Every Tuesday, our company comes together for an hour dedicated to learning and development. It’s a space where we engage in discussions about various topics that stretch our thinking and deepen our understanding. This past week, we explored resilience, and the conversation shifted my perspective in a way I hadn’t anticipated.

For much of my life, and like many other Gen Xers and baby boomers, I’ve understood resilience as toughing it out and moving on in the face of adversity. But, as we delved into the topic, I found myself questioning the very foundation of that definition. 

The Evolution of Resilience: More Than Just Bouncing Back

Historically (and in parts of the world even today) resilience was tested and forged against a backdrop of extreme hardship—wars, economic depressions, famines, and genocide. 

But, in the parts of the world where we are not forced to rebuild from the ashes of widespread destruction, how do we build resilience? If resilience is forged in hardship, then how do we develop it in a world that, for many of us, is far more stable than that of our ancestors?

The word resilience has its roots in the Latin resilire, meaning to spring back or rebound. At some point in the last century, resilience took on an additional preventive meaning. It became less about recovering from extreme hardship and devastation and more about building the capacity to withstand adversity in the first place.

Instead of waiting for hardship to test our resilience, we started asking:

How can we proactively build resilience before adversity strikes?
What tools can we develop to prepare ourselves for the unknown?
Can resilience be learned, even in the absence of extreme hardship?

Resilience in Today’s Context: Adapting to a Changing World

Defining resilience in today’s context must also call into question the definition of hardship in modern terms. There is still a demand on us to manage stress while staying grounded in an increasingly unpredictable world. The challenges we face today may look different, but they share the same hallmark principle resilience is predicated on–uncertainty.

Final Thoughts: Redefining Resilience for the Future

For those of us that scoff at how easy our children have it compared to when we were young, it would be wise to consider that there were generations before us who would likely think the same about us.

Our conversation about resilience challenged my old assumptions and opened my eyes to a broader definition—one that is just as relevant today as ever. Resilience is about perpetually building new and better ways to navigate an unpredictable world.

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