🧭 Resilience Explained

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Here’s Where We Are Headed Today:

• Arnold Schwarzenegger on Resilience

• Growth Doesn’t Happen Overnight: Jalen Brunson’s Story

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• Great Posts of the Week

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How to Become More Resilient

Today, we are going to learn about resilience in different situations from 3 experts and how you can use this in your life to be more resilient.

Lucy Hone - The 3 Secrets of Resilient People - Lucy is regarded as a leading international authority on resilience. She has experienced it with losing a young child and has also spent extensive time researching it now as the director of the New Zealand Institute of Wellbeing & Resilience. In her research, she has found 3 strategies to be effective (link to her Ted Talk below which is phenomenal):

1. Accept that Suffering is Part of Life: Understanding that suffering is an inevitable part of human existence helps you not feel unfairly singled out by adversity. You change the conversation from “Why me?” to “Why not me?”

2. Choose Where You Focus Your Attention: Resilient people do a great job of controlling what they can control by focusing on things that can be changed and accepting those that cannot be. Lucy emphasizes the importance of tuning into the good things in life. She cites a study by Marty Seligman that showed the benefits of gratitude and a daily practice of writing 3 good things that happen to you each day.

3. Ask "Is this helping me or harming me?": This strategy involves self-reflection to determine if one's actions and thoughts are beneficial or detrimental in a given situation. This approach helped Lucy make decisions that were conducive to healing and coping with her loss.

Resilience is not a fixed trait, it’s something you can develop. It means being willing to try and apply these strategies, even in the most challenging circumstances.

Let’s move on from the science of resilience to a story with Kobe Bryant.

Kobe Bryant - Shaq called this particular moment the defining moment in Kobe’s career. As a rookie, Kobe Bryant was pushed into a star role in the playoffs because of foul trouble and injuries. Kobe Bryant was fearless, but not successful. In the 4th quarter and overtime of a big elimination playoff game versus the Utah Jazz, he shot 4 airballs, which is unheard of. Shaq said, “[Bryant] was the only guy who had the guts at the time to take shots like that.”

Kobe said, “I came up a little short. When I get put in that situation again, I’m not gonna miss them.” That night, he flew back to Los Angeles at 3 am after the game and shot all day.

Kobe could have taken that moment, been upset, and let it stew, but he chose to control what he could control. He chose to bounce forward. Instead of feeling sorry for himself or blaming others, he looked inward.

Now, let’s move from the story of Kobe Bryant to Holocaust Survivor, Victor Frankl.

Victor Frankl - He was an Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor who founded logotherapy, a school of psychotherapy that describes a search for life's meaning as the central human motivational force. He is best known for his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, but what I think is of most interest is how he connected meaning and resilience. Here is what he taught:

1. You can always control your attitude - He said, “If we cannot change the situation, we have always the last freedom to change our attitude to that situation.”

2. You have to accept that there will be challenges in life - He believed that even the role of psychotherapy was not to make people happy, but rather to enable them to deal with real life and its unavoidable hassles.

3. Fall back on your meaning (your WHY) - He said, “Those inmates or prisoners were most likely to survive the camp period those I say who were orientated toward a future orientated for becoming free again in the future and most importantly oriented to a meaning that they had to fulfill the future a pasture they had to complete in the future and/or to be reunited with their beloved people in the future again.”

4. Your Meaning is Important - Without meaning, then your despair is just suffering. He defined Despair as:

   Despair = Suffering - Meaning.

5. Control What You Can Control - He said, “As long as I have no guarantee that I will have to die within the next days I continue behaving and acting as if I would spare this fate.”

His thoughts align well with a study done on storytelling and resilience that showed storytelling when used in a supportive and accepting environment can foster resilience and healing in nurses (Link here).

So what can we take from all of this?

There were similarities in approach between all 3 stories, whether it had to do with science, performance, living, or grieving.

1. Your self-talk is important - Watch your self-talk and ask the question that Lucy Hone emphasizes, “Is this (thought) helping me or is this harming me?” Then, think about the story and the stories that you are consistently telling yourself. Challenge the negative ones and dream of the positive ones. If you want to change your life, change the narrative in your head.

2. Remember your purpose - You are never resilient with things that you don’t care about. Remind yourself why this matters to you and attach yourself to that meaning. To remind yourself - say it out loud, create a story, and even write down that story.

3. You have to focus on what matters - Where your focus goes, so will your energy. Focus on what you can control and not what you can’t. When you focus outward, you feel powerless.

   When you focus inward, you take ownership.

4. Accept that it won’t be easy - Victor was a psychotherapist and he believed that the goal of therapy wasn’t happiness, but to help you deal with the inevitable challenges and hassles of life. Reset your expectations and understand that life won’t be fair at times. This mindset will help you change from “Why me?” to “Why not me?”

Source 1: 3 Secrets of Resilient People | Lucy Hone | TED Talk

Source 2: Showboat: The Life of Kobe Bryant

Source 3: Finding meaning in difficult times (Interview with Dr. Viktor Frankl)

Source 4: The Life of Victor Frankl

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6 Elements that affects your daily resilience.

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