People with special ability to resist adversities and adapt to change are said to be resilient. What´s the meaning of resilience in your life? How can it help you in your personal development and journey?
In this post we´ll talk about resilience: what it is, the meaning of resilience in life, and how you can identify your resilience... Stay tuned!
What’s the Meaning of Resilience?
Life can be difficult. Adversities come and go, and we often encounter them when we least expect them. In those situations, one must stay strong and in place, and be able to adapt to the change to face it and overcome the difficulty
Resilience is the ability to withstand adversity and bounce back from difficult life events.
Resilience is your life’s spring; when adversity rises, the spring stretches and gets tense. The strength of the spring (aka your resilience) will bounce back the difficulty to reshape your life.
Resilience is flexible strength. It makes you strong against adversities, and gives you the flexibility to bounce back and get back on track when needed.
Types of Resilience
Resilience it´s only one, but can be divided in different types depending on the origin and mechanism of such:
Psychological Resilience
Psychological resilience is the ability to mentally withstand adversities, inner fears and personal difficulties.
It refers to your “mental strength”, although resilience is way beyond strength.
Emotional
If psychological resilience was about your mind, emotional resilience talks about you emotionally face and overcome the difficulties.
Not only overcome them, but shape your emotions depending on the situation and stage in life.
Physical
Physical resilience is your body’s ability to adapt to new challenges and stimuli. It’s your ability to recover from illnesses, injuries, or other high physical demands.
Community
All previous types of resilience dealt with the individual. Community resilience, however, deals with the “us”.
It refers to the ability of a group of people to respond and recover from stressful and demanding situations.
The end of 2nd World War, the 11-S, or other social disasters have been cornerstones for our community resilience.
Why is resilience important?
You need resilience. The meaning of resilience in your life is essential for your survival and development.
Resilience gives you the strength needed to process and overcome hardship. Not only that, but also gives you the tools needed to adapt to new environments, respond quickly to changes, and pivot in life when your life asks for it.
Resilience makes you strong
Building a strong and resilient core will put all the odds in your favour.
Resilience is about “flexible strength”. The more resilient, the stronger your mind and emotions, and the better you’ll deal with life challenges.
The meaning of resilience is then important to make you strong and give you what you need to overcome difficulties and adapt to life.
Resilience Gives you Confidence
Humans are individuals living in society. Although human’s nature is social, each of us is built upon our own individual. How confident we are on ourselves will determine how far we get in life.
Resilience gives you self confidence. It creates an environment to believe you can cope and reach goals regardless the odds.
Resilience Keeps you on the Right Track
Life is a long term journey. There are different tracks to ride; some are better than others.
Resilience will assist you on finding the right track and maintain you there to reach an insightful and memorable life. It will give you the strength to stay on track when hopes, motivation, and discipline are down.
Resilience will be your safety net to keep walking and living life.
Resilience Pursues Change
Life is a constant change. Everything changes in a continuous flow, and how well you adapt to the change will define your success in life.
Resilience pursues change, giving you what you need to adapt to new environments and keep up with life.
Resilience and Health
Resilience is more than an aptitude. The power and strength resilience puts in you can help you fight and confront chronic illnesses (source)
In the case of illness, resilience talks about being strong and believing in a cure for the disease. The subjective thought and believe on the possible cure will relieve you from severe symptoms, and even make it disappear.
Followed by science, these are the chronic illnesses resilience may improve:
- Mental Health
- Rheumatoid Arthritis
- Immunological disorders
- Brain Injuries
- Type 2 Diabetes
- Cancer
- Digestive Issues
- Skin Condition
- Endometriosis
How Resilient are you?:
How resilient you are will determine the ability of confronting change and adapting to it.
When the strong winds come, some will build windmills, others will build big walls
You choose if you become the windmill… or the wall
Resilience is not a permanent state. Your resilience will largely depend on your stage in life, your health conditions, the magnitude of the change and adversity, and the environment around you.
However, resilient people share common traits over their lifespan
Resilience Common Traits
- Self-awareness: they know who they are, where they are, and with who they are. Resilient people like to be aware or their inner (and outer) world.
- Attention: to be able to adapt to change, resilient people must first identify that change. Through focus and attention, resilience gives you the tools to be the first one at identifying the change.
- Problem-solving skills: resilient people are engineer, they bring solutions to new problems faced in life.
- Self-care: resilient people know how much their mental and physical health matter, and put time and effort on themselves.
- Optimism: to face adversities and change, resilient people tend to be optimistic and think always on the best possible scenario. That brings them more power and motivation to keep going and get through it.
The Best Resilience Quotes
These are some of the best resilience quotes cited by great people in our present lives and the past:
“I can be changed by what happens with me, but I refuse to be reduced by it” — Maya Angelou
“Success is not final; failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts” — Winston S. Churchill
“Failure will never overtake me, if my determination to succeed is strong enough” — Og Mandino
“I am not what happened to me. I am what I choose to become” — Carl Gustav Jung
“Life doesn’t get easier or more forgiving; weget stronger and more resilient” — Steve Maraboli
“Resilience is accepting your new reailty, even if it’s less good than the one you had before. You can fight it, you can do nothing but scream about what you’ve lost, or youcan accept that and try to put together something that’s good” — Elizabeth Edwards
“The human capacity for burden is like bamboo: far more flexible than you’d ever believe at first glance” — Jodi Picoult
“If your heart is broken, make art with the pieces” — Shane Koyczan
“Don’t judge me by my success, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again”— Nelson Mandela
“I tried and failed. I tried again and again and succeeded” — Gail Borden
“Fall seven times, stand up eight” — Japanese Proverb
“As much as talent counts, effort counts twice” — Angela Duckworth
“That which doesn’t kill us make us stronger”— Friedrich Nietzsche
Conclusion
Resilience is the ability to withstand adversity and bounce back from difficult life events
Life is difficult, and it is in continuous change. The meaning of resilience in life points towards adaptation to change and reassembly in the new environment.
In this post, we have seen what´s the meaning of resilience in life, the different types of resilience, and the common traits identified in resilient people!
