The Art of Resilience

Bonnie M. Morét Photography
www.bonniemoret.com

 

How resilient are you? How well do you react to unexpected challenges and conflicts?  Resilience is fundamentally underpinned by the concept that it is not so much the hard times we face that determine our success, or failure, as the way in which we respond to those hard times. In particular:  

 

• the accuracy of our analysis of events;
• the number of alternative scenarios we can envisage;
• the ability to be flexible;
• the continued drive to take on new opportunities and challenges. 

 Although many of the external pressures on our resilience can neither be controlled nor reversed – the rain will continue to fall, the market will often be slack and we will never be able to regain those lost hours spent in traffic jams – evidence suggests that our internal thinking processes can both moderate the impact of these adversities and provide a valuable resource in moving forward from them, focusing on the things we can control rather than those we cannot. 

 

The key to resilience is the ability to recognize your own thoughts and structures of belief, and harness the power of increased accuracy and flexibility of thinking, to manage the emotional and behavioral consequences more effectively. This ability can be measured, taught and improved. 

 

More than education, more than experience, more than training, a person’s level of resilience determines who succeeds and who fails.