RESILIENCE

… about singing “I got knocked down, but I got up again…”

Resilience. The buzzword for 2020. After the race for TP ended, we got used to spending all day in our pyjamas, and ever so often thinking “it’s only Tuesday, where’s my whisky?”, there seems to be an invisible force trying to pull our sluggish matter back to a solid form. Resilience! No matter what professional platform I am looking at, someone seems to have opened an invisible tap, and resilience trainings are flooding the aether. 

While I have to admit, resilience is a crucial feature of the human psyche, keeping us from breaking into tears when we do reach on Tuesday for the whiskey bottle, only to find it empty, let’s take a deeper look into resilience in the work-field. (We all know where whiskey’s coming from, so we are safe there.)

Let’s look at the definition of resilience in physics: the capacity of an object to absorb energy without creating a permanent distortion. Aka elasticity. Take a bouncy ball, throw it against the wall and get out of the way, because it will come back untouched and smack you in the face!

Resilience in psychology: the ability to mentally or emotionally cope with a crisis and quickly recover to the pre-crisis situation. Good, good, gooooood… That’s a good starting point. So what happens here? We crash, we burn and we rise like the Phoenix. When faced with difficulties, trauma or loss, we usually not only learn that it is possible to recover, but we also learn a lot about ourselves. We grow personally. So, point for resilience. By becoming more resilient we not only become stronger, but also better. Seems logical, that we invest in resilience trainings, just ignoring the fact that the core of the universe is collapsing around us. Recovering to pre-crisis situation is only valid to the human psyche. 

So what happens, when we build resilience? Building resilience is like building muscles. It can be done, but it is not as fast and easy as it’s portrayed. You need different muscles to run a marathon than to be an Olympic weightlifter. So first conclusion, and #1 on your resilience to do list: PRIORITIZE. Choose what you give a sh*t about. Priority in relationships, things we spend our time on, where we place our focus. No matter what’s your sport in the Olympics, there’s one common requirement for all: health. So #2 on the resilience to do list: WELLNESS. Take care of your body, meditate, practice mindfulness, avoid (except Tuesdays) stress relief in form of alcohol and other recreational substances. Just take care of yourself. Somewhere along the lines of reprioritising and placing our focus where it truly matters, the next point will emerge uninvited. #3 on the resilience to do list: PURPOSE. I know this sounds soapy and overused, but having meaningful task, meaningful relationships and at the end of the day the feeling, that you’ve done something important and meaningful for yourself, will highly impact your view on the day that is ahead. And there you go… You have become resilient. 

So… While the world is trying to forge you into a marathon running weightlifter who is slam-dunking two points one second before the buzzer, invest where your return is the highest.