Resilience

Hi, I’m Sandra. Welcome to The Happyist.

Lately, I’ve noticed that “resilience” is getting a bit of a bad rap. It’s sort of fallen into the clutches of toxic positivity and, well, no. Resilience isn’t acting like we’re good; we’ve fully recovered and are totes back to normal. Nope.

Resilience is going through the experience, allowing the evolution of growth that will come from that experience — not just scrambling to get back on our feet and assure everyone that we’re fine, things are OK.

There’s nuance to resilience. It’s rather quiet in its power. We mistake it as performative, though. And the drive to appear resilient isn’t just coming from us and our desire to appear as if we have our shit together, it’s an expectation from those around us. People are watching to see how we respond when life gives us a shove.

So, if you suffered a loss and cry in public, are you not resilient? If you lost a job and are a bit salty and bitter about it, are you not resilient?

Resilience is not sucking it up and gagging down our feelings to make sure everyone around us is comfortable with what we are going through. No. Resilience is for us, not them. Resilience is personal.

The definition of resilience when it comes to people is: the capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.

The definition when it comes to things is: the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape; elasticity.

Which would you prefer to have: toughness or elasticity.

For me, it’s elasticity. Bending, not breaking, like a tree in the wind. Toughness implies not feeling what you need to feel, but just pushing through it. And we all know what we refuse to feel will just keep growing and pressing until it gets expressed, one way or another, and likely not pleasantly.

Photo by Wesley Tingey on Unsplash

Resilience comes from experience and wisdom. Typically, we’ll learn from what we’ve gone through before — how we will need to react and cope. But we can also use our wisdom and take what we’ve learned from different experiences and apply that knowledge to what we’re going through now, see what works and what might not. Because rarely are we going to leap to our feet after we’ve been knocked down by something new, like loss. Like someone we love passing. No matter how many times we’ve been through it before, it will be different. We can rely a little bit on what we’ve gone through previously, but it won’t apply exactly.

There isn’t a reliable formula or calculation for dealing with things. It’s instinctual and based on experience and emotional intelligence. Resilience isn’t something we have, it’s something we gain.

Having a solid foundation of eudaimonic happiness helps us be resilient. Why? Eudaimonic happiness is based on having a strong sense of self, of self-worth, of purpose and appreciation. It gives us a clear perspective, it ups our emotional intelligence, and it reminds us who we are and how we show up in the world. That’s wisdom. So, even if we’re without experience in the matter that knocked us back, eudaimonic happiness will light the path forward.