Written by Irene Gonzales, Hands-On Resilience 2022 – Edited by Bianca Rêgo, ESC Wake-Up 2022-23
In recent years, pandemia and climate change consequences have made us review our habits, looking for a more sustainable lifestyle.
Because of this forced change of habits the term “resilience” is everywhere but what does it really mean?The American Psychological Association defines resilience as “the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or even significant sources of stress”.
Far from being exhaustive, resilience consists in facing the hardest periods of our lifes, finding sustainable solutions both for our wellness and environment conservation.
Resilience vs Resistance: what’s the difference?
Resilience is often misinterpreted for resistance, although it has a completely different meaning. Generally, resistant people refuses getting outside of their comfort zone and redefining their livelihood models. By contrast, being resilient primarly means enjoying the challenges, even when they seem too hard to endure.
Anyway, we are not born resilient, on the contrary, resilience is a skill that we can acquire and develop by experience, communication and reciprocity.
Resilience Key Words
- Optimism
Embrace changes with a positive attitude.
Visualize your future success in order to help you in pursuing your objectives when in front of adversities.
- Acceptance
Know yourself.
Recognizing your strengths and weaknesses is the first step for managing the course of events.
- Easygoing with what is uncertain
Don’t be scared of what you can’t predict.
Overthinking how to prevent possible negative outcomes can paralise you. Resilience also stays in “walking in the dark” until things get clear.
- Learn to live with less comfort (reduce your consumptions)
Less is more.
Sometimes crisis teach us to appreciate what we already have and rethink our priorities and needs.
- Flexibility
Be open to change your mind.
Life is unpredictable. Resilience implies to be adaptable to whatever arrives. Additionally, because of the constant changes in the world being open minded is crucial to not stay freeze in a partial view.
- Ask for help
Resilient people are not afraid of showing their vulnerabilities to others. Rather, they think that sharing their doubts and fears will boost self esteem and trust in their community at the same time.
Much is said about being a resilient person to succeed in your job and career, but resilience is way more than that. Truly resilient people don’t care only about their personal growth but also about the environment surrounding them. To sum up, resilience has a lot to do with our values and our efforts in pursuing it. There is a lot of steps to accomplish resilience and life is always a process. Nobody is 100% ready and we are all trying to be the best version of ourselves, don’t be harsh on yourself if you don’t resonate with our list yet. As long as we keep in mind that it’s not impossible to have balance in our minds and live in a sustainable way, we will keep improving. So, we need to take into account that we are not islands thus every choice we made have large effects in our community and our planet.
