Resilience: Coping In Times Of Change And Adversity.

Why Willpower Is Overrated

Willpower is overrated, so much so that psychologists are beginning to increasingly think effortful restraint is not the key to success in business and well-being in life. So where do we go from here, and what really is the key to greater success in business and a deeper sense of meaning in life?

As with all my articles, we'll delve into the what, the why and how we can move forward without judgment or resistance when it comes to transitioning from excessive willpower into resilience.

From the glorification of willpower to understanding the difference between willpower and resilience and how to develop your own resilience, without burnout, without comparison, all whilst removing the societal pressure that is hanging over us.

Let's unpack.

The Glorification of Willpower

There lies a double-edged sword when it comes to the concept of willpower. On one side, sits drive, discipline and determination, allowing us to get good grades, build successful businesses, run marathons, or accomplish extraordinary results in any other area of our lives.

Willpower is known by some of the greats to be the reason they are now thriving — as the ability to resist short-term temptations in order to meet long-term goals. Many others also believe this to be true, with the American Psychological Association’s annual Stress in America Survey, asking, among other things, about participants’ abilities to make healthy lifestyle changes.

Survey participants regularly cite lack of willpower as the No. 1 reason for not following through with such changes.

However, as mentioned, willpower is a dangerous double-edged sword that can either help or hurt us and the stronger our innate drive, discipline and determination, the more extreme the potential good or bad that it’s likely to produce.

Ever heard of the saying; You can't push a river?

Within our society we have unknowingly placed willpower upon a pedestal, basing both our sense of belonging and drive on how strong and determined we are, and when we feel as if we lack it we use it as the reason we are not progressing in life.

It's clear that when discussing, let alone researching, the concept of willpower hardly anyone speaks of the limiting and often harmful effects of enforcing excessive willpower. In fact, when you google willpower most studies and articles that you come across primarily focus on how to train the so-called muscle to ensure strength and grit.

As an entrepreneur at heart, I encourage people to achieve audacious goals, however, my aim is to set a norm that allows people to move forward in a way that prevents them from unnecessary hardship, burnout, despair, but most of all, from the grief of a life lost living to their values.

Unfortunately, this isn't the norm yet.

In my work as a coach, I come across many intelligent and well-intended individuals who are overly fixated on the goals that they have committed themselves to and strongly attached to the underlying (pride-based) identity of the extreme, strong, flawless or determined entrepreneur, making it hard or sometimes even impossible to see things — including certain parts of themselves &/or our their businesses — for what they are.

The problem here is that when the gap between what we want to be true versus what is actually true passes a certain threshold, most of us fall into the habit of enforcing excessive willpower in an attempt to reverse the reality of change and, above all, to protect the pride-based identities from failing.

However, when your goals and expectations start to deviate from reality, holding onto willpower may no longer serve your growth or progress, in fact, it will only lower your chances of learning, adapting, and eventually succeeding.

In these moments it's worth asking yourself the following questions:

1. Am I seeing reality for what it is or am I misreading the situation and seeing it based on what I want to be true?
2. With total disregard to what I want to be true, what aspects of myself or my life/business am I avoiding?
3. When I put my pride (ego) aside, what would actually take to cope with this challenge?

These questions may sound like common sense, yet they are often not common practice, as the willpower-only mentality along with the ever-increasing silent pressure from society are sucking us deeper into the functional fight and flight mode — disempowering our cognitive abilities for problem-solving and rational decision making.

So what's the alternative?

The Difference Between Willpower & Resilience

There is a stark difference between willpower and resilience, one that many may not even know the difference.

We are often told that willpower is the only thing that's stopping us from achieving what we want, but in reality willpower, without an appropriate level of awareness and self-leadership, is one of the most detrimental combinations that I've come across.

The attachment to a certain outcome (#thepromisedland) along with the repressed desires of the underlying pride-based identity that it is serving can narrow our focus to a single point, causing us to lose sight of and, eventually, neglect other important aspects of our lives, including ourselves.

Of course, when creating a life on our own terms or achieving the results we aspire, we must make certain sacrifices. However, chronically neglecting these fundamental elements has proven to affect our capacity for performance, leadership, parenting, relationships and above all, our psychological and physiological well-being.

To let go of willpower, most of us first need to hit a rock to realize that doing more of the same will only further separate them from themselves and the aspects that are crucial to greater success in business and a deeper sense of meaning in life.

And this is where resiliency comes into play.

Personally, I consider resiliency as the older, wiser and more mature brother/sister of willpower, Other than willpower, resiliency requires the humility to explore our inner-world, whilst maintaining both patience and integrity to learn from them.

Willpower is the hero. Resilience is the king/queen. Willpower is finite. Resilience is infinite.

The American Psychological Association (APA) define resilience as the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or significant sources of stress — such as family and relationship problems, serious health problems, or workplace and financial stressors.

In other words; the ability to bounce back from or to grow and transform through difficult experiences.

