 participants in 10 countries from my own lab, as well as reviews of hundreds of papers from other researchers, we have found that people need strengths in four key domains to thrive despite exposure to trauma and adversity: meaning making, regulation, interpersonal relationships, and the physical environment. We’ve made real strides in understanding pathways to healing, especially in the last 10 to 15 years.
Meaning-making strengths are those that connect you to something bigger than yourself, like a sense of purpose or hope, religious or spiritual faith, and sustaining cultural traditions.
Regulatory strengths are the ones that help you manage emotions, thoughts, and behaviors daily, like emotion regulation and coping. We don’t have direct control over our thoughts and feelings—we can’t just say, “I’m not going to be sad starting now”—but we can take steps to navigate our ups and downs and promote healthy, stable lives.
Much work on resilience focuses only on our individual traits or abilities, but no one heals alone. We need strong social networks and good social support in the interpersonal domain of our resilience portfolios, too.
Finally, there’s our physical environment. Psychology can be terrible in thinking about the influence of non-human aspects of our lives, but they matter, too. Research on nature-based interventions shows that spending time in green and blue spaces affects our well-being, similar to psychotherapy or medication . Pets are important companions for many. And the human-built environment matters too—especially features such as walkable cities and access to healthy food.
Too much of the wellness advice out there focuses on only one of these domains: Regulation. Unfortunately, that is often the least fun one. We all need to clean our toilets and do the laundry, but those aren’t the best parts of life. Don’t fall for advice that pushes extraordinarily strict protocols about diet , exercise, or behavior. You can’t regulate your way to a good life, or substitute obsessing about diet, exercise, or time management for a true sense of purpose or fulfilling relationships.
The resilience portfolio approach provides a guide to determine your strengths and which ones would be most helpful to use. Some of us need to find a mission or role that motivates us, some need to work on building new relationships or reconnecting with loved ones. No one is good at everything—but fortunately, none of us need every possible strength in our lives either. We don’t need to follow all the advice. We can each put together our own unique portfolio and find our own pathway to thriving.
Note: This post is based on my first book for a general audience, Stronger Than You Think: Building Lifelong Resilience. I wrote this book to get the best information about healing out of the ivory tower of academia and make it accessible to everyone. The book describes the resilience portfolio approach, what’s wrong with the overly individualistic old ways of thinking about resilience, and offers journal prompts and exercises so that people can strengthen their own resilience portfolios. I share stories from my own resilience journey and those of people I’ve known. The book was released on May 26 by Penguin Random House and is available in bookstores and online.
Hamby, S. (2026). Stronger Than You Think: The Science of Building Unshakable Resilience . Penguin Life (Penguin Random House).
Banyard, V., Kelmendi, K., Yoon, S., & Hamby, S. (2025). The role of resilience portfolios in overcoming trauma. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 26 (2), 209-219.
Hamby, S. (2025). The resilience portfolio concept: New insights into how sufficient strengths can overcome even high burdens of trauma . Review of General Psychology , 29(3), 311-324.
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Sherry Hamby, Ph.D. , is a research professor of psychology at Sewanee, the University of the South.
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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.