Be resilient, they say – easier said than done

In the last few years, you’ll have been told by everything from your drink bottle, to the aspirational wall art, to your annoyingly perfect friend’s Instagram feed, that the key to success in life is to be resilient. I’ve even got a yoga mat that has this scrawled across it so I can remember, when I’m trying to unknot my cracking joints, that I need to Grow through what you go through! And what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger! As though this $5 rectangle of foam can see into my soul with the wisdom of Gandhi and smugness of a personal trainer.

Before lockdown, the word ‘‘resilience’’ was getting splashed around so much that it was being drained of almost all meaning and power. It became like the word ‘‘empower’’, which was used so far and wide from conferences to underwear shops that it became as floppy as the g-strings it was supposed to sell me. But if we thought we saw a lot of mindless intoning pre-lockdown, now it’s everywhere.

‘‘Be resilient!’’ has become the advice du jour, and you’ll likely have heard many variations of it from many different people through these strange, endless, blurry days. It’s advice that’s splashed around with the same, ‘‘this will make it better!’’ enthusiasm with which we squirt tomato sauce on everything.

And yes, it’s good advice. It’s very hard to argue with the simple truth that being resilient is an excellent life skill. It’s like learning to exercise regularly and cook with veges.

Except, the frustrating part is that while there’s plenty of advice on how to start jogging or cook broccoli in an edible way, there’s not a lot of advice on how to actually be resilient. Oh, there are lots of people telling you to do it. Just not a lot of explanation on how. And that leaves us in the unfortunate position of wanting to be resilient to get through these crazy days, but not quite knowing where to start . . .

I’m not an expert on how to be resilient. But I did grow up watching a parent go from world champion athlete to life-changing accident – and then do a 20-year slog through excruciating rehab. And it did show me that there are a few key misconceptions that we have about resilience, which we need to tackle before we can actually start embodying it.

First off, resilience isn’t the same as stoicism. Being resilient doesn’t mean you never have a breakdown. It’s easy to fall into this thinking trap. And that’s because people often tell us to be resilient right after we’ve exposed the ugly, messy truth of how we’re feeling.

And that messy truth makes them embarrassed, so they don’t know what to say, so they reach for Churchillian catchphrases that imply you should hide all emotion with a stiff upper lip and lashings of fortitude. And so the advice ‘‘be resilient!’’ to someone who’s mid-melting sounds like, ‘‘I don’t want to see your breakdown, so harden up!’’

But actually being resilient means you’re allowed to have a breakdown, ride it out, then pick yourself up off the floor where it left you and march onwards. Watching Mum’s painful journey back to mobility taught me that you can have many messy implosions of panic and fear. All that matters is that you don’t let them stop you. So if you’re telling yourself you have no resilience because you keep having meltdowns, that’s not true. It’s what you do after that counts.

‘Be resilient!’ has become the advice du jour, and you’ll likely have heard many variations of it ...

The second, much more fundamental, misconception is that resilience is somehow an in-built trait which you either have or you don’t. This isn’t quite true. Yes, there is research to suggest genetic components to resilience. Such as Emmy Werner’s 1989 study, which showed that, among children classified as ‘‘at risk’’, one-third had an innate resilience mindset that carried them through stress when the other two-thirds didn’t.

However, subsequent research has also shown that you can learn resilience too. Research out of Columbia University shows we can retrain people to interpret traumatic events in positive ways, such as seeing them as opportunities to learn from.

And learning to control your emotional responses has far-reaching effects on building resilience. So no, it’s not something you’re born with or you’re not. You can actually rewire your brain to make yourself more resilient.

So while we may not know exactly what resilience looks like, we know what it doesn’t look like. It’s not about pretending you don’t feel anything, or that everything’s fine. And it’s not just some inherent personality trait that irrevocably makes you weak or strong.

Sure, it’ll be messy and difficult, but it is something we can achieve. And that’s cause for hope.