24 June 2020
Last week’s post concluded the list of seven factors of resilience culled from Gonzales (2012), Barker (2020) and Rodin (2020) shaping up as follows:
- Accept the harsh reality and prepare to deal with it.
- Moderate expectations and efforts through self-discipline.
- Undertake a rigorously honest but positive resource assessment.
- Game it, turn it positive, and relax.
- Control your vector with a healthy, sustainable direction and momentum.
- Recognize the meaning, beauty, and narrative underlying your own self-realization.
- Don’t quit: Keep buggering on! (KBO)
Amid writing the KBO post, a loyal attendee at our SMART Family + Friends meeting (thanks, NS) sent a link to Dr. Lucy Hone’s (2019) three-point Tedx talk on resilience. Hone’s points:
- Resilient people know that life involves suffering. Fellow students of Stoicism will recognize Seneca’s pre-meditation of evils. Hone expanded this point in two directions: 1) evil is not about me, it’s about the nature of life and, 2) real life does not consist only of REM’s shiny, happy people experiencing good things. But…
- Resilient people are really good at directing their attention which goes straight to the heart of Stoicism, captured in Niebuhr’s (1943) serenity prayer: G-d, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Hone made the noteworthy point that humanity is better attuned to noticing hungry grizzly bears than blooming lilacs. But, having worked with heavyweight psychologist M. Seligman et al (2005), she also affirmed that noticing three lilacs a day, makes you a much happier person = gratitude work. She called it accepting the good.
- Finally, resilient people ask of their choices, Is this helpful or harmful [to my values]? This question has been heard with some frequency at SMART meetings.
The takeaway: It’s not about better lists. It’s that the same factors keep turning up concerning resilience: harsh reality, positive, directed responses, and grateful persistence.
Thought I would share this quote which I think ties in nicely with the summary. Resilience does not exist without pain or grief – they often go together, however “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent; it is the one most adaptable to change.” — Charles Darwin
Thanks for that keen observation, Nathalia. And for the idea behind that blog. While I can’t disagree with Darwin’s conclusion, I will argue that some of the inputs to adaptability (=resilience) are strength and intelligent, disciplined behaviours. But perhaps the most interesting point about Darwin’s observation is the need for a certain elasticity of perspective and action.