What is Resilience

Grapple with Something

"According to a 2021 study in 'Frontiers in Psychology', if you improve your resilience by just 5%, you lower the risk of a mental health diagnosis by 10% to 15%." - Costco Connection January 2024

That's right, there you have it, I read the Costco Connection magazine!  My family loves us some Costco in all forms.  The bigger thing here is that you never know where you are going to come across something interesting that will cause you to stop and reconsider a long standing pre-ordained thought or some established belief. 

As I was scanning the pages, I saw the percentages in that sentence, and I stopped and re-read them, and then I proceeded to read the entire article.  My thought process was that you were either resilient or you were not.  I had never thought about whether or not you build resilience like a muscle so to speak.  I had not given the word, its meaning or its impact on my life any proper consideration.  After looking at those numbers quoted above, I was now keenly interested and wondering about whether or not I was doing this work.

Resilience - Noun - the capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness, the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape; elasticity

Etymology - Resilient - dates to 1674 - adjective - capable of withstanding shock without permanent deformation or rupture, tending to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change.

Latin resilient-, resiliens, present participle of resilire to jump back, recoil, from re- + salire to leap

Those Latin derivations are interesting and in particular the notion of "recoil" or "jump back" are most closely aligned with what we think about resilience, the elasticity.  We encounter things and we persevere, we get crushed and somehow, we bounce back, we are resilient.  I think the article goes more on the last part of the etymology, the "to leap" piece.  Effectively, we dont just go back to normal, if the ability to be resilient and build resilience is a muscle we are enhanced by the circumstances, just as the muscle is enhanced as it faces resistance.  Whatever we face and move through effectively allows us to "leap" forward.

The article referenced a book "The Five Practices of Highly Resilient People:  Why Some Flourish When Others Fold" by Taryn Marie Stejskal, Ph.D. seemed particularly interesting.  Taryn is quoted as saying "Resilience is the ability to effectively face challenge, change and complexity, in a way that ultimately enhances us, not diminishes us."  I was interested enough to go and get the book.  The book does give 5 interesting practices that lead to creating resilience. 

1. Vulnerability

2. Productive Perseverance

3. Connection to Ourselves and Others

4. Grati-osity - combination of gratitude and opportunity

5. Possibility

As I read this book, I could not help but think back over all the books I have read, the hours of podcasts consumed where these same concepts are talked about in a variety of ways.  These are leadership concepts, these are the foundational elements for relationships, and these are the key elements to running an organization (whether that is your business or home). 

I think it is really fascinating in a world where mental illness is something that we are all acutely aware of, there are these very basic foundational practices that we all can employ that will help us in that mental health journey.  I could not help but think back the Seth Godin quote "Leadership is a Choice", he is right, but I think even more importantly everything is a choice.  We decide, no one decides for us, we control the controllables, resilience and building resilience is controllable.

The six inches between our ears is this most powerful tool in the world.  The human mind can choose, the foundation of free will, which is our greatest opportunity and our greatest weakness.  We have the capacity to see our lives as full of possibility or fixed.  We can decide to be grateful or indignant.  A wealth of opportunity stands right on the other side of our decision to act.  If we allow ourselves to trust others, there are so many connections to be gained.  We will have to be vulnerable to create lasting relationships.  We will have to pivot over time in order to persevere. 

All these choices, whether it is vulnerability, change, choosing to be grateful in the face of hardship, or building relationships, each will necessarily result in pain.  However, as you are enduring that pain, you are strengthening yourself and constructing a new normal you are leaping forward.  It is that cognitive work that helps keep your mind growing and active.  I am not a doctor, nor have I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express recently, but it makes total common sense that these things help our mental health.

As a business owner I have always thought in terms of building a resilient organization, we dont know when change is coming other than we know it is coming, how will we encounter that.  Some days we are more resilient than others.  I seek change and challenge because that is who I am, I am forever moving forward.  I now realize that resilience is a foundational element of the culture I am trying to build by virtue of how I operate and what I ask of my team.  We talk about vulnerability, our ability to pivot, building relationships and communication, there is a common theme of being grateful for our customers and over delivering to them because we see the opportunity, and we are always battling against the fixed and seeing what is possible.  This can simply be consolidated as building resilience into our culture.

All the work we are doing in our businesses and homes are all interrelated especially if we care about doing these commonsense things outlined above.  It is amazing how interwoven things are when you step back, great leadership entails these elements, and great leaders display great mental health.  Being a great parent requires all these elements, even though kids do everything they can to destroy your mental health, they are also posing the challenges that necessitate a very real need for building resilience.  All aspects of going through life require resilience, the question is are we bouncing back or leaping forward.