Being like the Bamboo: Cultivating Resilience

Bamboo can grow with many other plants of its kind or on its own. It can find a home in different regions of the world. In addition, it forms dense forests. Bamboo is incredibly resistant and flexible. It can endure large earthquakes. In fact, it doesn’t matter if its stems are cut because bamboo regenerates, heals, and grows again, even stronger and more unstoppable than before. It spends seven years growing under the soil and extending its roots before it starts growing above the ground. So, initially, it looks like nothing is happening and then suddenly, this resourceful plant starts sprouting above ground and it just keeps going.

Being like bamboo means having a resilient attitude in life. It means you accept that sometimes adversity might make you bend over, but still choosing to regenerate, heal and grow, sprouting deep and strong roots from every setback. It means cultivating the ability to bounce back to your former self; happier and more beautiful than before, after every setback. Being like bamboo, means cultivating resilience in your life.

Resilience is defined mental toughness. It’s the ability to adapt, recover from, or bounce back from setbacks, failures and disappointments. We have all heard tales of bravery and resilience from people who were able to overcome difficult circumstances or events and turn their lives around for the better. What is their secret? Is it something we can all learn?

What is resilience?

Life doesn’t come with a map. We all experience twists and turns in our lives, from everyday challenges to traumatic events with a more lasting impact – like the death of a loved one, a life-altering accident, or a serious illness. Differences in personality, culture, background, and mental toughness means that each of us will react differently to these traumatic events. Initially, most of us experience a flood of thoughts, strong emotions and uncertainty. Yet people generally adapt well over time to life-changing and stressful situations — in part thanks to resilience.

Psychologists define resilience as the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or significant sources of stress — such as family and relationship problems, serious health problems, or workplace and financial stressors. As much as resilience involves “bouncing back” from these difficult experiences, it can also involve profound personal growth, which social scientists term “post-traumatic growth”.

While adverse events are certainly painful and difficult, they don’t have to determine the outcome of your life. There are many aspects of your life you can control, modify and grow with. Becoming more resilient not only helps you get through difficult circumstances; it also empowers you to grow and even improve your life along the way.

What resilience isn’t

Being resilient doesn’t mean that a person won’t experience difficulty or distress. People who have suffered major adversity or trauma in their lives commonly experience emotional pain and stress. In fact, the road to resilience is likely to involve considerable emotional distress. Often, the more resilient someone is, the more setbacks, frustrations and/or trauma they have experienced. Consequently, they cultivate their resilience over time, becoming more adept at bouncing back when faced with setbacks.

While certain factors might make some individuals more resilient than others, resilience isn’t necessarily a personality trait that only some people possess. On the contrary, resilience involves thoughts, feelings, and actions that anyone can learn and develop. Like building a muscle, increasing your resilience takes time and intentional focus.

The three C’s of building resilience

Building resilience is an important part of growth and change. There are several ways to cultivate and inspire resilience. According psychologist, Susan Kobasa, there are three elements that are essential to building resilience:

• Challenge – Resilient people view difficult situations and setbacks as challenges; not as paralyzing events. They accept that change is part of life, and they approach their problems with an open mind and a willingness to learn from failures. Instead of obstacles, setbacks then become opportunities for personal growth.
• Commitment – Resilient people possess a strong sense of commitment. They have a compelling reason to get out of bed in the morning. They are deeply committed to creating the lives that they want, and they know that commitment requires persistent action towards their most important goals. Commitment also isn’t just restricted to work. Resilient people have deep and meaningful relationships with others and causes that they passionately care about. These commitments and causes they care for, give them a reason to keep fighting, and to not give up when faced with adversity.
• Personal Control – Resilient people spend their time and energy focusing on situations and events that they have control over. They do not spend time worrying about things that they cannot change or control. Because they put their efforts where they can have the most impact, they end up feeling empowered and confident. In Covey’s words, they spend time expanding their circle of influence, instead of becoming trapped in their circle of concern.

So, the question is, how do you effectively incorporate these three C’s of resilience into your life?

We teach ourselves to view problems and setbacks as challenges, rather than insurmountable obstacles, by adopting a learning or growth mindset; instead of a performance or scarcity mindset. When we focus on performance, we focus on winning or getting it right, and on presenting ourselves in the most favourable light. We spend most of our time and energy on developing our perception self; i.e. how we think others see us. The perception self is volatile, because it depends on others’ feedback and it increases our ego concerns and gets us stuck. It also makes us feel like we must compete with others. When we compare ourselves with others, we look at the world through a scarcity lens that leads us to believe that there aren’t enough resources and opportunities for everyone. Thus, if someone else succeeds, we see their success as a threat to our own success, because they are taking all the resources.

The only way to become unstuck and to truly grow, is to embrace a learning mindset, and to focus on discovering and developing the deeper authentic self. When we cultivate a desire to learn and grow, we also give ourselves permission to fail, because failing is learning. The goal then becomes learning for our own personal growth, and not perfection for prestige or praise; which in turn means we no longer feel threatened by others’ successes. We look at the world from an abundance lens, where we can see the many opportunities that are available and where we can truly rejoice in someone else’s success, because it doesn’t detract from our journey. This is a much better space to be in, because it allows us to compete with ourselves instead of others, leading us to true authentic self-leadership; which is the desire to become our best selves.

