Resilience: Why Rebounding Matters

The ability to get back up after a life blow is one of the factors that separates successful people from unsuccessful people.

As we all know, life will come at us in unexpected ways, ways we cannot control, and ways that are unappealing. Resilience is the capability to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness. How we choose to respond to those difficulties is where the road to resiliency begins.

Why Resilience Matters

Why is it so important to become resilient? What are the benefits of enduring life's hiccups and not letting them negatively define your actions and behaviors? In an article from PositivePsychology.com, Jeremy Sutton, Ph.D., describes it in this manner. Resiliency is “...the capacity to remain flexible in our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors when faced by life disruption, or extended periods of pressure, so that we emerge from difficulty stronger, wiser, and more able.” This is where resiliency is a gift, albeit an unwanted one when handed to you, yet when approached with open-mindedness and with the support of peers, the difficulty endured becomes a lesson and an opportunity for growth.

Resilience as a Learned Trait

Resilience can be learned. In studies that have been conducted over the last 50 years on the subject, discovery has shown that “... the quality of our close personal relationships, especially with parents and primary caregivers,” (Eileen Zimmerman – The New York Times) is one of the biggest contributing factors to becoming resilient. According to E. Zimmerman some other components of resiliency include:

• Positive/realistic outlook
• Moral compass
• Belief in something greater than yourself
• Being altruistic
• Acceptance of what you cannot change and focus energy on what you can
• Mission, meaning, and purpose
• Social support system

In essence, resiliency is sustained competence under stress and being able to thrive in the face of adversity. As leaders and entrepreneurs, our lives are constantly moving with familial changes, business changes, and the ups and downs of the daily rigor it takes to run a successful family/business. Utilizing the skills that you already possess as a leader in your industry have helped you get to where you are today, and I am confident in stating that you’re no novice when it comes to resiliency, yet where can you improve?

Community is Key

It's not solely up to you to make it through tough times, it's the people you surround yourself with and the networks of support you've cultivated that make all the difference.

“... we can actually become resilient in the process of connecting with others in our most challenging times.”

- The Secret to Building Resilience – Rob Cross, Karen Dillon, and Dana Greenberg. Harvard Business Review.

Having a reliable network of supportive and understanding individuals is one of the most beneficial tools one can apply when facing the unknown.

Developing Resilience

Creating a checklist of your infrastructure, both within your being and within your business, will aid you greatly in developing resilience.

• Where are there vulnerabilities that can be reinforced?
• Have you surrounded yourself with the best people, the ones who will get through the inevitable difficulties alongside you?
• Where is your mind-set? Fixed or rigid?
• What action can you take today to safeguard yourself and your business from the inevitable disruption?

Being pro-active and having a plan of support for the undeniable changes that will come protects you from what you can’t see while allowing you to remember that it is YOU who ultimately controls your response and subsequent actions.

Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

- Confucius