​Somebody once said that one should list “living in South Africa” as a skill set, and even more so if you live in Kwazulu Natal. Many of us have said that we’re just tired of being resilient. Actually we’d like to be able to collapse into a puddle and have a good cry in the knowledge that someone will pick us up and make it all better.

The truth is that that is never going to happen. We live in a world where shit happens. We have to withstand the impact of all sorts of dramas. Locally we have had Covid 19 with all its tragedies and personal difficulties, the riots and looting of July 2021 and now the devastating floods of April 2022 that have resulted in widespread loss of life and property.

Resilience might be thought of as the ability to cope mentally and emotionally with a crisis and to bounce back after the crisis without long-term health or psychological consequences. Resilient people are those who are able to remain calm during the crisis, making good decisions for themselves and others. They then return to their pre-crisis psychological and mental state quickly, and move on from it without any residual difficulties.

It includes the following abilities:

• Coping well with high levels of ongoing, disruptive change;
• The ability to sustain good health and energy even under constant pressure;
• Being able to bounce back after setbacks;
• Overcoming adversity;
• Being able to change to a new way of living and working when the old way is no longer possible;

… and all without behaving in dysfunctional or harmful ways.

​Consider your own circumstances:

• What ongoing, disruptive change are you needing to cope with?
• What is happening to your health as a result of the constant pressure you are experiencing?
• Are you bouncing back from adversity, or do you find yourself being weighed down by feelings of despair and hopelessness?
• What changes do you now have to make because the way things were is no longer possible?

 
Resilient people have a significant advantage over people who are not resilient – people who respond to adversity with helplessness or a sense of being victims. Consider this:

• Companies that have resilient employees perform better during tough times than companies that don’t;
• During downsizing (or whatever it is being called this week) resilient employees with a wide set of competencies have a better chance of being kept on
• Resilient job applicants are more likely to be hired than those who are not;
• When the job skills of resilient people are no longer needed, they will quickly learn new ways to earn an income;
• When the economic times are tough, resilient people give their families a better chance of pulling through and bouncing back;
• Resilient people are able to make the best out of difficult situations;
• Less resilient people are more likely to become ill during difficult times.

 
Now rate your own resilience (1 = very little; 5 = very strong):

From “The Resiliency Advantage” by Al Siebert.
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Scoring :
Low score: A self rating score under 50 indicates that life is probably a struggle for you. You may not handle pressure well. You don’t learn anything useful from bad experiences. You feel hurt when people criticize you. You may sometimes feel helpless and without hope.
If these statements fit you, ask yourself “Would I like to learn how to handle my difficulties better”. If your answer is yes, then a good way to start is to meet with others who are working to develop their resilience skills. Let them coach, encourage and guide you. Another way is to work with a coach or a therapist. The fact that you feel motivated to be more resilience is a positive sign.

High score: If you rated yourself high on most of these statements you would have a score over 90. This means you know you are very good at bouncing back from life’s setbacks.
A question for you to consider is whether you feel willing to tell your story to others and make yourself available to people who are trying to cope with adversities. People learn from real-life role models. You could be one.

Middle scores: If you agreed with many of the statements and scored in the 70-89 range, then that is very good! It means that you are fairly resilient, but that you could become even more resilient and confident by paying attention to some of those factors that will make the difference.
If you scored in the 50-69 range, you appear to be fairly adequate, but you may be underrating yourself. A much larger percentage of people underrate themselves than overrate themselves on the assessment. Some people have a habit of being modest and automatically give themselves a 3 on every item for a total score of 60. If your score is in the 50-69 range, we need to find out how valid your self rating is.

In the next article, we will look at ways in which you can develop your own resilience, after which we will consider how you might enable your team to become more resilient.
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Contact Me
Resilience has everything to do with how you think about things, so it is a completely coachable topic. If you recognise that you need to strengthen your own resilience, email me on [email protected] and let’s discuss your coaching programme.

The last couple of years have been difficult for most of us, and this has resulted in widespread mental health problems and a great deal of unhappiness. I happen to think that, while we collectively dealt with the challenges of a pandemic, the notion of life being difficult is ubiquitous. Life is difficult for different people in different ways and to differing degrees at different times. Yet some people rise above these challenges and others don’t do so well. This article is a continuation of a series that starts here.