One way that you can learn to view the world from this abundance lens is to change the question you ask yourself when faced with a challenge or difficult situation. Instead of wondering why this is happening to you, instead ask “How or why is this happening for me?”. By reframing your thinking into noticing how this challenge, setback or frustration could potentially be happening for you, you turn it into an opportunity to learn something or grow something inside yourself. This feels much more empowering, because it’s not happening to you, so you don’t have to see yourself as a victim of the circumstances.

In a previous blog post, I discussed our search for meaning. To build resilience, requires building commitment to a cause outside ourselves. This could be work, a project, something we want to create or do, or it could be commitment to those we love. Deep, meaningful and sustainable relationships are the bridges that help us rebuild when life deals us a bad hand. The love we receive in healthy relationships with others, can be a strong source of meaning in our lives. Research seems to support this, with married people living longer than single people and with terminally ill patients overcoming their illnesses, or surviving for longer if they have the loving support of friends and family who come to visit them in hospital, compared to those who receive no visitors in hospital. Often our ability to bounce back from failure, comes from knowing that we have friends and family who care for us and who depend on us.

The last way to build resilience is through a process called cognitive restructuring, which is basically, a way to reframe our thinking about negative events and adopt a more hopeful outlook. Part of the process of cognitive restructuring, is critically reviewing the events in your life and asking yourself three questions:

The first question you should ask yourself is this: “Is this problem something I have direct control over? In other words, can I change it?” If you can change it, then take the necessary steps to do so. Sometimes, the change is simple. Sometimes the change is slow and requires time, energy, and commitment through a process of self-discovery and personal growth. If the problem is caused by something in your attitude, personality, communication ability, or your level of emotional intelligence, then you owe it to yourself to address it, because it is something that only you can change.

The second question you should ask yourself is: “Is this problem something that I did not cause, but that I could influence in some way?” So, if the problem is caused by your boss, or your spouse or your colleague, then of course, you cannot change how that person reacts or behaves, but you still have control over how you choose to respond. You can choose to diffuse their anger or to see the humour in the situation, thus influencing the outcome. You can bring reason and logic to the discussion and persuade them to see a different perspective. You can focus on your own response to the situation and thus influence how the other person might react.

Sometimes challenging situations can be diffused before they turn into disasters, simply by anticipating how things might derail and taking steps to correct before disaster strikes. Being proactive often leads to a situation resolving itself before it becomes problematic and before a reactive response is required.

The third question you should ask yourself is: “Is this problem a force majeure – in other words, a force of nature or something that is completely out of my control?” If we were to take stock of the things we stress about, we will discover that most of the time, we worry about things that we cannot control. We have no control over the weather, fluctuations in the economy, the traffic etc., and yet we obsess over these things and waste valuable energy that could be spent figuring out how to spend more time on the things we can control.

So, what do you do when you discover that the things you are worried about are not in your control? You accept that change, upset and/or difficulty are part of life and that your current situation will also change eventually. When you are faced with a situation that is not in your control, adapt as best you can so that you are able to spend your time and energy on your commitments and on learning as much about this challenge as you can. Often by learning about this challenge, you notice proactive steps you could take to influence the situation or to avoid it becoming a disaster.

In these times we live in, we all find ourselves navigating the waters of uncertainty. And yes, sometimes it’s really tough and overwhelming. Some days we simply don’t see how we could influence the situation. However, over time, as we reframe what is happening in our lives as something that is happening “for” us instead of “to” us, as we recommit every day to the things that are most important to us, and as we focus most of our mental, emotional and physical energy on the things we are able to control directly, we start building our ability to bounce back when faced with setbacks. It’s a slow process to be sure, but with practice, one day we will notice that we are no longer overreacting to a stressful situation the way we used to. We have cultivated a growth mindset and we notice the opportunity hidden inside the challenging situation.

*Bonus feature: According to Elizabeth Scott, resilience is a mix of inborn traits and skills that can be practiced and developed. If you want to do a quick check to find out how resilient you are, take this quiz: How resilient are you?

References:

1. Breytenbach, C. (2020). The Value of Stoic Principles in Times of Crisis. Available online at: https://chantalbreytenbach.com/value_of_stoic_principles_in_times_of_crisis/
2. Breytenbach, C. (2020). Our Search for Meaning. Available online at: https://chantalbreytenbach.com/our_search_for_meaning/
3. Covey, S. R. (2004). The seven habits of highly effective people. London: Simon & Schuster.
4. Diamandis, P. & Kotler, S. (2012). Abundance: The future is better than you think. USA: Free Press.
5. Jayawickreme, E. & Blackie, L. E. R. (2014). Post‐traumatic Growth as Positive Personality Change: Evidence, Controversies and Future Directions. European Journal of Personality, 28(4), p. 312-331. Available online at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/per.1963
6. Kobasa, S. C. (1979). Stressful life events, personality, and health: An inquiry into hardiness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37(1), 1-11. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.37.1.1 [http://psycnet.apa.org/record/1980-21134-001]