Resilience: Myths and Truths
This article was originally published on Soulaia.com. This version has been lightly updated to reflect my current understanding, work, and offerings while preserving the heart and core message of the original article.
“You’ve got to be resilient”, “You’ve got to be strong”, “You’ve got to be tough”, are words I bet you’ve heard often from friends, colleagues, family, and acquaintances alike. These words followed me like a shadow into high school, through college and graduate school, and into adulthood ever since I heard them for the first time in my adolescence.
As I kept listening to this woman, a lovely and well-intentioned family friend, describe what it meant to be resilient during what was, for me, a difficult time, I realized I didn’t want to be strong or resilient– at least not in the way that she meant it. It wasn’t until my late 20s that I began to understand resilience differently, and just how much that shift changed the way I moved through difficult seasons of life. In hopes of giving resilience its name back, here are three common myths or misconceptions about resilience that we’re often brought up to believe.
Myth #1: Being resilient means being able to skate by life’s challenges unharmed.
That resilience implies an ability to prevent and ward off challenge is a falsehood. Rather than avoiding or eliminating challenge, resilience denotes an ability to experience life’s difficult and challenging events and stay the course anyway. Challenging experiences often become the very places where resilience is developed and strengthened.
Let’s look at an example of love. There are a few ways to approach conflict or challenging dynamics in the context of a loving relationship, and only one represents an attitude of resilience. You can be the kind of person who avoids conflict with your partner at all costs, conceding all of your interests just so there are no tiffs or fallings-out. If you’ve ever been this person (I, for one, spent a good part of my first relationship at the age of 17 playing this role), then you know that these actions are anything but resilient. In fact, they are incredibly disempowering and antithetical to the strength and inner confidence commonly associated with resilience. You can also be the kind of person who runs at the first sight or sound of conflict. Whether because of the fear of being wrong or because of fear of conflict itself, if you get into a big argument, your response is to call it quits. This isn't usually what I think of when I think about resilience. So what is? Well, you may not prefer conflict, but if you aren’t dodging it or the relationship when it comes, then hey, you’ve got yourself some resilience. You may be the source of or target for hurtful words; you may suffer a bit of a bruised ego; you may even feel a little crack in your heart, but you stay in the game* (more on this later).
Myth #2: Being resilient means being able to put things behind you at record speed.
The idea that a strong, resilient person ought to be able to get over struggle and mishaps immediately after they’ve occurred is a distortion. In fact, you can almost guarantee that the person who tends to utter “No big deal, I’m over it!” just moments after something unplanned or unpleasant has happened isn’t revealing the whole truth of their experience. Days, weeks, or months after, they are likely to be expressing thoughts and feelings about the situation, whether via writing in their journal, talking to a trusted friend or family member, or ruminating about it in their own mind. In fact, the last time I told myself “I’m good, I processed this challenging situation (in this case, an unpleasant behavior on the part of a colleague) yesterday”, I found myself sobbing as my heart tried to process the perceived injustice while falling asleep just later that night.
Why? Because the processing of challenging events in our lives doesn’t happen with the snap of a finger. There is a range, with some people taking days and others taking months or even years to process and understand certain experiences, and then orienting themselves to organize their thoughts in the hopes of problem solving. But, a person on one end of that range is no more resilient than the person on the other. “Bouncing back” from a situation is not a process to be rushed. If true healing and transformation are to result from a challenging experience, we’ve got to give it time to unravel and unfold at its required pace.
Myth #3: Being resilient means always being willing to try just one more time.
“Trying just one more time” isn’t really what resilience is all about. In fact, “trying one more time” can be an act of holding on so firmly to hope and expectation that you are unwilling to recognize the best way forward. Sometimes, being resilient is actually recognizing that you need to find alternative ways to achieve your goals and that the previous way doesn’t need one more try; in fact, the previous way has reached its limit.
Take the earlier example of being in conflict with your partner. Is “staying in the game” really the best option if you have repeatedly been the source of or target for hurtful words, or if one little crack in your heart has turned to 50 or 100 cracks in your precious heart? In all of these cases, the resilient (and not coincidentally, more loving) approach (true resilience, after all, is a function of self-love) is not to try one more time. The resilient and more loving approach may be to step back, reconsider your options, and become open to a different path forward.
Now that we know what resilience isn’t, how about we take a look at what resilience is.
Truth #1: To be resilient is to be agile.
Being resilient doesn’t mean that you are always strong, tough, and “on point”. It means you are agile, flexible, and have the ability to keep changing as often as necessary (which, given life’s constantly changing circumstances, is often!)
One of my spiritual colleagues and teachers recently described agility this way: You’ve got three types of people who appear during times of crisis.
The first response is to freeze. Many of us have experienced moments where overwhelm, fear, uncertainty, or helplessness make it difficult to know what to do next. In the context of our relationship example, this would equate to a sense of “I don’t have the answers. I can’t change my partner, I can’t change myself, I don’t know of any teachings, therapists, classes, groups, or other resources out there that can help me, so I’m just not going to do anything. I will stay just as I am, my partner will stay just as they are, and our relationship will remain just as it is.”