Characteristics that are typically used in relation to being able to prevail in the face of challenges include Resilience, Grit and Mental Toughness. They are not all the same thing and not all people who do ok despite life’s difficulties have all of these characteristics. In this article, I explain the concepts and why they are important. In future articles I will talk about how to develop these characteristics. Here are some useful definitions:

1. Resilience
Wikipedia: Psychological resilience is the ability to cope mentally or emotionally with a crisis or to return to pre-crisis status quickly.[1] Resilience exists when the person uses "mental processes and behaviors in promoting personal assets and protecting self from the potential negative effects of stressors".[2] In simpler terms, psychological resilience exists in people who develop psychological and behavioral capabilities that allow them to remain calm during crises/chaos and to move on from the incident without long-term negative consequences.
Everydayhealth.com: Resilience is typically defined as the capacity to recover from difficult life events.
American Psychological Association: Resilience is 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.
Positivepsychology.com: Resilience can be defined as the ability – and tendency – to “bounce back.” “Bouncing back” is what we do when we face disappointment, defeat, and failure, but instead of wallowing or letting things keep us down, we get back up and continue on with our lives.

The common thread in these definitions is that resilience is what enables us to ride out the struggle and recover from negative life events. It does not shield us from experiencing pain – we experience the pain of these life experiences as one might expect – but it gives us the strength to get through it and rise again without breaking down or falling apart. Resilient people are not afraid of the pain because they know they will be fine, no matter what happens.

We need resilience because life is just damn difficult – and we need to be able ride out the tough experiences and bounce back from setbacks and tragedy. In the next article, I will discuss the life choices and actions that build resilience and how to put these in place.

2. Grit
Wikipedia: In psychology, grit is a positive, non-cognitive trait based on an individual's perseverance of effort combined with the passion for a particular long-term goal or end state (a powerful motivation to achieve an objective). This perseverance of effort promotes the overcoming of obstacles or challenges that lie on the path to accomplishment and serves as a driving force in achievement realization.
South African College of Applied Psychology: Angela Lee Duckworth is quoted: “Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term goals. Grit is having stamina. Grit is sticking with your future, day in, day out, not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years, and working really hard to make that future a reality.”
Psychology Today: If you're gritty, you attain success through endurance, perseverance, resilience, passion, hard work, and practice, practice, practice. If you persist and face all the obstacles, you may just win. It involves finding your passion (which involves a sense of purpose) and persevering.
New Harbinger Publications: It is the ability to persist in something you feel passionate about and persevere when you face obstacles. This kind of passion is not about intense emotions or infatuation. It’s about having direction and commitment. When you have this kind of passion, you can stay committed to a task that may be difficult or boring.  

As you can see, the essence of grit is a sense of purpose – big goals that you feel passionate about – and the perseverance to stick with it until the goal is achieved, no matter what obstacles you might face.

Without Grit, one cannot get the big goals achieved. It is about being driven towards something important and having the determination to see things through. I think that grit requires that one is actually resilient – but not all resilient people also have grit.

3. Mental Toughness
Mental Toughness is a concept that has emerged from the field of sports psychology, but I think it can be applied far more broadly. It is not the same as resilience. Here is my definition:

Mental toughness is the ability to sustain consistent focus and self-belief under difficult circumstances and despite external distractions and challenges. It has four components:

1. Control: the sense that one has the ability to influence in a situation while keeping one’s emotions in check;
2. Commitment: the choice to stay deeply involved in pursuing challenging goals despite the difficulties that may arise;
3. Challenge: seeing potential threats as an opportunity for self-development and continuing to strive despite a constantly changing environment.
4. Confidence: in one’s capabilities as well as in one’s ability to navigate complex interpersonal settings.

(For more see Frontiers in Psychology).

It is most easily demonstrated in the world of sport:

• The tennis player who makes no errors despite a hostile crowd and an opponent who is relentless. Rafael Nadal springs to mind;
• The rugby player who will practice kicking for posts for hours at a time, even without the presence of the coach, like Jonny Wilkinson;
• The golfer who is able to sustain focus over 2 or 3 days despite searing heat or howling wind. Ernie Els is a great example.

It would appear that mental toughness is about the ability to “mind your mind” despite relentless pressure. In the world of work, it is demonstrated by the CEO who stays calm, focused and continues making good decisions and communicating well despite constant surprises and curved balls. I think Andre de Ruyter, Eskom CEO, is a great example of a business leader who is mentally tough.

Once again, mental toughness is only possible in the presence of resilience – but being resilient does not necessarily make one mentally tough.

In the next few articles, I am going to explore each of these concepts and examine whether and how they can be developed or learned. So stay with me.
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Contact Me
If you are in a chapter of your life where success requires that you are resilient, gritty or mentally tough, the support of a coach is very powerful. If this is you, why don’t you email me on [email protected] and let’s discuss your coaching programme.