I spend a lot of time thinking about resilience. What is it? You hear people say “you’re so strong” or “you have such resilience”.

Dictionary definition:
1. the capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.
“the remarkable resilience of so many institutions”

2. the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape; elasticity.
“nylon is excellent in wearability and resilience”

Well, this is my definition on resilience.

“Resilience is the ability to go through a difficulty whilst using it as an opportunity to build on life experience so that the next time it happens it is less impactful”.

Unlike nylon, we don’t spring back to the original shape. That’s not possible. We’re more like a balloon that once it’s been filled with air, you can let the air out again but the shape is different. But that doesn’t mean it’s bad, it just means that it won’t be the same again.

The secret to being resilient is to accept things won’t be the same again. It’s easy to want to go back to how things were before the difficulty. Being a different shape make us see the world differently and being aware of that can be used as a platform of strength for other things that life throws at us.

Strength comes from knowing that “it will pass” because it has before so we are in better shape to deal with it. The balloon has already been inflated so knows that it has to stretch again if you like.

Too much difficulty and inflation and the balloon can burst – we all know this, but for day to day stresses and strains, it’s a good image to have in your mind when life gives us lemons. The lemonade is a by product!

If you’re a bit stretched at the moment – remember, you’re not made of nylon!