A-Z of Soft Skills: R is for Resilience

Resilience is a noun that comes from the Latin resiliens that means “to recoil or to rebound.”
This brings to my mind the elastic, quality of something to come back to its core shape and size after being stretched or stressed or compressed or bent.

In terms of character and personality, resilience is a person’s mental and emotional ability to recover quickly from something negative that has happened to them. We call it the ability to bounce back. Or rise from the ashes.

Resilience helps you cope better with problems and manage stress situations.

What makes one person more resilient than another?

Think of two trees in a typhoon. The hardwood tree stands rigid and refuses to bend. It breaks.
The soft bamboos and palms bend easily and low to the wind's direction and can thus go back to standing after the storm has passed.

The lesson, then, is to enhance your ability to adapt, to bend, to be more pliable and flexible and open to changes.

Many, many, many years ago, I read something in a book I don't even remember. But that something has stayed with me. The book talked about there being 3 types of people in the world.

The first type would pray to his gods:"Don't bend me lest I break"
The second would pray: "Bend me, but only to my breaking point. Don't let me break."
The third would ask: "Bend me. Bend me. Bend me and see if I can break."

In order to "bounce back" from anything, we have to hit the ground hard.

In order to "rise from the ashes," we first have to be willing to burn.

The author, Dr. Ranee Kaur Banerjee consults under the brand Expressions@Work to create and deliver learning and development programs in communication and soft skills.