We have all heard of resilience and mental toughness and the stories of those who did the impossible against all odds.
These are the stories of heroes and inventors and creators and leaders. They inspire us because at our core, we know that resilience is one of humanities greatest and most necessary strengths.
It’s a little known fact that when a baby giraffe is born, it’s mothers first act of kindness and motherly love is to kick it’s legs out from under it. When the baby attempts to get up again, the mother again, knocks her baby to the ground. This happens over and over until the baby giraffe at last gets to its feet quickly and escapes the attempt to knock it down.
Why would a loving mother do this to her newborn baby giraffe? The answer is that the baby must, above all else in the world, learn to get to it’s feet quickly and run so that it can survive in a world when it would be eaten without that ability.
The baby’s giraffe’s first lesson is to become resilient. Even if knocked down, you have to get back on your feet and take action in the face of adversity. Never give up. Never surrender.
WHAT IS RESILIENCE?
Resilience is your capacity to bounce back, to stay positive, to stay strong, to rise up in the face of challenges, to never surrender to fear or pain or setback or failure or danger or even catastrophe.
Resilience is the ability to do more than cope, more than survive, more than get by.
It is the ability to welcome the unknown and the uncertain with open arms, being certain you can and will find or make a way.
It is the ability to embrace change and thrive through change.
It’s the ability to move forward fully determined to create the outcome you seek, no matter what the circumstances and no matter how difficult the path might be.
Resilience is the key to doing what others think is undoable or impossible.
Resilience, when we really look at it, is made up of three components: Mental, Physical and Emotional. When we develop mental, physical and emotional strength, speed, endurance and flexibility we can face any challenge and overcome almost any obstacle.
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?
Resilience is one of the most important keys to individual and team success.
Virtually every advancement humanity has made throughout our history on this planet, has come about because someone or some team of people has refused to give up in the face of adversity.
When you have the ability to bend rather than breaking under pressure you can accomplish the seemingly impossible.
Success is going from difficulty and setback to difficulty and setback, without loss of enthusiasm. A “failure” is not failure if we learn from it, grow and keep going forward using what we have learned.
If we want to lead and create and achieve, we must develop the ability to stay strong and steady and focused and upbeat and unstoppable no matter what challenge we face.
Winston Churchill, during the bitterness of a World War that was ravaging his people, once said “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”
We have all heard the cliché, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” It is a reminder to never give up, because persistence in the face of adversity has led to extraordinary success.
Consider all of these stories of resilience:
Bill Gates’ first business failed and he faced countless obstacles building Microsoft into the trillion-dollar company it is today.
Albert Einstein didn’t speak until he was four years old and his parents were told he was stupid repeatedly, yet is revered as one of the greatest minds in humanity.
Stephen King’s first novel was rejected 30 times, but he never gave up and became one of the best selling authors of all time.
Oprah Winfrey, who gave birth at age 14 and lost her child, survived sexual abuse, and was fired from her first TV job as a news anchor, persisted to become one of the most successful TV personalities in history.
Thomas Edison, who was partially deaf, and faced a multitude of business setbacks in his career, failed 1,000 times before creating the lightbulb that lights the entire world today.
Jay-Z couldn’t get signed to any record labels and was seen as talentless. Now he runs one of the most successful record labels.
Vincent Van Gogh only sold one painting in his lifetime – no one valued them – but he painted more than 900 and created more than 1100 drawings and sketches which are now seen as some of the finest masterpieces ever created.
Franklin Roosevelt became partially paralyzed at 39 yet his illness gave him strength, courage and compassion he had not had before, committing to infinite patience and never ending persistence and becoming one of the most revered Presidents who led the U.S. through the Great Depression and WWII.
Steven Spielberg was rejected from USC Filmschool, three times yet never gave up and became one of the best known, best loved, and most prolific filmmakers in the world.
