An overwhelming majority of Americans report that spring is their favorite season. I think the reason is pretty obvious. Spring is about rebirth, optimism, and opportunity; but more than anything, spring is the reward we get for our resilience. Winter can be brutal: frigid temperatures, unpredictable snow storms, risky travel conditions, the flu… But, given little other option, most of us endure.
Resilience has become somewhat of a buzzword in the mental health field over the past several years, and justifiably so: resilience is what helps people rise to challenges, and bounce back from adversity. Resilience is what helps us create opportunity from crisis, and it is the psychological fuel for creation and innovation. Like every other attribute that helps to measure one’s overall mental health, resilience is not a characteristic that each of us possesses at a set quantity. Rather, resilience is a quality that we can acquire and enrich upon, though for most of us, increasing resilience means slightly altering our perspective.
Central to resilient people’s worldview is how they relate to crisis. When faced with challenging circumstances, we essentially have two options as to how we view ourselves: solution focused survivor, or victim of circumstance. Resilient people tend to focus on the potentiality of a positive outcome, even in the midst of difficult conditions. They maintain a belief that their actions can affect the ultimate outcome in almost any situation, possessing what is called an internal locus of control. Of course, there are obvious limits to that which each of us controls, and factors beyond the scope of anyone’s influence are less important. What is more important is our belief in our respective power to make choices and to cope.
Lastly, it has become increasingly clear that resilient people are more apt to ask for help than less resilient people. This may seem as a contradiction to what was written above, that resilient people have a strong belief in their individual abilities to manage and affect crisis. Yet, we can’t forget that humans are naturally social animals, and our survival has always been dependent upon group unity. Resilience is about solution-oriented modes of thinking, propelled by one’s inner belief that a solution exists, and that they have the tools to find it; sometimes the best tool at our disposal is simply asking for help.