Written By GoGet.Fit Content Development Team
Sam has a presentation on Friday. He has practised the opening twice, slept reasonably well, and knows his teacher will let him restart if he loses his place. His friend is presenting just before him and has already said, “If I survive, you survive.” Sam is nervous, but he gets through it. He forgets one sentence, finds his place again, and sits down feeling relieved.
Two weeks later, there is another presentation. Same Sam. This time he was up late finishing another assignment, had an argument at home before school, and barely looked at his notes. His friend is away. When his name is called, his stomach drops. He asks the teacher if he can have a few minutes before going up. So which Sam is more resilient?
So which Sam is more resilient?
It would be easy to choose the first Sam. He looked calmer. He kept going. He finished without much trouble. But that answer starts to fall apart once we look at what was different around him. The challenge was similar, but the conditions were not. Sleep changed. Preparation changed. Stress from somewhere else was already taking up space. Support changed too. Sam did not suddenly become a different person between one Friday and the next.
This is one reason the word resilience can be misunderstood. It is sometimes used as though resilient people barely notice difficult things. They stay calm, push through, recover quickly, and apparently never need anybody. Real people are much messier than that. Someone can be upset and still respond well. Someone can ask for help and still be acting with good judgement. Someone can need time before they are ready to try again.
Resilience is better understood as a changing ability to respond, adapt, recover, and find a useful way forward when something is difficult.
Resilience is better understood as a changing ability to respond, adapt, recover, and find a useful way forward when something is difficult. That does not mean returning instantly to exactly where you started. Recovery can be uneven. A difficult day can still be followed by a better one, then another rough patch, then some progress again. Human beings are not rubber balls. We do not have to spring back on schedule.
There is another problem with deciding who is resilient by watching one moment. We usually cannot see everything that person is carrying. We do not know how much sleep they had, what else happened that day, whether they have faced this kind of challenge before, or whether somebody helpful is nearby. We may not know whether the person who looks calm is actually stuck, or whether the person who looks upset is already doing something useful about it.
So go back to Sam. On the second Friday, asking for a few minutes may have been a very useful response. It gave him time to settle enough to think about what to do next. If he then asked a question, found his opening sentence, or accepted some help from the teacher, those actions would tell us much more than whether his hands were shaking.
Instead of asking:
“Is this person resilient?”
Ask:
What is helping that person find another useful option?
That changes the question. Instead of asking, “Is this person resilient?” it is often more useful to ask what is helping that person find another useful option. Once you start looking that way, resilience becomes much more interesting. It also leads to the next discovery. If Sam did not change into a completely different human being between two Fridays, something else clearly changed. What was it?
If Sam did not change into a completely different human being between two Fridays, something else clearly changed. What was it?