.png)
Is resilience a personality trait?
I once thought that I was failing in life because I was too emotional and not resilient enough.
There’s lot of talk about how to “build resilience” around.
And then there are people who appear to be unphased by the ups and downs of life. They seem to deal with setbacks with ease, grace and even a sense of humour. Almost as though resilience is a personality trait and they lucked out in the personality department.
It so doesn’t look like this to me these days, which is why I spent several years delivering a programme called “Resilience for All” to schools and youth groups.
If you’re ever feeling like you or someone else needs to “be more resilient”, here’s a pause for thought.
Resilience is who we are.
Just look at a baby learning to walk. They don’t give up when it doesn’t go right, they don’t make a fall mean that they’re just not cut out for walking, that they don’t have what it takes, or that walking is for other people.
So what happens between babyhood and the point at which we start to wish an older child was more resilient?
Human beings develop the capacity for conceptual thought.
And with that capacity comes the concept of there being a “me” that is separate from the rest of life and that what I do or don’t do means something about the “me”. We are taught this by the adults around us, who all believe it too, so we aren’t even aware of it, it’s just the way things are (except it isn't).
We’re also often taught, again by the adults around us who all believe it too, that some feelings are not safe to be felt. So we get busy trying to not feel those feelings, which is a load of hard work that takes us even further away from the source of our natural resilience.
You know the way if a baby does fall over learning to walk they might cry wholeheartedly and then get up and try again?
We could all learn a lot from babies.
The best thing is, that once we see our own thought system for what it is (a collection of beliefs about ourselves and the world) we are no longer a slave to it. We find ourselves “in life” a lot more, freer to be with what is, and that new ideas about what to do next occur to us all the time, if only we are ready to notice them rather than our own repetitive thoughts. This is resilience.
These days I don’t “try” to be more resilient, rather I look at what’s true about our psychological experience, and resilience naturally shows up more and more.
If you’re curious about this kind of stuff too, you’re in the right place, and I’m so glad you’re here.
