You might think that resilience is all about strength and courage. You might think that resilient people never let anything get them down. They are like stone, hard to break and long-lasting. However, the reality is actually quite different.
In truth, resilience isn’t the ability to deal with everything like a badass. It’s the skill to fall flat on your face, cry it out, and get up again.
And if you’ve overcome these 7 struggles in life, you’re clearly a highly resilient person.
You didn’t get accepted to the university you’d dreamed of for so long.
You didn’t get the job you wanted.
Your first (or second or third) business project failed.
You wrote a book only to realize it’s kind of crap.
Did you grumble or cry or scream out in frustration?
Sure.
Did you feel like rubbish for days or weeks?
Yes.
Did you let this one failure get in the way of your dreams, though?
Not at all.
If your business project didn’t work out, you didn’t just turn around and say to yourself, “I guess I’m going to become an accountant.”
If your first book had no proper plot, you didn’t delete it and think, “I’ll never write anything ever again.”
At its core, resilience is about the ability to try again. And again. It’s about the skill to persevere and keep going until you eventually get to your destination.
If you haven’t reached it yet, all it means is that your journey is still ongoing.
When I moved to another country to study at university, I got a part-time job. I worked as much as I could, but back then, it still barely covered all my essential expenses.
This meant that during my first year, I couldn’t even afford to spend 5 dollars on a latte.
Of course, billions of people had it worse than I did. I was very well aware of that. This knowledge didn’t make my own ordeal in life any easier, though.
I was constantly tired because I didn’t eat enough; I rapidly lost weight; I almost never socialized because making friends usually came with some kind of expense.
Now that I’m somewhere completely else in life, I often think back to those times and shudder.
And while I wouldn’t wish financial hardship on anybody ever, if there’s one thing it teaches you, it’s definitely resilience.
If you know you can make it on twenty dollars a week, you can do almost anything you set your mind on.
The resourcefulness I learned back at university has stayed with me to this day.
Did you know that going through a breakup isn’t unlike drug withdrawal?
Yeah. It’s mad.
When you fall in love, your body releases a bunch of feel-good hormones that essentially make you feel addicted to that one specific person. As your relationship progresses, you get used to that higher level of “happiness boosters” as it were.
Once you break up, though…
That’s when things get truly miserable. You’re going through a great deal of emotional pain, and to top it all off, your body is suffering from love withdrawal.
This is why people who have gone through a rough breakup and managed to slowly pick themselves back together afterwards are heroes. Every single one of them.
It may sound like a trivial thing – almost everyone goes through a breakup at some point, after all – but the fact that it’s common doesn’t mean it’s not impressive.
You can either let a breakup shatter you forever or you can use your feelings as fuel to grow and flourish (after your grieving period is over, of course).
Resilient people choose the latter.
It’s a common theme that people who are healthy don’t appreciate it until they’re ill or injured.
When you have a cold, you think to yourself, “Ah, I can’t believe I took mucus-free breathing for granted!”
When you go through an injury, you stare at the ceiling and say to yourself, “I will never not appreciate a working leg/back/arm.”
While the occasional flu doesn’t leave a long-lasting impact on us, dealing with a bigger injury does.
Getting severely injured is an incredibly vulnerable and scary experience. During recovery, you must constantly keep up hope, be kind to yourself, and take it slowly.
I’ve been there.
Even years after you’ve recovered, you may catch yourself thinking about that experience, wondering whether you truly went through such terrible pain at one point in your life.
Okay, this one is clearly not as huge as getting injured or suffering through financial hardship, but it bears mentioning nonetheless.
Why?
Because different struggles apply to different situations, and even those that are smaller and not as consequential can be life-changing in the most vital of ways.
When you decide to learn a foreign language, you’ve got to:
Learning a new language is hard. Only those who have never done it think it’s easy.
The moment you really dive into it and move beyond the beginner’s level, it hits you just how difficult it is to understand such a brand-new way of perceiving the world.
And if you don’t give up and achieve fluency…
That’s a sign of resilience if I’ve ever seen one.
Toxic relationships, be it friendships, family relationships, or romance, are incredibly difficult to untangle yourself from.
That’s why they’re toxic, after all – they’re based on an unhealthy dynamic that centers around a power struggle.
And more often than not, the people in question are so close and love each other so dearly that they find it difficult to let each other go.
Sometimes, though, letting go is exactly what needs to happen in order for both people to grow, change, and thrive.
One of the hardest decisions of my life was to cut off my best friend of eight years. However, it was also one of the best things I ever did for my mental well-being.
No matter how much you love someone, you’ve got to prioritize your mental health. And if you do, it’s yet another sign you’re highly resilient.
Finally, resilience isn’t just about strength or confidence.
It’s about kindness. About self-compassion. It’s the ability to give yourself a break.
If you’ve ever gone through an incredibly rough time and made it through in one piece, congratulations! That’s something worth celebrating.
If you’ve also managed to be kind to yourself throughout the process, it’s a huge green flag – it means you’re not only resilient but also have a healthy relationship with your own sense of self.
The latter feeds into the first. If you know how to be your best friend – if you don’t talk down to yourself, don’t drown in self-loathing, and don’t act like your worst enemy – your resilience automatically increases.
And that’s because showing yourself compassion is the most resilient thing you could ever do.
Take a break if you need it. Speak gently to yourself. Read books that help you establish a more loving relationship with yourself and unpack the complexities of your mind.
Thus the secret of resilience.
In this age of information overload and pressure to meet others’ expectations, many struggle to connect with their core purpose and values. It’s easy to lose your inner compass.
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