Resilience means the ability to adapt to difficult situations and the ability to adjust and recover from misfortune or change. It’s having mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility and the ability to adjust to both internal and external demands. When adversity occurs, a resilient person is able to bounce back and grow despite life’s downturns.

The resilience theory is an argument that the adversity of nature is not the most important thing but how we deal with it is. The resilience theory also tells that resilience is not a fixed trait. You can practice growing your resilience. You may be very resilient when facing a challenge but not so much when faced with another stressor.

Dr. Sood says in this article that resilience involves these five principles:

• Gratitude
• Compassion
• Acceptance
• Meaning
• Forgiveness

There are certain factors that build resilience more than others. Resilience is a complex and very personal thing. It combines inner strengths and outer resources. This is why there is no formula to become more resilient. There are some key factors that contribute to one´s personal resilience including.

• Specific coping strategies
• The way someone engages and views the world
• The availability and quality of social resources.

Resilience is built over time and things done in childhood affect resilience in adulthood. Things like family cohesion, positive self-appraisals, and interpersonal relations affect resilience in young adulthood. Having social support and good relationships with close family and friends in situations of crisis helps an individual develop resilience for the future. A positive sense of self also knowns as self-esteem is closely related to resilience. Good coping and problem-solving skills help overcome hardship. Using positive coping skills like optimism and sharing can help boost resilience in an individual. People who can interact with, show empathy toward, and inspire trust and confidence in others tend to be more resilient. The ability to regulate overwhelming emotions helps maintain focus when overcoming a challenge and also is a factor that improves resilience.

People who lack resilience are more likely going to feel helpless and overwhelmed, and people who avoid situations, isolate themselves from others and practice self-medication. People with good resilience, great coping capabilities, and emotional intelligence are overall more likely to have general well-being. During the latest pandemic, emotional resilience strong people showed to have less stress and a bigger life satisfaction which helped them through the Covid-19 pandemic. Resilience is seen as having such a big impact on well-being that it has been observed that people who have committed suicide have a low level of resilience whereas, on the other hand, people with a high level of resilience have never attempted suicide.

There are for types of resilience:

• Psychological resilience: People who have this type of resilience have developed coping strategies and methods to remain calm and focused in uncertain and stressful situations and move on without any negative long-term consequences.

• Emotional resilience: These types of people understand what they are feeling and why. They practice realistic optimism when in a time of crisis. They are able to use internal and external resources to get through the situation.

• Psychical resilience: The ability to adapt to challenges. These challenges can be aging. A person with psychical resilience is very conscious of aging and therefore does lifestyle changes that improve well-being. Being ready to recover from an illness the fastest possible is a sign of a physically resilient person.

• Community resilience: A group of people’s ability to recover from adverse situations like natural disasters or acts of violence. A real-life example could be a mass shooting that requires a community´s resilience to go forward after a horrible situation that affects a community as a whole.

Resilience can be learned, and it is simply the ability to “get over” adverse situations happening throughout your life. These are the 6 things you can do to be more resilient according to this article.

• Develop self-awareness
• Build self-regulation skills
• Learn coping skills
• Increase optimism
• Strengthen connections
• Know your strengths

People with resilience have the following characteristics:

• Social support: They can rely on their family, friends, and other close people when needed.

• Problem-solving skills: They are good at solving problems as they identify ways with their control to work.

• Optimism: When things get tough they believe in themselves and believe that they can handle the situation.

• Coping skills: They have developed techniques to fight against stress and anxiety.

• Self-awareness: They know their strengths and weaknesses and how they can put internal resources to work.

Final thoughts:

Resilience is something that I knew about from the surface, but I didn’t realize how many things go into it. A resilient person is the closest to the famous Finnish word SISU which is difficult to translate into any other language. So now that I know more about resilience, I can see many similitudes with SISU which is the ability to never give up and push threw everything to get to the finish line. Writing this essay gave me many valuable points for life which are also important in business life. Business life has many difficulties to overcome and being resilient makes you one step closer to be a successful entrepreneur.

Sources:

The three secrets of resilient people, Lucy Hone, TEDxChristchurch, 2019

Everyday Health, What is resilience, Katie Hurley, 2022

Resilience, Center of Developing Kids, The University of Harvard, read 25.11.2022