What About Resilience?

"Failure is not an option" is a phrase that we have been hearing since we were children the same way we heard "never give up" and "keep going." All these encouraging mottoes form a subjective concept that our minds, from a young age, use to start building the idea of resilience. However, what is resilience really... and does it mean the same for all of us? According to Marston (2018), an individual's resilience skills include "adaptability, a healthy relationship to control, continual learning, having sense of purpose, and knowing how to leverage support and appropriate resources." Clearly, resilience will differ from person to person as great diversity exists within all of these "resilience skills" from individual to individual. Therefore, we must refine our question to what is resilience specifically to each of us. for we have established that the meaning will likely be different depending on our own background and situation.

One common definition of resilience is the ability to cope with stress and, Marston (2018) argues that coping with stress is a perception game. "How we perceive stress can be just as important to how we handle it as the amount of stress we're experiencing." Marston (2018) then adds that "Researchers at the University of Buffalo found that stressors, big and small, help us develop the skills to face other taxing or stressful circumstances in the future." In other words, if we perceive stress-coping mechanisms as a muscle, we can use self-awareness to detect stress as it happens and learn from those situations in order to build the muscle that will help us cope with stress more effectively in the future. Tolle (2005) explores the same concept from a different angle when he writes that: "When you become comfortable with uncertainty, infinite possibilities open up in your life." (p. 274). Resilience; conversely, could be construed to be the ability to be happy in the midst of stressful situations. This ability, just like muscle, gets bigger and stronger, with exercise and repetition.

The relationship of resilience with a sense of purpose is an important factor to consider when defining resilience. At the risk of oversimplifying what surely are complex concepts, we can assert that the main purpose in people's lives is to be present and fully aware of the every moment (Tolle, 2005. p. 257-258). Hence, we could conclude that resilience should be defined as the ongoing pursuit of present moment awareness. For example, Marston (2018) proposes, as a way to display resilience, to: "Link learning with action" which is arguably a demonstration of present moment awareness. "We can choose to see difficult circumstances as learning opportunities rather than as a time to shut down." Conversely, by showing resilience, people pursue awareness in moments of stress which creates the opportunity to objectively assess a situation of trouble to be a able to identify the learning opportunities within it.

Lastly, let's close by briefly discussing what resilience IS NOT. Resilience is not the ongoing pursuit of a "successful" outcomes somewhere in the future as resilience isn't about just "not giving up." It is important to note that there is an ethical side to resilience. People love to say "begin with the end in mind" or "the end justifies the means" but Tolle (2005) makes a pretty strong argument against that stance when he writes that: "...the end and the means are one. And if the means did not contribute to human happiness, neither will the end. (p. 271). By the way, beginning with the end in mind immediately implies the prioritization of a future state over the importance of the present moment which goes against our premise of present moment awareness which we relentlessly pursue as we seek to demonstrate resilience.

In conclusion, don't give up on your pursuit of present moment awareness as such chase is our life's main purpose. The more we endure stress and difficulty in our lives as we pursue pervasive awareness, the stronger that our resilience muscles will become.

Than you for reading. Onward and upwards!

Oliver

Notes

Marston, Ana and Marston, Stephanie. "To Handle Increased Stress, Build Your Resilience." Harvard Business Review, Jan-Feb 2018.

Tolle, Eckhart. A New Earth. Namaste Publishing, 2005.