True Resilience VS What Resilience Is Not

Photo by Ava Sol 

The book Crisis = Opportunity is exactly what it says on the title: it’s a book presenting crisis as opportunity. 

Today, it takes only a couple clicks to see the crisis that seems to be just about everywhere on this planet (from hurricanes to ongoing wars). 

Some might think that books about encouraging resilience and helping people grow amidst adversity are fine and good. Others would argue that such books are, in fact, harmful if applied to those in such dire circumstances as the catastrophes making today’s headlines. 

Such an exchange isn’t really all that helpful. 

For one thing, both points tend to come from a confused understanding of what resilience is. 

The answer lies in what resilience is not.

In fact, ask yourself very carefully: What is not resilience? 

If your first thought is to immediately think of its opposite (weakness, malleability, softness etc) then your mind is already driving in the wrong direction. 

The question isn’t asking what the opposite of resilience is. It’s actually a tricky question that can challenge you to think about what resilience is often confused with. 

People can get understandably upset when they are asked to be resilient (or even praised for it) at inopportune moments. No sane life coach would lecture their friend about resilience after they learned that they just suffered a freak accident that left them paralyzed. And yet, there are certainly some misguided yet well-intentioned people who do. 

Thus, it’s important to know what resilience is not when talking about it.

Resilience is Not Suffering in Silence

Photo by Nandhu Kumar 

A story of resilience tends to follow this plot: Person A suffers Situation B. Resilience is shown when Person A decides to make the situation a stepping stone to become better and stronger rather than let Situation B overwhelm them. 

In a way, it is an uncomfortable truth that horrific things can also end up bringing out the stronger side of human beings. The problem is when it somehow becomes a convenient excuse to endure a problem rather than actually overcoming it. 

That is not resilience because it traps you in a stagnant, if not horrific, situation that has no resolution. 

Real resilience is about acknowledging that you are not in a good place, and you are indeed looking for a way out. It’s fine to cling to a hope that things will get better, but what resilience is not is putting up with an abusive situation only to come back tomorrow to get more of it. 

For example, say you live in a bad neighborhood. You spend every day just making sure doors and windows are locked while not walking the streets at night. Suddenly, you learn that there is a movement in the community to improve security and living standards. 

Which counts as resilience: Joining them and seeing what you can contribute, or just continuing to live in silent fear of the streets because you’ve given up on things changing? 

Obviously, it’s the first one.

Resilience is Not Against Making Changes

 Resilience and toughness tend to be correlated. On the other hand, toughness can also overlap with stubbornness. 

Because of this, some people tend to confuse resilience with stubbornness. 

How does one avoid this? 

This tends to come from people who want to be resilient through changes that they don’t like. This, by itself, is pretty healthy. 

The nuance here is that resilience and change aren’t always fundamentally opposed. In fact, when one adapts to a difficult situation, they are already undergoing personal changes. 

What resilience is not is constantly trying to keep things the same even when it’s against your best interests (and better judgment). 

The same goes for insisting that you keep living in a way that has been proven harmful (both to yourself and others). It’s like saying that pipe smoking is better than cigarette because pipe smoking looks classier. It doesn’t matter! A smoker is still at high risk of cancer no matter what they use! 

This doesn’t just apply to habits, but entire systems and organizations as well. 

If you are a business and you are confronted with either changes in the market or changes in workplace standards that you have to comply with, then the reality needs to be faced head on. Brushing it off, refusing to comply and confusing that with resilience would be acting like the captain of the Titanic after he brushed off all the iceberg warnings.

Resilience is Not About Enabling Injustice

Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm 

If there is probably one way that the concept of resilience gets a lot of heated, angry pushback is when resilience is justification for some very unjust situations. 

There is no doubt that bad things happen in the world. To see those things as an opportunity to come out stronger is indeed a powerful mindset.

That is not the same as actively creating bad situations (or worse, becoming a bad actor yourself). Genuine resilience is many parts proactive, responsive, effective and self-empowering. What resilience is not is being in the business of inflicting trauma, injustice and wrongdoing. 

Unfortunately, the reality is many people (particularly those in power) can have trouble distinguishing the two in practice. 

As a bit of historical analogy, look at the way the chemical lead went from a seemingly innocuous additive to a serious public threat against health. 

And yet, there are people who look back on that and downplay the danger they were exposed to and thinking they turned out all right. 

This isn’t the proper way to look at resilience.   

Real resilience is being able to get past and grow from a bad situation, not because there’s some inherent goodness in it, but because you’re better than it. In fact, you probably know better than to recreate that situation (let alone inflict it on someone else). 

Never forget that. 

Now, nothing still beats learning about real people and the real situations where they overcame a crisis by turning them into opportunities. It shows genuine resilience in action. Check them out in Crisis = Opportunity. It’s already available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and BookBaby.