Everyone tells a story about themselves that helps explain, interpret and make sense of their lives. We tell these stories to people around us, but most of all, we tell stories to ourselves. The more we tell the same story, the more we come to believe it, and live it in the present. These stories can be happy or sad, humorous or tragic, focused on recent events or based in early childhood.

The stories are however highly selective and biased interpretations of our past. We select particular events and string them together and make interpretations of what has happened. Through this highly selective process we focus on a select few events while ignoring many, many others, and in this way we actually reinterpret and reinvent our past.

Recreating our past influences how we perceive ourselves and live our lives in the present. Resilient people make sense of their lives by telling stories to themselves and others interpreting the obstacles they encounter as steppingstones to new phases in their lives.

Steve Jobs, the extremely talented founder of Apple Computers, whose health has been the subject of recent newspaper articles, tells stories about his life in this way too. He refers to this as joining the dots”. He had this to say about his life in a commencement address at Stanford University in 2005 :

“I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”

What is the story you tell yourself about yourself about your life — do you talk about obstacles or steppingstones?
 

The April 2011 edition of Harvard business Review contains an article describing how the U.S. Army is training its soldiers in the skills of building personal resilience. It is remarkable that not only is the Army undertaking what could be seen as "soft skills" and training for its front line soldiers, but also that they expected to train all their 1.1 million members in these techniques. Click here to go to the article.

What is also quite remarkable is that the program has been very well accepted, with some soldiers saying that it is the best training that they have received from the Army.

The training is being conducted under the auspices of Dr Martin Seligman, who also authored the article, and is arguably the most influential living psychologist today. He together with other well-known research scientists have identified five elements that go to make up resilience and train the soldiers in these five areas. Further details were described in my blog dated 22 November 2009.

The five areas are known as PERMA – positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning and accomplishment.

Our research on the building blocks of resilience in South Africa found these five elements and an additional two. We also offer training in these building blocks and have found that delegates report a sustained enhancement of their resilience over time — they find that you don’t have to do flounder in the face of adversity, but can deal with it and eventually flourish.

In these turbulent times resilience is fast becoming regarded as the personal competency to deal with tough times, to remain task focused and ultimately flourish. This is required as much in the Army as it is in everyday business.
 

Is resilience “mental grit”, tough mindedness or perseverance? The answer is that all of this but much more.

Most people understand resilience as the ability to “bounce back” and “stay the course” during tough times. And it is indeed correct that resilience is the ability to not buckle, but rather to persevere and recover from tough times. In this way, resilient individuals at work remain task-focused and productive in the face of personal and organisational difficulties.

But resilience is not just about fortitude and persistence. Resilience is also about healing, recovery and becoming stronger than before.

Now we all wish for good times; those times when we feel we’re on an even keel, when we can cope and when most things in our lives go smoothly. But we also know that personal development does not occur during good times. It’s at times when we are challenged, our resources stretched, and we have had to move out of our comfort zone to find new and different ways of coping and dealing with adversity, that we develop.

Abraham Maslow, the noted early psychologist, understood this and proposed that people evolve as they move through various states of being towards the highest level of personal development, which he called self actualisation. This theory has been further developed by thinkers like Richard Barrett, who has identified different values associated with each level of what he calls consciousness.

From these perspectives, the experience of tough times may have a benefit to us. Whilst not sought or welcomed, tough times can facilitate personal growth and development. When this happens, adversity, difficulties and real challenges have the potential to give us the opportunity to become better individuals, and live our lives more in tune with our real values. In this way, personal resilience helps us to heal, recover from adversity, and move on with our lives.

Thus a more comprehensive understanding of resilience is that it is the life force to cope with tough times, heal and move towards self actualisation. It enables living an authentic life, true to one’s values, and achieving one’s purpose.

With this broader understanding, resilience is truly a life force we all need!
 

We have all heard of that saying, but is it true?

In a study published in the latest issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Dr. Seery reports that people who had experienced some misfortune over the course of their lives, were more content with their lot in life and reported better mental health, then people with either a history of great adversity or having experienced no adversity at all.

