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This is the second in a series on under-considered keys to success and contentment. The previous one focused on titration: consciously adjusting your level of intensity, effort, and intellectuality depending on the person you’re interacting with. The third installment in the series is on assessing the impact of your statements and actions on how others feel. The fourth is on efficiency. The fifth is on practicality. The sixth is on composure.
Today, I turn to resilience. Everyone has setbacks, whether a firing, divorce, unfair accusation, negligent parent, whatever. And everyone tries to bounce back—learn from it and take baby steps forward. But some people are more resilient than others. What is it about them?
I’ll ignore any genetic causality because we can’t do anything about that. I focus here on the malleable. Also, I've chosen to not make this article research-finding driven. We tend to respect a study’s results more than a priori reasoning. But ironically, it’s in part because my Ph.D. focused on research methodology that I’ve developed a healthy disrespect for most studies, especially in the social sciences, where so many uncontrollable factors can be operative. For example, a large study found that self-esteem correlates with resilience. The problem with that is that self-esteem also correlates with other characteristics that may actually be at root: intelligence, financial resources, etc.
The older I get, the more I rely on what seems to me common sense, the experiences I’ve had with my 5,400 clients, and simply having lived for 68 years, long interested in observing humankind.
Of course, everyone is different and you may find some or even all of these tactics inimical to your own resilience, but I hope you'll find at least one worth trying.
Deliberately distract. Conventional wisdom is that suppressing bad experiences is ill-advised because they'll reemerge later. I’ve often found the opposite to be true: The more a person “processes” that bad experience, the more it remains top-of-mind and miring. Resilient people tend to quickly glean any lessons to be learned from the setback and then refocus on something constructive.
Inventory wins and losses. To avoid catastrophizing, recall your wins and losses and then develop a goal. That both distracts from the self-pity party and may suggest a path forward. For example, let’s say a person has been terminated from a job for the third time in three years. Inventorying those terminations and perhaps other failures, he sees a common thread: His individual-contributor work has usually been fine. His problem has mainly been in human interaction: too controlling, short fuse, or not realizing or not caring when he’s offending someone. That inventorying gives him reason for hope; that if he looks for a job that’s mainly solo work, he may well succeed next time.
Give yourself lots of options for moving forward. For example, if you’ve just lost your job, you might focus not only on landing a job but perhaps on spending more time on your favorite pleasure activities: friends, hobbies, whatever. I recall a client who, after losing her job, filled her days with job search, seeing friends, gardening, volunteering in a community theatre, and dating, She said, “I’m too busy to be depressed.” That’s resilience.
Face the worst. What's the worst likely outcome? Usually you realize it's unlikely and/or survivable. Recognizing that can de-stress you and thus allow you to be calm enough to move forward.
Get help moving forward. Resilient people don’t often rely on others as a shoulder to cry on or even to “process” the bad experience. More likely, they ask others to help them move forward. For example, after a divorce, they might ask a trusted friend to help create a dating ad that is more likely to elicit a good partner.
The takeaway
Nothing in this article should be inferred to mean that setbacks don’t hurt and or that they’re necessarily easy to rebound from, but perhaps one or more of these tactics can make it easier.
