Survival Skill #2: Resilience
“A person who falls and gets back up
is much stronger than a person who never falls.”
The 2nd Survival Skill for pushing through the COVID-19 experience is Resilience.
What is Resilience?
While resilience means different things to different people, the definition we will use is this:
“Resilience is one’s ability to remain flexible in our thoughts feelings, and behaviors when faced by a disruption or extended periods of pressure, so that we emerge from difficulty stronger, wiser, and more able.”
Pemberton: Resilience (McGraw Hill, 2015).
WOW! Doesn’t that sound exactly like what we are going through! Briefly, it’s one’s ability to remain standing. Because resilience is an outcome rather than a thing, it originates from the combination of three things – genetics, childhood experiences, and learning from adversity. Learning from Adversity is the greatest influencer of one’s resilience. It’s almost like growing a muscle and the good news is that resilience tends to increase as we get older. We certainly are exercising the “resilience muscle” during these challenging times.
How You Know When Resilience is Low
Indicators that my resilience could be declining may include:
- A sudden attitude of pessimism
- A loss of connection with the purpose of my work or life
- Withdrawal from relationships
- Outbursts of emotion
- Difficulty focusing
- Loss of confidence
- Changes in my eating or drinking patterns
- Sleep habits change
- Discontinue doing what I enjoy
- It’s hard to make decisions
Three Things To Do To Increase Resilience
- Recycle – What are the knowledge and skills that you usually rely on? Reconnect to your strengths such as compartmentalizing things, walking outside, using humor, listening to music, meditating, reading, poetry, etc. Re-activate them!
- Resource – What resources do you have access to . . . including both human and material resources? Maybe it’s accessing a thinking partner such as a coach, studying your strengths, learning something new, or actively building confidence in self, etc.
- Re-Author – How might we rewrite our story? Perhaps we create a new beginning or ending, or we rewrite the narrative around the event or situation that has occurred, or we assign different powers to the players in the narrative. When we can create a different relationship with the event, we can recover more quickly. A study of widowed men vs. widowed women showed that women moved faster because they talked about the experience and expressed their emotions aloud to one another.
During this “new normal” we have many opportunities to build the muscle of resilience. Committing to remain strong in the presence of everyday challenges is our best hope to push through to the other side of this experience.
How are you staying resilient during these unusual times?
Reference: Pemberton, C (2017) Resilience Coaching: rebuilding resilience when it’s a crash, not a wobble. International Coach Federation Conference. Washington, DC.