Everybody has resilience, however, some people have developed a greater capacity to 'bounce back', and, in some cases, even utilise the problem to their advantage, whereas others experience more difficulties in coping with change and are at higher risk to fall victim to their circumstances.

Sidenote; being known as a resilient person doesn't mean you're unable to feel the intensity of a problem or event, it just means you have found a good way of dealing with it faster than others may.

Moving from a place of excessive willpower into resilience delves into the rethinking process of our ingrained beliefs whilst unlearning defence mechanisms that we have formed to suppress the aspects of ourselves and our lives that we (desperately) wish to avoid.

Like any other human skill, we can learn and expand our resiliency as we move through life and navigate our challenges, however, it's a process that takes time, patience, trust, removal of judgment, unlearning and practice.

Just like you learned to walk, step by step.

You vs The Rest Of the world

Resiliency is not something which we are born with, in fact, it is something that is learnt and developed as we grow.

Bessel van der Kolk once stated that;

“How loved you felt as a child is a great predictor of how you manage all kinds of difficult situations later in life."

We must understand that at some point, we will all deal with some level of adversity, from everyday challenges such as work conflicts to certain traumatic events with more lasting impact. As individuals we are all different, therefore each individual, when faced with adversity, is affected differently.

**But what really makes one person more resilient than the other?

Even though certain biological factors can make individuals more resilient than others, resilience isn’t necessarily a personality trait that only certain people possess. In nearly every review or study on resilience in the last 50 years, the single most common factor for the development of resilience is having at least one stable and committed relationship with a supportive parent, caregiver, or another adult.

These relationships support the foundation that protects children from developmental disruption, allowing them to build a healthy self-image as well as core capacities such as the ability to; plan, monitor, relate to others and regulate their emotions. The combination of supportive relationships, adaptive skill-building, and positive experiences prepare and enable them to cope with change and adversity later on in life.

When looking into resiliency in children to strengthen the concept, one way to understand the development, as stated by Harvard University, is to visualize a balance scale or seesaw.

Positive experiences and coping skills on one side counterbalance significant adversity on the other. Resilience is evident when a child’s health and development tips toward positive outcomes — even when a heavy load of factors is stacked on the negative outcome side. (Center on The Developing Child)

See the image below:

What this visual shows us is that the more a child is able to develop and grow with the support of adult relationships, they're able to stack more positive outcomes onto one side, therefore when faced with stressors or adversity in their life, they are able to utilise more positive aspects than negative.

Counterbalancing behaviours to increase the positive side to the scale can include;

1. Facilitating supportive adult-child relationships;
2. Building a sense of self-efficacy and perceived control;
3. Providing opportunities to strengthen adaptive skills and self-regulatory capacities;
4. Mobilizing sources of faith, hope, and cultural traditions.

(Center on The Developing Child)

Now, this doesn't mean that you can't develop resilience at a later age, in fact, the capabilities that underlie resilience can be strengthened at any age. And if you aren't as resilient as you'd like to be, you can develop skills to become more resilient.

How to Develop Greater Resiliency

Developing resiliency doesn't just happen overnight, especially if you are currently in the process of working through adversity, neither is there a one-size-fits-all approach, however, the good thing to know is that you can develop it by slowly shifting your own scales of positive and negative.

Building resilience enables you to harness inner strength supporting you when in the process of 'rebounding' from a setback or challenge. As many of you are aware, change, adversity and trauma are part of life and it's important to understand that being resilient doesn't mean you will not experience difficulty or distress.

Quite the opposite, the road to resilience is likely to involve considerable emotional distress.

Having resilience won't make your problems disappear — but resilience can give you the ability to turn them into an opportunity for learning, growth or even transformation.

According to the American Psychological Association (APA) focusing on four core components — connection, wellness, healthy thinking, and meaning — can empower you to withstand and learn from difficult and traumatic experiences.

A few examples from the APA of how to build resiliency are;

• Accept and adapt to change.
• Focus on connections.
• Building meaningful relationships.
• Avoid isolating yourself due to trauma.
• Take care of yourself and practice mindfulness.
• Be proactive and utilise your time.
• Understand perspective.

Although the above examples from the APA hold great power towards building a resilient nature, we also have to understand, before we go any further, that we won't actually feel good all the time.

You don't build resiliency by feeling good all the time, you actually build your resiliency by getting better when you're feeling bad.

When thinking about how to implement resiliency skills into our life, we have to let go of one particular element:

Control

In matter of fact, as much as we want to control what goes on in our lives, the reality is we aren't in control of much.

We have zero control over our past, whether we had parents who showed up for us in a way to support or whether we had dismissive and distant caregivers, we can't control the weather, the pandemic, our cultural values, the education system, or how others see or feel about us. However, we are able to control how we respond to what happens (or happened to us).

