A few days before Christmas, I shared online a picture of my daughter, Michele, dressed up as Ruth Bader Ginsburg for her school’s superhero day. The picture went viral.

I shared the picture because I knew my friends and family would get a kick out of it. They know Michele well and this picture is the essence (本质) of her. I had no expectation that it would be as appealing to strangers as it was to her grandfather. But it was, and the image began to fly through the channels of social media.

As I looked through all the shares and comments, the reason for the picture’s popularity became clear — people were inspired by the idea of a strong little girl with a mind of her own. I read dozens, if not hundreds, of comments that ran along these lines: “Your daughter gives me hope for the future. I wish all little girls were like her.”

There is no doubt that my daughter is a strong little girl with a mind of her own. I bought her the book I Dissent because the title summarizes (概括) what she has been doing in her entire life: dissenting disagreeing, and making her voice heard. I believe she will grow up to be someone who fights for what she believes in.

And if one little girl like her gives people hope, then I have good news for the world: She is not the only one out there. Michele is surrounded by little girls who are ready to grab (抓住) the world with both hands and shape it to fit their vision of how things should be. For example, she has a cousin who, for both her last birthday and Christmas, asked people to give her gifts to less fortunate children. And when her little sister was 4, she told me that she “was put on the earth to make people laugh” — because when people laugh they are happy and she was “born to make people happy.”

The problem isn’t that there aren’t more tough little girls who think for themselves and stand up for what they believe in. The problem is that there are millions of girls who go unnoticed because we don’t expect girls to be that way.

When I first found out I was having a daughter, I had this thought in the back of my mind that, if I wanted her to go as far as her potential (潜力) could take her, I would have to teach her to think for herself and to use her voice to get where she wanted to go. I would have to teach her to be a strong woman.

What I didn’t realize was that she came to me pre-programmed. She, her sister and every other little girl I know have that strong woman in their DNA. It’s taken me years to understand this, but my job isn’t to teach my daughters to be something they already are — my job is to make sure they never listen to the message that they shouldn’t be that way.

If our goal is to raise strong women, the best thing we, as parents, can do is to understand that little girls come to us strong. That they are born mighty (强大), with voices they are ready to use.

One summer night in a seaside cottage, a boy felt himself lifted from bed. Then, with the swiftness of a dream, he was held in his father’s arms out onto the nearby beach. Overhead the sky blazed with stars. “Watch!” Incredibly, as his father spoke, one of the stars moved. In a line of golden fire it flashed across the astonished heavens. And before the wonder of this could fade, another star leaped from its place, then another, plunging towards the restless sea.

“What’s this?” the child whispered.

“Shooting stars. They come every year on a certain August night. I thought you’d like to see the show.”

That was all: just an unexpected glimpse of something mysterious and beautiful. But, back in bed, the child stared for a long time into the dark, knowing that all around the quiet house, the night was full of the silent music of the falling stars.

Decades have passed, but I remember that night still, because I was the fortunate boy whose father believed that a new experience was more important for a small boy than an unbroken night’s sleep. No doubt I had all the usual childhood entertainment, but those are forgotten now. What I remember is the night of the shooting stars, and the day we rode in a caboose (列车末尾的职工车厢), the telegraph we made that really worked, and the “trophy table” in the dining room where we children were encouraged to exhibit things we had found — anything unusual or beautiful — snake skins, seashells, flowers, arrowheads... I remember the thought-provoking (引人深思的) books left by my bedside that pushed back my horizons and sometimes actually changed my life.

My father had, to a marvellous degree, the gift of opening doors for his children, of leading them into areas of splendid newness. This subtle art of adding dimensions to a child’s world doesn’t necessarily require a great deal of time. It simply involves doing things more often with our children instead of for them or to them.

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus once said that you can’t step into the same river twice, for you aren’t the same person at each visit and the water is ever flowing. It is a powerful way to show the reality that everything is always changing. Yet so many people have unpleasant relationships with change. We resist it or attempt to control it, the result of which is almost always some combination of stress, anxiety, and burnout. It doesn’t have to be that way.

No doubt, change can, and often does, hurt; but with the right mindset, it can also be a force for growth. A concept called allostasis can help. Developed in the late 1980s by neuroscientist Peter Sterling and biologist Joseph Eyer, allostasis is based on the idea that rather than being rigid, our healthy baseline is a moving target. Allostasis is defined as “stability through change”—the way to stay stable through the process of change is by changing.

From neuroscience to pain science and psychology, allostasis has become the dominant model for understanding change in the scientific community. The brain is at its best when it is constantly rewiring itself and making new connections. Overcoming pain is not about resistance or trying to get back to where you were but about balancing acceptance with problem-solving and moving forward to normal.

The time to start practicing is now. Over the past few years, the river of change has been flowing, and it shows no signs of letting up. Our ability to work with these changes is directly related to our life satisfaction. Given all this, simply creating a stable expectancy around change goes a long way. So does realizing that the allostasis mindset doesn’t ask us to do nothing. Rather, it asks us to partake in change by focusing on what we can control and trying to let go of what we can’t. When I catch myself resisting change, in my head I say the following: “This is what is happening right now. I’m doing the best that I can. What, if any, skillful actions can I take?” Do this repeatedly and finally you start to get better at it.

To thrive in our lifetime — and not just survive —we need to transform our relationship with change, leaving behind rigidity and resistance. We are always shaping and being shaped by change, often at the very same time.