It seems that a certain amount of adversity and tough times is necessary in order to develop our coping mechanisms. High levels of adversity however, overwhelm our coping ability and the result is a feeling of hopelessness, loss of control and mental health problems.

The conclusion of this study is that we all have enormous capability to develop our resilience and be resilient. This is in line with the research that we have carried out, and supports our findings that people can develop their resilience so as to not only cope better with tough times, but also to live their lives with zest, joy and happiness. This is encouraging for us all.

Reference:
Seery, M. D., Holman, E. A., & Silver, R. C. (2010, October 11). Whatever Does Not Kill Us: Cumulative Lifetime Adversity, Vulnerability, and Resilience. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1037/a0021344

Myth 6: Resilience is enhanced by rigorously thinking about your problems and difficulties.

It is commonly believed that in order to solve a problem or deal with an unhappy situation, we need to thoroughly understand all aspects of it. The better we understand it the better we are able to deal with it.

Whilst this is certainly generally true in most situations, a specific myth about resilience has developed from it. The myth and misunderstanding is the belief and practice that frequent rehashing and rethinking about the circumstances and events of things that made you unhappy and lacking in resilience, will enable you to become happy and resilient. The problem is that very often this kind of thinking simply leads to reliving the problem in your mind, and bringing up the emotions associated with the problem, which results in experiencing the negative emotions and helplessness all over again.

This type of thinking pattern is called rumination. Rumination is the constant reliving of unhappy events and conversations and feeling the associated negative emotions. In rumination, one dwells on the problem and feelings rather than the solution. This approach can actually lead to increasing negative emotions and leads to downward spiralling of the thoughts and emotions.

Resilient people are able to quickly break out of negative spirals of thinking. This can be achieved by reframing the negative experience and then going on to what can be done to cope and deal with the adversity.

This is the last of the six myths of resilience. I hoped that you enjoyed reading about them!
 

 Myth 5: Understanding your character weaknesses is key to being resilient.

The central idea of this myth is that if you can understand what’s wrong with yourself, you can then work on those defects and make them strengths in order to become “balanced” and an "all-rounder".

This myth has its origins at school and extends to business and almost all walks of life. The idea is that everyone, and in particular leaders in business, must be "well balanced". The problem is that very few people start off life as an all-rounder in terms of skills and personality strengths.

Therefore to be an all rounder with balanced strengths and a balanced leadership style, deficit areas or weaknesses need to be developed to the level of our strengths.

This belief is deeply flawed. Firstly, it’s extremely difficult, if not impossible, to develop all one’s skills and character strengths to an equally high level. Secondly, when confronting and dealing with adversity, dramatic change and generally tough times, it’s a lot easier to use your natural character strengths to cope than it is trying to use your weaknesses.

In addition, in order to fulfil your life purpose, you must have been provided with the wherewithal in order to do so. The provisioning for this journey is in the form of your particular character strengths — not your weaknesses.

When we use our strengths we feel effortless, our work is easy and enjoyable, and time seems to stand still while we have fun. When we rely on using our weaknesses on the other hand, it’s difficult. Work is experienced as heavy and we are left feeling tired and depleted.

Resilient people cope with the adversity by using their natural character strengths. This enables them to cope quicker and better than less resilient people. This enables them to recover, heal and move on with their lives, focusing on growth and self-fulfilment.

 Myth 4: Resilient people stay resilient over the normal passage of time.

Some people think that if you are resilient you should be able to remain resilient over long periods of time.

This is not the case however. Even resilient people experience down periods in their lives – they experience hardships, difficulties, betrayals and bereavements just like anyone else. At difficult times like these, their resilience slips and they too experience negative feelings of fear, disappointment, frustration and anger as everyone else.

Resilience is not a magic potion that makes you immune to the problems of life. What sets resilient people apart and makes them resilient, is the way they react to and cope with challenge and adversity. They will tell you that bad times don’t last forever. Resilient people will say that one needs to persevere through the tough times, not give up hope that things will get better. They intuitively know and believe with great conviction that there are ups as well as downs in life and that the downs don’t last forever.

Resilient people experience the same bad things and tough times as people who are less resilient. The difference is the way resilient people cope with the tough times enables them to experience less negative effects and to recover quicker.

