
Resilience, or personal resilience, relates to a person’s ability to function well in the face of high demand, unwanted change, challenge, or adversity.
Resilience is built of a set of characteristics that most people possess, more or less. We are naturally stronger in some areas than in others. That means that we can play to our strengths, and recognise and develop the characteristics which are under-developed or lacking.
Qualities of personal resilience
Personal resilience is about personal qualities. These qualities are innately human; they are aspects in our development which we are aware of even if you don’t actually do them yet, or don’t do enough of them. There are six of them and you can think of them as individual areas to focus on.
Like personal resilience itself, hey are pretty straightforward to explain, if a bit more tricky to develop, but they are very clear in that they suggest steps to take which will start to help you be more resilient.
Once you know about them, to enhance your personal resilience consider which areas you are strongest in, and where you need to do a little work. Think of them as signposts to a destination; they point the direction, but the actual route you’ll take will depend on you. If you want to take a detour, or stop and rest, feel free to do it.
The foundations of resilience are:
- Self-esteem
- Purpose
- Meaning
- Optimism
- Social connection
- Openness to learning.
I’ll be publishing better descriptions of these as a series of posts, so watch out for them if your goal is improve your personal resilience..