PSYCHE

Forget there’s a new Nordic trend in town. is the Finnish word for “resilience,” a hot topic in the self-help world. BY HANNAH NATHANSON

What exactly is sisu, the Finnish word that’s taking the self-help world by storm?

PICTURE A STORM with tornado-force winds. Now imagine you’re a tree. (Bear with me.) What kind of tree would you want to be? A solid oak whose roots have been growing for hundreds of years or a palm with a trunk that bends in the wind? If you chose to be a seemingly invincible oak, your trunk would have snapped in half, uprooting you. If you opted for the palm, with its flexible trunk, you’d have survived. Well done!

The storm-tree analogy has long been part of psychology-speak, but its implications are now more relevant than ever. After a turbulent 2017 and an uncertain start to 2018, “resilience” is emerging as a self-help buzzword—it’s something we will need to weather any incoming social and political storms. And you might not be surprised to hear that, as with Danish hygge (making life cozy) and Swedish lagom (meaning “in moderation”), the hype around resilience is aligned with another Nordic import: sisu.

And, yes, it’s a Nordic word you can actually pronounce: “see” with a “soo” at the end. It also has far more meanings than its hygge predecessor. According to Helsinki-based journalist Joanna Nylund, whose book, Sisu: The Finnish Art of Courage, is out this month, sisu is difficult to translate. In her book, she uses several different words to describe it, including courage, grit and perseverance. If you were to think of an English equivalent, Nylund says, it would be akin to having “fire in your belly”: “For me, sisu is a visceral force, and usually we point to our stomachs when we talk about it; the term actually comes from the Finnish word for ‘guts.’” h

According to Nylund, sisu can be applied to several areas of life, from well-being (there’s a chapter about reconnecting with nature, which also gives foraging tips—nettle soup, anyone?) to how to talk using sisu. And just as hygge went on to influence everything from home interiors (just light one more candle) to our wardrobes (chunky knitwear), it seems that sisu is set to shape both our lifestyle and our outlook on life. In Finland, telling someone they have sisu is one of the biggest compliments you can give. “It’s a wonderful thing for someone to say ‘Oh, you have so much sisu,’” says Nylund. “It’s like saying you have strength of character and strength of personality in one go.” But it’s not something Finns brag about, she adds: “It runs underneath everything we say and do. It’s always there, almost omnipresent.”

So how can we achieve it, and who is a good example of someone who displays sisu? For her book, Nylund interviewed social activist Emilia Lahti, who has researched sisu as a psychological construct. When I call Lahti, she demonstrates sisu as soon as she picks up the phone: She has just come in from a twoand-a-half-hour run in the snow as part of her training for 50 ultra-marathons in 50 days across New Zealand. It’s in aid of “Sisu Not Silence,” her personal campaign against domestic violence. But, Lahti says, “sisu isn’t something we do all the time; it’s a place we visit in those moments that are so tiring we feel we’ve consumed all our energy.” I ask why it feels so relevant now. “If you look at the global situation, there’s a lot of restlessness; people are looking for answers,” she says. “We’re seeing the ugly side of the systems around us.”

It’s not just the Finns who are acknowledging that now, more than ever, we need to display strength and courage in the face of adversity. Psychologist Sam Owen’s recent book Resilient Me: How to Worry Less and Achieve More is a practical guide that aims to help readers achieve inner strength in four weeks. She chose to focus on resilience because, she says, “it’s a core element of what determines people’s progress and how easily you bend with all that life throws at you.” There’s that palm tree flexing in the storm again.

In her book, Owen identifies three pillars of resilience: a positive outlook, driving motivation and a problem-solving approach. Without these pillars, it’s impossible to build your inner strength. She also offers eight resilience-boosting habits, which include closing unpleasant chapters and setting achievable “true goals.” These, she says, will help train the brain to fall into a healthier pattern. So even if you’re not sure how tough you actually are, it’s something that can be learned. “Resilient people have a positive outlook from the outset,” says Owen. “Even if it’s a horrible, scary, gut-wrenching situation, they will still keep a positive mindset about it and take proactive steps to try to resolve it.”

While Owen’s is more of a traditional self-help book, Ama Marston, a leadership expert, has collaborated with her psychotherapist mother, Stephanie Marston, to write “a big think piece” that aims to change the conversation around resilience. The book, Type R: Transformative Resilience for Thriving in a Turbulent World, is, says Marston, “not focused on the traditional approach to bouncing back but on transformative resilience—the idea of building on challenges and using them to your advantage by learning instead of feeling that it’s a waste that you’ve gone through difficult times.”

If this all sounds like hard work, the good news is that women, according to Marston, are more equipped to initiate transformative resilience: “Women tend to be raised as communicators and are encouraged to be self-reflective, so they have a skill set that lends itself to being more ‘Type R’—people like leaders and business owners who turn challenges into opportunities for innovation.” Although resilience is obviously not exclusive to women, Marston acknowledges that “we face a number of unique stresses and pressures—such as lower pay, which affects our finances and our mental health, and having to juggle work and personal lives. We often have to learn how to work around those things and adapt while also speaking up for what we believe is right.” Which is more important now than ever in a post-Weinstein, Time’s Up age.

Resilience is an important topic, not just a Nordic import encouraging us to light more candles. From the Finnish art of courage to transformative resilience, it has many angles and perspectives. But it seems only fair to give Lahti the last word: “Sisu is a four-letter word that’s so tiny yet so powerful,” she says. “And it means a different thing for each person.” So, the next time you’re facing a storm, why not channel sisu and be the palm tree? n