This week I’m sharing a few thoughts about the nature of resilience, what I call the bounce-back factor of the human mind. 

Like a trampoline or bungee cord that will bend and flex, sometimes to absurd degrees, only to return to its original shape, the innate resilience of the mind brings it back to balance and does so relentlessly. 

We have all experienced resilience in action. Just think back to the last time you were thrown off your inner game at work, left wobbly, unbalanced, and wondering what to do next. 

Then, perhaps moments later (or maybe a day or two later!) you find your bearings and progress forward with fresh ideas and attitudes about what is possible. Even if you don’t know what to do, you might find that the insecure or discouraging feelings that once seemed all-encompassing have passed and a relaxed and easygoing feeling emerges. 

This is what I’m referring to: the power of your mind to naturally bounce back from insecurity and regain its bearings. It’s the hallmark of resilience and it’s very misunderstood. It’s also a superpower for any professional who wants to excel in challenging work environments.

You see, most people think that resilience is something that you have to create and hold up with ​willpower and effort​. That you can only be resilient after a few “trials by fire” and decades of experience in life and at work. I even encountered a professional who told me that resilient people were the rare lucky ones, the winners of a genetic lottery!

None of this is the case. 

Resilience is a built-in capability of your mind. It’s not something you need to go out and get. It’s not something you have to learn. It’s not something you need to consciously apply. It also cannot be destroyed. However, resilience can be ignored, not trusted, covered up, interfered with and tragically misunderstood.

By misunderstanding where resilience comes from, and that this bounce-back factor is innate to every human mind, we go looking for it in all the wrong places, and wonder why we don’t find it!

Said again, we are born resilient. 

If we weren’t, we wouldn’t be able to learn how to walk, talk, write and eat our food. All of those basic tasks are fraught with failure and struggle in our infancy and toddlerhood. Yet we somehow persist. If you pay attention to young children, they often climb those learning curves while smiling and laughing! Even when they cry, they get over it quickly and get on with their learning and growth (resilience in action!).

If we weren’t resilient at our very core, we would never recover from a broken heart, an insult, or the aggressive driver who cut us off on the road last month. We would hold grudges forever against bosses and co-workers who don’t seem to like us. It would be impossible to climb a new learning curve in a new job. Once stress or pressure shows up at work, we would be stuck with no way out. 

Of course, none of these things happen!

Even the most pressured person will feel moments (sometimes prolonged periods) of peace, joy and relaxation – emerging out of the blue – amid ​terribly challenging circumstances​. 

This can happen since your state of mind can (and does!) ​change at the speed of your thinking​. As the flow of your thoughts shifts and settles, your state of mind (and the feeling you are in) improves. 

Bingo, resilience in action! 

What’s counterintuitive is that you don’t do resilience, resilience does you. 

Does that make sense?

Seeing that the mind has an innate capability to self-heal and balance itself out, is to see that resilience is not something you need to create and force. Instead, it’s something to understand and bring awareness to. The more you see how it operates, the better it can work without interference. 

You still might be asking yourself: How do I do that? How do I see how my mind operates?

My favorite way – but not the only way – is to start paying attention to how your mind, and your innate resilience – truly work. Start listening and watching yourself in a careful and relaxed manner, like you would watch for birds in the sky. Once you start noticing the presence of this bounce-back factor, it’s easier to trust and allow it to do its job, without getting in the way. 

Reflection

Go deeper by pondering the following question throughout the next work week (or two!). 

How does the “bounce-back factor” – your innate resilience – show up for you at work? What would it be like to trust that process even more? 

As you explore the question, you may wish to notice and journal the moments where you recognize your mind balancing itself out after being triggered by something that throws you off your inner game. In doing so, you will notice that these moments are numerous and that your bounce-factor factor is more reliable than you ever imagined.

As you explore this topic for yourself I would love to hear from you. Just leave a comment below!