Myth 3: Resilient people are normally more pessimistic as they have a far better grasp of reality than optimists.

Some people say that to be resilient you should be pessimistic. In that way you won’t be disappointed by what happens in your life.

The truth is that resilient people are more optimistic than pessimistic. They explain tough times and failures to themselves as things that happen to everyone and not just to them. In addition, they are better able to compartmentalise their experience of the adversity so that the bad things that happen to them have a limited effect and don’t negatively taint all of their life.

Having false optimism or being over-optimistic is of course dangerous and sets you up to be disappointed. Resilient people are realistically optimistic. Either influenced somewhat by luck of genes at birth or more probably by their own choice, they find hope and look for positive aspects in key situations they face. An important aspect of their optimism is that they have their feet on the ground and their positive outlook is grounded in reality — it’s not” pie in the sky” type of optimism that sets them up for later disappointment.

Now if you are by nature more pessimistic than optimistic, you may feel disheartened. The good news is optimism can be developed, and you can train yourself to be more optimistic than you are at the moment.

Myth 2: Resilient people do not experience as much emotional pain or distress as less resilient people.

Everyone wants their loving relationships to endure and be strengthened. We hate the thought of the people we love aging, becoming infirm and ultimately dying. Parents want the very best for their children and in particular that they should grow up resisting the temptation of alcohol, drugs, lawlessness, devious behaviour, and illicit sex. At work, we all want our jobs to be secure, to have a boss who treats us well, and to be paid fairly. And we want all of this all of the time.

However that’s not how life works. Everyone experiences up and downs in life and no matter who you are, life is still difficult. No matter how hard we want or wish something to happen, no matter how hard we work for a particular result, there will be times when we are disappointed, frustrated and let-down. This happens to everyone — and resilient people are not exempt.

In addition, bad things do happen to good people. Out of the blue, terrible things happen despite your precautions. Robberies, random violence, car accidents, rape and murder can happen at any time with terrible results and consequences for both the person experiencing the calamity, and that person’s family. You can take as many the precautions as you can to prevent these things happening, but sometimes they just do.

When we experience tough times in our lives, when what we earnestly desire and wish for does not come about, it’s natural to experience pain and distress. In getting through the pain and distress, resilient people choose to be positive and find joy and happiness in the face of challenges. They feel the pain as much as anyone else, but their resilience enables them to let go of issues; to not allow negative emotion leak into all the areas of their lives. They are able to better control their negative self-talk and self-recrimination.

Despite resilience being such a wonderful ability and one we all have, there are many misconceptions about it. Having covered what resilience is, it’s important to understand what resilience isn’t. These are the myths of resilience.

 

Myth 1: Resilience is a characteristic that shows up in extraordinary people and is something they are born with.

 

  The myth that resilience is something only a few people are born with arises from the media focusing on the heroic examples of people who have dramatically risen above their circumstances. We often see on TV talk shows, the evening news or on the internet, examples of people who have been through the most remarkably difficult circumstances and have been able to cope and even thrive.

 An example is that of Callie and Monique Strydom who were kidnapped in Malaysia by Al Quaeda rebels and survived four months under the harshest circumstances. On a daily basis they were threatened with death. They lived on an emotional rollercoaster as their hopes for rescue were raised, only to be cruelly dashed, time after time. They eventually were released, and returned triumphantly to South Africa and established a trust in their names to assist disadvantaged people.

 Callie and Monique are exceptional individuals who suffered greatly in captivity. It’s easy to see how resilient they were over a long time period. When you think of what they went through and compare this with the problems we face, many of our problems seem insignificant in comparison.

 Examples of such courage and resilience however, can lead us to despair that because we struggle to cope with lesser challenges in our own lives, we could never be as resilient as they are. We can easily conclude that their resilience is a special gift for extraordinary people.

The good news however is this view is incorrect. Everyone has resilience and can enhance their ability to be resilient and that it’s not just the fortunate few that have it.

We can be resilient, even when we feel we can’t. What we need are the tools and techniques to enhance our resilience so that we can be more effective in applying our innate resilience.