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

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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.

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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.

Tags: Myths
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This is the last blog in the series and addresses the fourth step of how be resilient in the moment.

Step 4 How can I persevere and reach out?

Having dealt with the issues of one’s heart and head and maintaining an appropriate perspective when confronted with challenging times, we are now turn to dealing with the actual adversity. This involves perseverance and reaching out to others.

It seems obvious that perseverance is necessary to deal with changed circumstances and tough times. Logically resilience seems to imply one needs to guard against giving up too soon or being overwhelmed in the face of great difficulties. The reality however is somewhat more subtle. A special kind of perseverance is needed which is characterised by open-mindedness and flexibility. This is different from the type of bull-headed, “full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes” persistence involving resolute drive, power and tenacity.

Open-minded and flexible perseverance almost sounds like a contradiction. Nevertheless to be resilient, one must be open to new ways of doing things, embrace different ways of dealing with problems, employ active listening, seek differing views and be open to a change of tactics or even strategy. At the heart of these actions is a flexible mindset.

The other part of this step is that of reaching out to others. This has two aspects to it – reaching out to ask for help and reaching out to offer help. The problem most people immediately face when asking for help is that of pride and being uncomfortable with “owing favours”. This difficulty in asking for help is often exacerbated the higher the person is in the organisational hierarchy. Yet in times of adversity, most people say that when they finally pluck up the courage to ask for help, they are overwhelmed by the generosity they receive.

Offering help is often easier, particularly in an organisational context where work roles require giving help. In these cases managers of staff often find it easier to counsel and mentor others than to ask for help themselves.

Perseverance and reaching out requires a shift in focus away from the adversity itself to the changed circumstances it creates and the action that is required. This inevitably necessitates staying goal- and solution-focussed, prioritising, being action-orientated and taking small steps. 

Putting it all together: living a life of fulfilment

Using these four steps will help you to build resilience in order to deal with the tough times and changes we all face. The steps are as applicable for dealing with a stressful situation in the moment as they are for dealing with prolonged adversity. The steps assist building inner resources and buffering capability during the good times which are called on in times of stress and challenge. In this way resilience enables coping with the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” whilst living a life of joy and fulfilment. Good news for all!

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This is the fourth blog in the series and addresses the third of the four steps of how to be resilient in the moment.

Step 3. How can I keep perspective?
Perspective is at the heart of the conviction that one is able to influence the direction of one’s life and that the inevitable problems encountered along life’s journey can be solved. Resilient people choose to have a positive rather than negative attitude. This echo’s Viktor Frankl’s thoughts and logotherapy concepts: "…everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way".

We all tell ourselves stories about ourselves to make sense of our experiences of life. These stories mould and ultimately define who we are, and in this way, the stories we tell ourselves actually continually create ourselves. In this way optimists view the good things they experience as permanent and affecting everything, whereas the bad things they experience are perceived as temporary and having limited effect on their overall lives.

Some people are born more optimistic than others, but fortunately realistic optimism can be developed and so one does not need to be stuck in the mind-set of persistently seeing doom and gloom. One of the ways of enhancing optimism is to reframe the adversity to find what can be learnt from it or what you would do differently next time. Changing the story one tells oneself, enables one to choose a more balanced and positive outlook on life. Negative thoughts become more balanced which in turn leads to feeling more positive and ultimately one’s outlook becomes more optimistic.

Two additional simple but powerful exercises can assist building resilience by enhancing realistic optimism. The first is to reflect on the good that has happened to you over the past 24 hours and why it has occurred. This builds perspective and reinforces positive links to other people. The second exercise is to reflect on what you are really grateful for and why, which in turn involves reviewing and thinking of the many things for which you are grateful. This definite mood-lifter works immediately and is wonderfully long-lasting. For best results, the reflection should be carried out daily at a fixed time, either mentally or with the aid of a journal.

The benefits of deliberately maintaining a positive and optimistic outlook are profound: people who regularly use these balancing perspective exercises report enhanced optimism, positivity, energy and connectedness. Our perspective is thus a choice we make about how we decide to perceive and relate to our circumstances. Adopting and maintaining a realistic and optimistic perspective is a way of thinking and an attitude that can be learnt to enhance resilience. It even works for people that are naturally inclined to be pessimistic.

Next week this blog will continue with the fourth step. Watch out for it!

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This is the third blog in the series and addresses the second of the four steps to be resilient in the moment.

The way is long and getting longer

What can be done to break out of a negative thinking spiral? The first thing to do is to calm yourself to reduce your threat response. There are several calming techniques and an example of this is to shut your eyes and concentrate on your breathing for between 1 to 3 minutes. Quietly observe how your lungs rise with air as you breathe in and fall as you breathe out. Allow the stress of the moment to roll off you as your exhale. Visualise tense and negative thoughts flowing out of your mind and your body with the exhaling breaths and leaving calm in its place. 

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This is the second blog in the series and addresses the first of the four steps to be resilient in the moment.

Simply asking yourself this question will have the effect of creating a pause or space so that the immediate response that comes to mind can be checked to see if it is indeed the response that you wish to make. Trying to identify what it is that you really want takes you back to your values and what is important to you from a long term perspective. In an argument with a loving partner for example, do you want to prove you are right or do you want to deepen the relationship? In an argument with your off-spring, do you want to win or have the child take responsibility for their actions?

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I was working with a group of 25 people in Johannesburg last week who were identified as “affected” by a business case to merge and subsequently downsize two accounting departments. Not good news for the people involved and as you can imagine feelings ran high.