Embracing change & facing your fears

Embracing change can feel quite intimidating, and, as humans, we have a natural tendency to avoid pain or situations that may threaten our pride-based identity, however, as the famous Jospeh Camnbel stated; the cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.

No matter how much we deny the reality of change and no matter what we invent to suppress the consequences of our decisions, change is inevitable and the longer we deny our own reality, the greater the impact of change on us. When it comes to embracing change, there are four psychological stages that we go through as humans and recognizing at which stage you are and knowing what to do will help you move from habitual willpower into true resilience.

To provide more of an insight, see the following;

Stage One: Denial

In this stage, we ignore the reality of change as if nothing is happening, downplaying the impact and rationalising our excuses in an effort to avoid the cost of changing.

Questions to help you face reality:

• Where in my life do I experience discomfort, tension or stress?
• Where in my life am I complaining?
• Where in my life am I projecting upon / blaming others?
• What is actually happening in this situation?
• What parts of myself or my life am I avoiding?

Stage Two: Resistance

In this stage, we move towards acceptance and learning, which can activate overwhelming emotions and deep-seated defence mechanisms to protect the more vulnerable aspects of yourself, your life or your business.

Ways to move through resistance:

• Seek social support (or professional help).
• Befriend your fears, insecurities &/or incompetence.
• Practice mindfulness and self-regulation.
• Identify the parts of yourself that you need to accept, integrate &/or develop.
• Clarify the values that you wish to honour in this situation.

Stage Three: Exploration

Here we move from defence into exploration, in which we accept the implication and start to adapt by opening ourselves to new ideas and ways of moving forward.

Ways to move through exploration:

• Seek advice from people who have been 'there'.
• Map out your possibilities.
• Clarify the values that you wish honour.
• Shape a construct of the best possible outcome.
• Clarify the benefits of making the change.

Stage Four: Commitment

In the final stage, we commit to the process of change, in which we continue to adapt by learning and integrating new behaviours/skills, along with taking consistent and progressive action towards our goals.

Ways to move through commitment:

• Set realistic goals.
• Avoid comparing to others.
• Make commitments that you're able and willing to stick to.
• Actively develop the required core capacities or skills.
• Prioritise and plan.
• Exercise, rest/sleep, regulate.
• Take consistent action.

Take Consistent Action

Taking consistent action is the single and most crucial aspect of developing resilience because there is simply no way to overcome and master something without experiencing it. Repetition is the mother of all learning and conditioning.

However, one of the roadblocks I often come across when working with my clients is the all or nothing mindset causing them to believe that they must commit to big audacious goals in order to change, that change can only be achieved through 'force', but developing resilience requires a different approach — one that allows us to follow through on our promises. Over and over again.

When we consistently follow through on our commitments and promises, we teach ourselves to trust our own word.

Therefore, when working through times of change or adversity we must only make commitments that we're able and willing to follow through upon. We have to accept the conditions of our circumstances — including ourselves — in order to take consistent and progressive action, but most all, to establish a deep level of trust within ourselves.

Starting small isn't something to be criticised, — it's extraordinary.

But what if you feel like you can't move forward?

Seeking Support

If you currently feel stuck or find yourself in a place of suffering, the most valuable thing you can do is to reach out and connect with someone, open up, talk about your problems, ask for support, or simply just share your struggle or pain.

Social support has long been recognized as an important protective factor for people dealing with difficult experiences or emotional distress. This can be through supportive relationships, such as family and friends or through working with a helping professional.

Seeking professional help, whether a therapist or a coach, doesn't make you any less of a person, in fact, it's quite the opposite, it allows you to diversify and expand your current capacity of knowledge with the support of a professional to help you not only set achievable goals but work with you to bring you back to the resilient person you have the potential to be.

In Summary

In summary, resilience is not something that you are born with, it is in fact something that you create as you develop from child to adult depending on the adult relationships you have within your life, but can also be developed later in life.

Whether we like it or not, our lives will never be plain sailing, with adversity being a part of our evolution and our desire to control never being fulfilled.

However, although this all sounds negative, our resiliency can and will develop through our own innate wants and needs being worked on through connection, support and acceptance.

As the Buddhists say that any time we suffer misfortune, two arrows fly our way. Being struck by an arrow is painful. Being struck by a second arrow is even more painful.

“In life, we can’t always control the first arrow. However, the second arrow is our reaction to the first. The second arrow is optional.”

And if you’re still with me, I would like to thank you for your time and attention. My hopes are that this article has inspired you to move forward with compassion, curiosity and hope.

All the best,

Jord Cuiper

Footnote: If you have any questions in regards to this article, feel free to reach out to me. Furthermore, I’m just a guy sharing his perspective based on my own experiences, along with the studies and work of believable professionals in the industry. I fully expect that I have made a mistake somewhere in this article, in referencing an idea or tool to the wrong person or not at all. I’ve no intention of taking false credits, so if there’s anything not aligned regarding referencing, please email me at [email protected]

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