By Sangeeta Bansal, Ph.D.
Rye Youth Council staff recently held a professional development workshop for Rye City School District on the topic of resilience. We all can benefit by cultivating this superpower.
Human beings usually wish for a comfortable and joyful life and prefer that no major adversity strike them. This, however, is not always how life works! We face challenges in our day-to-day existence ranging from inconvenient travel delays to more serious losses. In these situations, the quality of resilience can see us through.
How can we define “resilience”? It is the ability to persevere through a crisis and even grow from it. Typically referred to as, “the ability to bounce back,” resilience is much more than that. It is knowing that failure is not the end point of a challenge; that there is meaning to be derived from every experience. It is the willingness and strength to stay the course, even though there may not be an immediate end in sight.
Takeaway: Resilience is the willingness and strength to stay on a difficult path even though there may not be an end in sight.
We have daily struggles such as getting good nutrition, exercising, spending time with loved ones, and being productive at work. In addition, there are difficult emotions to deal with and voices in our heads that question our self-worth and life purpose. Daily decisions are to be made that affect our financial solvency, physical health, and emotional well-being. All these require tremendous energy, which gets depleted over time. The ability to galvanize energy to navigate through all these life situations is what resilience is also about.
Takeaway: Resilience is the ability to generate energy within ourselves to fulfill all our responsibilities.
Research reveals the major obstacles to resilience are not genetics, exposure to adverse experiences in life, or growing up in a tough environment. All these things may have some impact, but the single most important factor is one’s cognitive style: the way we look at the world and interpret events. How we process adverse experiences and talk ourselves through them is the key to developing the quality of resilience.
Takeaway: The ability to process negative experiences in our minds and give them some positive spin helps us build resilience.
When faced with a major stressful situation, our nervous system goes into fight, flight, or freeze. Resilience is cultivating a fourth response: the ability to step back from the experience, re-evaluate it, question the instinctual reactions, and then choose to act in a different way. Undoubtedly this requires an enormous degree of self-awareness, willpower, and self-control to stem the tide of emotional reactivity that comes from the “reptilian brain.”
Takeaway: Resilience is the ability to be responsive to a situation rather than reactive.
Resilience is also about cultivating a quality of equanimity, where we are not swayed by perceived good or bad things that happen to us. Instead, we take a long-term approach, knowing that life has both roses and thorns. By allowing ourselves to align with forces of nature (such as seeing the cyclical nature of seasons) and bringing an attitude of acceptance to things we cannot change, we begin to recognize that ups and downs are part of life’s journey — just as the bare winter trees are germinating and preparing for the spring blooms, although this may not be visible to the naked eye.
Takeaway: Resilience is about knowing when to accept a situation gracefully as a part of universal design, even though it seems difficult on a personal level to us.
One of the most interesting things about resilience is that it can be both reactive and proactive. While reactive resilience arises as we deal with a negative situation, proactive resilience is something we can develop within ourselves by challenging ourselves to do difficult things regularly and take on a degree of stress willingly, for the purpose of growing. This can be something like pushing limits in the gym, taking cold plunges, and reducing compulsions to consume food, substances, and internet content. It builds the muscle of willpower that in turn helps build our resilience. Building this type of day-to-day resilience is key to living a larger life. As the saying goes, “Ships are safe in the harbor, but that’s not what ships were built for.”
Takeaway: We can build resilience proactively by challenging ourselves daily to do hard things.
We are the ships, sailing through the ocean of life that gives us sunny days and stormy days. Good preparation, planning, and the right mindset will help us enjoy the journey and the destination.
Sangeeta Bansal, Ph.D., is the Rye Youth Council director of wellness and youth empowerment.