Abraham Lincoln started numerous failed businesses, went bankrupt twice, and was defeated in 26 campaigns he made for public office, and lost his wife but, he became President and led America through the Civil War ultimately reuniting the nation in peace.
J.K. Rowling went from homeless to being the richest woman in the world in less than 5 years with Harry Potter being rejected dozens of times by publisher after publisher, before becoming one of the best selling books and move franchises in history – loved by billions of people across the planet.
Beethoven’s teachers told his parents he was a terrible violin player and was too stupid to be come a music composer, and yet he persisted even after becoming deaf and left a legacy of extraordinary music that lives on today.
Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team and told he didn’t have what it takes, yet through persistence and grit became the greatest player in NBA history, winning more championships, scoring more points, and, believe it or not, missing more thank 9000 shots and losing almost 300 games. He said “I’ve failed over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
Fred Astaire, often thought of as one of the greatest dancers in history, was rejected by a casting director with notes reading “Can’t act. Can’t sing. Slightly bald. Not handsome. Can dace a little.”
Colonel Harland Sanders lost his restaurant when an interstate highway was built and was forced to retire with a meager pension, but despite being rejected more than 1000 times, found his first partner to create the franchise model that would become KFC one of the largest restaurant chains on earth.
Walt Disney, arguably one of the greatest imaginations of all time, was fired from a newspaper because he “lacked imagination and had no good ideas” but ultimately created Mickey Mouse and went to more than 102 banks who rejected him before ultimately getting the funding to build the Magic Kingdom.
Elvis Presley was fired after his performance at the Grand Ole Opry being told “You ain’t goin’ nowhere, son. You ought to go back to drivin’ a truck,” yet he went on to become the King of Rock and Roll.
The Beatles were told by recording executives who rejected them “we don’t like your sound, and guitar music is on the way out,” but they never gave up through difficulty and adversity, becoming perhaps the most loved musical acts in history.
Babe Ruth, baseball hall-of-famer with a home run record of 714, was also the record holder for strikeouts (1330), but was know for saying “Every strike brings me closer to the next home run.”
Lucille Ball’s drama instructors told her to try another profession and before starring in I Love Lucy she was widely regarded as a failed actress, yet she persevered and became the beloved icon she is known as through this day.
Steve Jobs, cofounder of Apple was fired from Apple by the man he hired to be CEO, went on to found Pixar as well as NeXT which was bought by Apple, and ultimately to come back to Apple creating innovation after innovation while and while fighting each day against the ravages of pancreatic cancer still brought the world the ipad and iphone which transformed the way of life for the entire world.
HOW DO WE BUILD RESILIENCE?
The wonderful thing about resilience is that it can be built. You can train and condition your mind, emotions and body to be more resilient.
PHYSICAL RESILIENCE
Physical resilience is how well our body stands up to strain and pressure. It’s how much physical weight we can bear. It’s how long we can endure bearing weight. Its how far and how long we can go without rest. It’s how much physical pain can we handle and still move forward.
There are a few areas of physical resilience – Strength, Flexibility, Endurance, Pain Tolerance and Vitality.
We can massively impact all of them in a positive way by doing some simple things.
The right exercise done consistently over time will without question increase strength, flexibility and endurance.
The right nutrition, rest, and proper breathing also make a massive impact on vitality along with properly done exercise.
The ability to handle pain has a physical component as well as a mental/emotional component – for example we build calluses on sensitive skin when training so that it becomes less sensitive physically. In contact sports and martial arts, we learn to take a hit and in time we become used to it physically and mentally/emotionally we become immune to the pain as well.
The more of these things we do right, the more physical resilience we can build in time.
MENTAL RESILIENCE
Mental resilience goes to our intellectual capacity to think under pressure and keep distractions, both physical and emotional, from reducing our mental abilities.
Mental resilience is the ability to manage our Attention Span & Focus, to maintain our Positive World View, to Solve Problems using Analysis and Logic, to Communicate Effectively under difficult circumstances, and our Mental Flexibility which allows us to see multiple perspectives and possibilities rather than having tunnel vision or shutting down.
