Resilience

I’ve been thinking this week about the word resilience.

Dictionary.com defines resilience[1] as the following:

1. the power or ability of a material to return to its original form, position, etc., after being bent, compressed, or stretched; elasticity.
2. the ability of a person to adjust to or recover readily from illness, adversity, major life changes, etc.; buoyancy.  

the ability of a system or organization to respond to or recover readily from a crisis, disruptive process, etc.

I’d say my thoughts have been centered on no. 1 and no. 2, although many conversations currently can be had about and for no. 3 as well.

When we think of how one develops resiliency, what are the thoughts that come to mind?

Is it an innate ability to recover, the tried and true of mind over matter, as they say, or is it ones ability to rebound based on the everlasting debate of nurture vs. nature?

What occurs wherein one person may be far more resilient than another?

I can tell you the experiences in my life, one stands at the forefront especially, which required resiliency like I have never known, but even then, if you ask those around me they’d tell you they don’t think they would have shown up the same way.

So, that leads me back to nurture vs. nature. I can tell you that growing up my mother is/was no nonsense.

The aspect of “I can’t do this” was not allowed to be in my vocabulary. Did that help build my resiliency skills?

Do some experiences that others face require so much resiliency that one cannot do it on their own?

I can tell you the ability, in my opinion, the ability to feel like one can recover or rebound comes from a deep sense of knowing that if you don’t, or if you struggle, there is a support mechanism behind you to pick you up and help you recover. My family, I’d say, is my biggest source for my resilience.

Even when I have doubted my abilities to recover or rebound, they have not. They are resilient for me when I cannot be.

So when one fails, where does one turn to pick back up if no support system exists?

I am so blessed to have the support system which I do but for those that don’t, how do we help them when we feel that they are struggling with their resiliency skills?

I do believe the ability to navigate obstacles, either like ours, or unlike ours, with others, is a way to develop these skills. To hear of another’s struggles and understand how they overcame, I do believe, can assist in the development of resiliency skills.

The power of our own story telling should never be minimized.

Far too often we are unaware of how best to respond to situations, for we’ve never had an example. It isn’t until someone vocalizes how they showed up for the same situation, and recovered, that we see that we too, can have the ability to do same.

How about you? What helped you develop your resiliency skills? How do you help others do the same?

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[1] https://www.dictionary.com/browse/resilience