Posted by Elizabeth

I was walking with Maikael in our neighborhood park one cold-but-sunny afternoon last week when I spotted a little boy playing happily with his father.  Suddenly, for no apparent reason, the little boy began issuing loud, ragged sobs, and I turned to Maikael and said, “Kids sure do cry a lot, don’t they?  It doesn’t take much to upset a kid and set them on a crying jag.”  As we circled the park we talked about the benefits of growing older:  whereas we cry nearly daily as babies, crying – at least for most of us – ceases to be an everyday occurrence as we blossom into adulthood.  As we mature we’re better able to handle the slings and arrows that life hurls our way.  But as we rounded the bend and came upon the son and father, just minutes later, the little boy was giggling and bouncing and playing happily once again.  It might not take much to get a kid crying, but they sure do recover a great deal more quickly than we adults do.

Bouncing back.  Bending in the wind.  Getting back on the horse.  Call it what you will, but resiliency — the ability to get back up when life has knocked you down — might be one of the most important lessons we have to learn about living a Life in Pencil.  We all know people who seem to meet life’s challenges with remarkable grit and determination…and those who are flattened at the first sign of trouble.  Resiliency is a hot topic in the world of psychological research, and in my graduate studies in counseling I learned that the ability to adapt to the changes that life throws our way is one of the most important ingredients to successful living.  So what skills or qualities do resilient people maintain in their reserves?  And, if we weren’t blessed with an innate ability to quickly spring back after misfortune strikes, is it possible to learn to become more resilient?

In The Secrets of Resilient People by Beth Howard (which, incidentally, I read in my mother-in-law’s AARP magazine over Christmas), the author lists the critical ingredients of resilient individuals:  they stay connected, they’re optimistic, they’re spiritual, they’re playful, they give back, they pick their battles, they stay healthy, they actively seek solutions, and they find the silver lining.  What strikes me about this list is that the vast majority of the items imply action. Resiliency is something we must do, that we must practice, which leads me to believe it’s something we can become better at.  Resiliency isn’t simply saying, “This bad thing happened to me, and now I’m going to sit back and roll with it” (although, if you can do that, more power to you).  Resilient individuals do something about their situation.  Sure, some of us might come by resiliency more naturally than others, but resiliency is more of a way of being in the world than simply a blissful state of mind.

The author includes a quiz on resiliency, where readers are asked to rate their levels of proficiency in each area.  Here are the items:

I’m usually upbeat

I can tolerate high levels of ambiguity and uncertainty about situations

I adapt quickly to new developments

I find the humor in rough situations and can laugh at myself

I learn valuable lessons from my experiences and from the experiences of others

I’m good at solving problems

I’m strong and durable

I’ve converted misfortune into good luck and found benefits in bad experiences

As I read this, I thought, “Wow, this is what Life in Pencil is all about!”  These are the very skills we encourage you, our readers, to cultivate on a daily basis.  I’d never considered that when we talk about change we’re often talking resiliency, which I’m beginning to see are two sides of the same coin.  Life is nothing but a series of changes, and it’s not the changes themselves but how we handle and respond to those changes that determine our success and happiness.  This, in a nutshell, is resiliency.  We write a great deal about approaching change as a personal choice:  we can ignore it, embrace it, or tentatively accept it.  We can love it, hate it, or feel indifferent to it.  But the reality is we don’t choose change; change chooses us.  And given that fact, perhaps it would be wiser to focus on how we’ll cope with the inevitability of those changes rather than the choice of change in the first place?

So how do we become better at resiliency?  First, something must go awry for us to be resilient towards.  All of us are forced into this situation at one time or another — we lose a job unexpectedly, a family member dies, we’re diagnosed with a disease.  If we’re lucky, we may not experience these difficult events often enough to get any substantial “practice” at resiliency.  When I worked in the university setting – first as an admissions counselor, and later as a career counselor – I was often witness to young adults, somewhere between the ages of 18 and 22, facing the first real disappointment of their lives.  And how they handled those disappointments often told me a great deal about not only their capacity for resiliency, but what I predicted to be their future success as independent adults.  Some students, upon learning that they’d been denied admission to the university, absolutely crumbled.  Other students, upon learning that they hadn’t landed the first job they applied for, expressed their disappointment, but handled that disappointment with grace.  Perhaps that second group of students had a greater proclivity towards resiliency, but I think the mitigating difference comes down to one of experience. I think that second group of students had faced failure and heartache before, and had some practice at what that felt like.  Some of them may not have chosen the difficult circumstances that taught them their resiliency, while others may have placed themselves in situations that invited disappointment.   Perhaps, then, those most resilient are risk-takers:  they have developed their ability to handle failure through a repeated series of trial and error.  And if that is the case, we could all stand to take more risks, face more failures, and become more resilient in the process.

Would you describe yourself as a resilient person?  What do you think are the key ingredients to resiliency?  Do you think resiliency is an important part of the process of change?