The company had a culture of caring for its staff, but that did not prevent the present economic realities demanding that savings needed to be found, and staff salaries are an obvious target. People were very worried about their jobs and the possibility of being retrenched, but underlying their fear was deep anger. There was anger at the organisation for “betraying” its culture of putting staff first and at a deeper personal level there was anger at themselves for getting into this vulnerable and scary situation.

I was asked to run a “Building Resilience: Strength for Life” workshop for the people in the 2 departments, to bolster their resilience so as to better cope during the tough times and remain task-focussed and productive. After all, the monthly accounting processes and system had to continue functioning!

By the end of the workshop I was delighted at the way the people had responded. This was shown by a question in the workshop evaluation form, in which delegates were asked if they were able to immediately implement at work and at home the resilience tools and techniques that they were taught. They all answered “Yes”. This positive response was despite the tears which were shed by both the delegates and the MD himself who attended the concluding sessions.   

At the end of the workshop I was asked for a questionnaire which could be used to track and monitor the resilience of the delegates in the weeks and months ahead. I have been working on such a questionnaire for some time, but I was struggling to distil the items and constructs from the research we had done on resilience, and put this into a questionnaire. This was however the impetus I needed to complete the questionnaire and now I am happy and proud to have it in a final format.

The purpose of the questionnaire is to assess personal resilience and gain pointers as to what can be done to strengthen or sustain personal resilience. It’s not a psychometric test and has not been validated.

To gain insight into your level of resilience by completing the resilience assessment and rating questionnaire, click here . Your feedback and questions will be most welcome.

Tags: Resilience questionnaire
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My friend Shelly is a health nut. She exercises regularly, eats healthily, and drinks alcohol only in very moderate amounts. She has always seemed to me to be a model of how to live a happy, full and balanced life, coping well with the demands of running a home and working a demanding job. She had been experiencing some stomach pain for some time however and eventually decided to consult her doctor. Several tests later she was given the devastating news that she has cancer of the pancreas. That was certainly not the news she and her family expected.

 
Life is not easy. We all have to deal with disappointments and hassle on a daily basis, and also deal with really bad things such as the challenges facing Shelly and her family. The knack is to be able to deal with life’s inevitable difficulties in a way that still enables one to enjoy life, to have fun and experience fulfilment. In a nutshell, it’s to be resilient in the face of adversity.

Here are seven suggestions to help you enhance your resilience. Don’t be fooled into thinking that their simplicity makes them less effective – they are all research based and highly effective!

 
1. Keep your faith
In tough times, you need to keep in mind the “big picture” you have for your life. Remind yourself of your purpose and goals of life. Your personal beliefs play a big part in keeping your focus on what’s really important in your life and not being brought down by tough times.
But its not just faith and belief alone that’s important. It’s also about the implications of that faith: the ambitions and goals you create for yourself as a result of those beliefs. In tough times, faith and life goals provide perspective and the motivation to get out of bed and deal with the adversity.

 
2. Use your strengths

Almost everyone is aware of their weaknesses and may even have formal development plans to overcome them. In times of adversity however it’s much more useful to have identified your character strengths and use them to cope and move forward. People often comment that developing and using weaknesses is heavy and tiresome – in contrast, using natural strengths is easy and joyous. Thus try to deliberately capitalise on your particular personal strengths to persevere and deal with tough situations.

3. Find the positive

We need balance to obtain perspective – and the darker the adversity, the greater the need to maintain perspective. Even in bleak circumstances, people find things to be positive about. This type of positive yet realistic thinking promotes balance and helps build resilience.

 
This is the end of the first part of this blog which describes the first three tips for building personal resilience. The second part which deals with the remainder of the tips will be posted on 25 February 2010.
 

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We have now dealt with each of the seven research-based principles of Building Resilience. Whilst no-one chooses to experience tough times and adversity, successfully dealing with adversity does have an upside. Personal growth and development occurs most when one is in unfamiliar territory, when comfort levels are breached, and when one is out of one’s depth and struggling.

Building Resilience Principles
1. Connect to your purpose and meaning in life
2. Use your unique strengths
3. Maintain perspective
4. Generate positive feelings
5. Be realistically optimistic
6. Persevere by being open minded and flexible
7. Reach out to others

Adversity creates such an environment, and a response based on resilience enables growth and development, and even life-enhancing change, to take place. The personal benefit for staff in being resilient is that they have inner strength and resourcefulness to absorb “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” and live a joyful life.

In this context, resilience is the life-force through which one can overcome adversity, and strive towards self actualisation. But is resilience teachable?

The answer is a resounding yes. Our research has demonstrated that the innate skills relating to each of the seven building resilience principles can be developed and enhanced through training in specific resilience-building tools. These tools have been used successfully by both individuals and teams. When delegates who completed resilience training were asked if they would able to put their newly learnt resilience coping strategies into immediate use at work and at home, 100% of the delegates reported “yes.” Follow-up studies also indicate a statistically significant sustained improvement in resilience over time.

Some species of Cape fynbos require fire in order to bloom (cyrtanthus ventricosus)

Imagine your organisation staffed with resilient people who have abundant inner strength, energy and resourcefulness, with skills that enable them to cope with mergers, new strategies, major change initiatives, new technologies and downsizing. Wouldn’t that make a difference to your team and organisational results!

Tags: Resilience Principles, resilience training
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