Resilience and Recovery
Resilience is defined as “the capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties” (Oxford Dictionaries). The American Psychological Association defines resilience as “the process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences.” In most definitions of resiliency, adversity, shock, and/or change occurs that an individual or system must adapt to. Individuals or systems that are resilient are able to absorb and adapt to said adversity, shock, or change more efficiently than their peers.
Teaching the skill of resilience leans on the seven C’s model that was first proposed by the American Academy of Pediatrics in 2006. Those C’s are confidence, competence, connection, character, contribution, coping, and control. While this model was originally designed to help children navigate through times of high stress and change, it applies to working adults as well.
Challenges, disappointments, and failures are an important part of our daily lives—both personally and professionally. It’s easy to let emotion and ego get the best of us when we face a set-back. Using terminology from the world of change management, it’s far too easy to wallow in the valley of despair. There’s something oddly warm and comforting about attending a personal pity party, but overstaying your welcome at a pity party can be quite damaging.
To make the importance of resilience clear, I’ll ask this question. What do you want to be known for? Do you want to be the person who’s able to pick themselves up, take ownership, ask for help when needed, and quickly rise above challenges; or the person who gets upset, falls into an emotional black hole, shifts blame, and doesn’t move forward? I’d rather be the former than the latter and it is the skill of resilience that serves as a key ingredient to moving through change and upheaval with grace and dignity.
The best way I can describe the skill of resilience is through the example of golf. In a typical round of golf, there are somewhere between 60 and 120+ swings at that blasted little white ball—depending on skill level, weather conditions, and course difficulty. When a golfer hits a bad shot, they face a choice—let the bad shot negatively affect the next few shots (and possibly the whole match), or quickly “shake it off” and move forward. Pro golfers have developed and honed the ability to strike a bad shot, learn from what the bad shot signaled, and then approach the next shot as a new opportunity to succeed. Their ability to recover is remarkable.
So how do we build the skill of resilience? Focus on recovery. While I applaud the seven C’s model for resilience, I believe that the concept of recovery needs to be made more explicit. Certainly confidence, competence, character, coping, and control are related to the recovery process, specifically focusing on recovery needs to be brought to the fore (pun intended).
The ‘how’ of recovery is very personal and is unique to each individual. Anyone who tries to tell you that there’s a one-size-fits-all recovery model is, well, wrong. What I can offer are suggestions for what works for me to help recover from a challenge or disappointment. Here are two:
Exercise. For me, nothing beats sweating my a$$ off on my bicycle or on the yoga mat. The release of endorphins is just what I need to see a situation more clearly and to get out of my own way.
Meditation. A close second in my book is mindfulness and meditation. If I’ve got a dark cloud hanging over my head, I can usually dissipate it by getting in tune with my breath. During these sessions, I ask myself ‘why’ in myriad ways to uncover the root cause of a challenge or failure.
So there you go. Fail, recover. Next shot, new opportunity. For me, resilience and recovery go together like peanut butter and jelly.