The second response is hesitation. Part of us wants to move forward, but another part isn't quite ready. There is fear present so although it looks like forward steps are happening, true action is actually still being put off. In the context of our relational example, this would equate to requesting or maybe even starting to have a conversation about resolving conflict, but not taking any real action to guarantee it.
The third response is adaptability. Not because fear is absent, but because a person remains willing to work with reality as it unfolds. They’re agile. They know that what’s happening is not what they expected but they go along with the events anyway because hey, that’s what’s happening. They might even have an urge to freeze or hesitate, but they don't let it stop them completely. The fact that their current experience is an unexpected one doesn’t matter. They don’t stop just because they veer off of their predicted and expected path and something changes. Instead of plummeting to rock bottom or spiraling out of control, they keep maneuvering; they keep going. Best summed up by Pablo Neruda, a mantra of agility may very well be “You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming.” In the context of our example, this sense of Spring coming might look like initiating conversations with your partner, getting curious about their perspective and experience of the situation at hand, allowing yourself and the relationship to change as a function of what you learn about your partner through disagreement, reading a book, seeking the advice of a friend or the support of a therapist, and letting the relationship take its natural course into and out of harmony and conflict.
Being agile means adapting to life’s circumstances, even and especially those that are unexpected, unwanted, or not fun. It means recognizing that you may not have all the answers, you may not have the perfect solution but that it also doesn’t matter, because guess what!? You can keep asking questions, and you can keep managing, maneuvering, and living.
Truth #2: To be resilient is to embrace the mess.
As someone who is resilient, you embrace not just the positive and pretty parts of life but the messy and not so pretty ones too. You know that the journey really is the destination, and that the journey is full of messy parts and paths. To that end, you tell yourself “no matter what phase or stage of life I am in right now, I will see this through.” “I know that I will stumble and fall, and maybe even crack and break a little– but also that I will undoubtedly bounce back and become even more whole at the end of it all.” After being rejected, failing, experiencing a loss or difficulty of some kind, you slowly find your footing again and you choose to get up just one more time. If you need some help or resources to help you get back up, you seek and ask for them. You know that resilience isn’t about doing it all on your own.
Think about it. When you look at any activity in its middle, it tends to look like a big ‘ol mess or failure, doesn’t it? Try making breakfast or dinner without the kitchen looking a mess. Try returning from a weekend of camping without the trunk and/or backseat of your car being filled with all sorts of outdoor gear piled one on top of the other, and not necessarily in the most organized, tidy way. Try building a healthy, satisfying relationship without the sloppiness of getting to know one another through misunderstanding and disagreement. To be resilient is to welcome, expect, and embrace this mess. To resist it, after all, is to resist the very nature of life itself.
This reminds me of something I've been reflecting on more recently: how often we measure ourselves against where we think we should be rather than honoring where we are. If that resonates, you may also enjoy Process Over Outcome: Stop Measuring Your Life by Where You "Should" Be.
Truth #3: To be resilient is to learn from the peaks and valleys.
If you are resilient, you not only expect there to be messes and valleys in your day to day life, but you also expect that these experiences will teach you a thing or two. You begin to wonder whether there might be something to learn, understand, or discover within the experience. Your scars and bruises become reminders of where you’ve been and what you’ve learned about yourself, others, and the world along the way. As you get comfortable with saying “This isn't what I wanted, and I may never be glad it happened. But is there something here I can learn, carry forward, or understand more deeply?”, you also build courage through reflection, gather strength from difficulty, and befriend challenge and failure as an opportunity to grow. Over time, you may find yourself becoming curious about the experience itself — not only why it happened, but how you want to relate to it and what might help you move forward. And that curiosity can become a powerful source of resilience.
Resilience, redefined in these terms, is an ideal accomplice during difficult or tough times. And the best part about it is that it’s not a quality that you either are or aren’t born with. “You either got it or you don’t” doesn’t apply to resilience like it does to blue eyes, red hair, or a long forehead. It’s a quality that can be practiced, strengthened, and developed over time.
This isn't what I wanted, and I may never be glad it happened. But is there something here I can learn, carry forward, or understand more deeply?
Over the years, I've come to see resilience less as toughness and more as flexibility. Less as never struggling and more as learning how to stay connected to ourselves while we do.
And while resilience is something we build within ourselves, it's not something we always have to build alone. Sometimes the most resilient thing we can do is reach for support, lean on others, and allow ourselves to be helped.
If you're moving through a difficult season, navigating a major transition, or feeling stuck in a recurring pattern, I also offer one-on-one support. It would be an honor to walk alongside you.
Because the goal isn't to become someone who never falls apart. It's to become someone who knows how to find their footing again.
* Please note that “staying in the game” is not a sign of resilience when it is part of an interaction or relationship marked by emotional, mental, or physical abuse. In these instances, resilience is more readily characterized by gathering the proper internal and external resources to support you in making change/s for a healthier and more emotionally conducive life experience.
