The word resilience can be perplexing. Does it mean remaining calm when faced with stress? Bouncing back quickly? Growing from adversity? Is resilience an attitude, a character trait or a skill set? And can misperceptions about resilience hurt people, rather than help?
To sum it up in a sentence: Resilience is the ability to manage stress in effective ways. It’s not a static quality or attribute you’re born with, or a choice of attitude. Instead, it’s a set of skills that can be developed by repeating specific behaviors. As a clinical psychologist, researcher and educator specializing in training people to cope with stress more effectively, I know that resilience can be developed.
But as with physical fitness, you can’t get stronger abs by just wanting them. Instead, you have to repeat specific exercises that make your abs stronger; intention alone just won’t do it.
Cultivating resilience is much the same. Like physical fitness, resilience is not a single quality but rather many ingredients that contribute differently to a range of strengths and situations. For instance, one may handle relationship issues rather well but be unable to cope with the stress of a traffic jam.