All of these skills can be taught. All of these skills require training and practice and use to ensure they are maintained at minimum and ideally expanded.
Just like we go to the gym and exercise physically, so too must we exercise these skillsets so our mental resilience is there when things get tough and we need to step up and lead.
EMOTIONAL RESILIENCE
Emotional Resilience is the ability to be courageous, determined, confident, patient, poised, passionate, hopeful, creative, playful, unstoppable, faithful, unbreakable, and unshakeable. It’s the ability to muster resourceful emotions in the face of any challenge, no matter how daunting.
It’s the ability to resist, manage and overcome doubts, fears, worries, and concerns about people, things or circumstances that might prevent you form succeeding or achieving your goals and objectives.
Emotional resilience has a few primary areas we can develop: Emotional Self Regulation, Emotional Flexibility, and Positive & Resourceful Emotions/Feelings.
We can be trained to manage our emotions and can build them like muscles. Look around your office and you can see it at work. Some people are easily happy because they feel it alot and it’s a muscle they use regularly. Some people are angry all the time. Guess what? They have built that muscle so it’s easy to flex. What emotions will serve you best? All you need to do is determine which ones and then learn how to feel them more often.
The more we condition ourselves to certain resourceful emotions, the more we can utilize them under real world pressures. The greater the number of resourceful emotions we train ourselves to access, the more emotional flexibility we can muster. With training we can access emotions almost like a super power so that whatever we need in the moment is available on demand.
Resilience, sometimes referred to as mental toughness, is the super power that allows us to do the seemingly impossible.
TURNING PAIN AND FEAR INTO POWER
Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.
We can make pain and fear into allies and use it to developing mental, physical and emotional resilience.
Ideally we should never ask for smaller burdens. Rather we should ask for broader shoulders so we can do more, handle more and be more – for the benefit ourselves and others.
When we push our limits we grow. Resilience is born through facing challenges that push us beyond what we were previously comfortable with. Discomfort is the key to growth. Doing something new and different rewires our mind, emotional and body to be able to do more.
Training on resilience is just that. Going through a process that pushed our limits (in a controlled environment) so that we can have the right amount of stress to induce growth.
Trees grow strong as they sway in the wind. Trees that have weathered a wind storm become even stronger. In time they become impervious to event the strongest of winds because having faced them over time, their branches and roots have become more flexible and more able to bear pressure.
RESILIENCE IS NOT DISASSOCIATION
Please take note. Resilience is thriving in the face of challenge and valuing goals, relationships and dreams so highly we will sacrifice and suffer to maintain them.
Resilience is not simply disassociating with pain. Many people in todays world act and interact with a cold indifference. Nothing really matters. If something goes wrong, so what? Who cares anyway. Everything is replaceable. People, relationships, jobs. This is not resilience. This is disconnection. Being numb is different than being strong. Being disconnected is different that being fully present, but moving forward in spite of pain or fear.
Resilience is being fully present and engaging the ability to thrive despite pain.
RESILIENCE & GROWTH
Human beings have a Catch 22 built into our systems.
We love comfort and security and stability. And we generally do not like pain.
But living for security and comfort doesn’t allow us to grow, or become more, or create the things we have the ability to create, or help those we have the ability to help.
Becoming our best self requires growth. Growth requires doing what we haven’t done and facing risk and facing pain and facing fear so we can become more, do more and be more.
And by the way. People don’t really have a problem with pain itself. We have a problem with what pain might be telling us.
Some pain is good. Much pain is bad and warns of something wrong. That warning is actually a good thing, but the fear of the uncertain is what usually makes it unbearable.
If pain is temporary and predictable and we know it will serve us, most can bear it easily to obtain the rewards.
But when pain because pervasive, permanent, or personal, almost none can handle it.
Having recently suffered the joy of passing multiple kidney stones (which evidently is the closest a man can come to experiencing the pain of giving birth), I can tell you of two very distinct experiences.
The first kidney stone was a complete unknown. Imagine waking up one morning at 4:37am with an achy hot pain in your left side between your ribcage and your hip. It’s probably nothing. You must have slept funny and it’s just muscle tension. You roll over and hope it will relax, but now it feels worse… almost as if someone just punched you really hard in the kidney. So you get up and go to the bathroom thinking maybe it’s a digestive issue and you just need to use the facilities and should be better momentarily. But alas, no such relief. Now it’s as if someone is stabbing you with a knife in your side repeatedly. You are knocked to your knees the pain is so powerful and a dry heave comes over you leaving you thankful your stomach is empty, yet setting your entire insides on fire with pain.
For most, this would be enough to trigger a 9-11 call. But for someone who has spent years developing mental, physical and emotional resilience, the process involved a little more thought and access to the internet.
So bent over in pain, I quickly searched the internet for “stabbing pain left side of abdomen near ribs.” There were multiple options for what might be causing it ranging from simple gas, through a burst appendix, to kidney stones, to a ruptured colon. Besides the gas, none was benign, and some were quite life threatening.
So I called my best friend and told him I was heading to the hospital ER and asked him to stay on the line with me for the seven minute drive (which I determined would be still quicker and potentially much less costly than an ambulance).
Upon arrival, I refused pain meds because I wanted to keep a clear head and didn’t want narcotic pain killers dulling my intellect or my capacity to manage my emotions. I used breathing techniques I have learned over the years to manage the pain and keep focus. (ironically, similar to breathing women do when giving birth)
Long of the short, they did a CT scan and took a urine sample and diagnosed kidney stones.
During the hour or so at the ER, before the CT scan and urine results were back, the first kidney stone finished passing from the kidney to the bladder.
That process was literally 45 minutes of intermittent contractions and spasms down the left side of my abdomen that shook my entire body, felt like hundreds of knives were being driven into my side repeatedly and triggered repeated dry heaves and retching.
So I was discharged and given a small plastic “strainer” to catch all of the additional stones that were expected to hit me over the coming days according to the scan.
Fast forward a few days later. Another stone hits. But this time there is no uncertainty about the cause. There was clarity about the fact that it and the pain would pass – over the course of 7-8 hours, but nevertheless, clarity. The type of pain and the course of the pain was predictable. The cause of the pain was known. The outcome, while intensely painful, would not kill me or do any permanent harm.
This time, it was substantially easier to handle. This would require no hospital and no fear of the unknown. The pain had started in the early afternoon. It followed a similar course to the previous experience, slowly intensifying and coming in waves. This time I was so confident I could handle it that I headed our for my dinner plans hoping and thinking it would not even interfere. Of course, it did. As I arrived at dinner just in time for the stabbing and dry heaves to overcome me. I said my hellos and excused myself to the rest room where for the next 45 minutes I faced the barrage of stabbing and the flutter or contractions and cramps, almost impatient for them to pass so I could get back to dinner.
The point is, going through pain can have the wonderful benefit of making us stronger.
Pain without fear still hurts, but is far less crippling in the moment. Pain that we know will pass can become easy to bear.
And, most importantly, to build mental, physical and emotional resilience, you and your team do NOT have to go to the extreme of passing a kidney stone.
Experience is a great teacher. Experience is gained through making mistakes, bearing consequences, suffering pain, and learning from what we went through.
Wisdom is the ability to learn from the experience of others.
Exceptional training, including controlled interactive initiatives, visualization exercises and emotionally engaging interactions, can put us through processes that allow us to gain true wisdom and learn from others experiences.
Through powerful training, we can begin to master skills that build mental, physical and emotional resilience, and then commit to conditioning ourselves to grow stronger and more resilient each and every day, as we face and overcome obstacles and challenges.