I thought I knew resilience…
This week, we celebrated Veteran’s Day. I saw many of my friends post great memories about their service, and I even reflected on my own service in the Air Force. Then, a great post came out by my friend Herb Thompson about mental health and building up pressure. It made me think — my conditioning and learning about resilience was faulty.
In my family and childhood, I felt resilience was meaning learning to cope with adversity, accepting it for what it was. In the military, the concept of resilience was how much we could push through the discomfort, pain, and chaos. In school, it was how much I could read and write 4-hours before a Sunday night deadline (yes, I was a procrastinator in my undergraduate studies). What I realized, especially in the struggles of COVID-19, was that resilience and being “stretched under pressure” is not the same thing.
I felt that resilience meant how much could I handle, similar to pulling on a rubber band as much as possible. Yet, after watching Herb’s video post, I realized I was thinking of this all wrong. Even by definition by Merriam-Webster, resilience is “the capability of a strained body to recover its size and shape after deformation caused especially by compressive stress.” As Herb discussed, it is important to vent pressure to prevent it from overpowering the vessel. The same is with our own personal resilience — we need to learn to reset and recharge to prevent permanent changes or damage.
As I reflected on this, I realized I had encountered this. Even before COVID, but especially during it, I had built up so much internal pressure that my outward was starting to change in a noticeable way. Worries about my work and being “the guy to take care of it all” had worn me down, and I was not doing my typical activities to help me recover. My thought of resilience was that of “doing it all”, not of recovery. Eventually, like a runner that had not rested their muscles properly, everything tore that was trying to hold it together. However, my stubbornness made it where I kept fighting through the pain, and I kept doing more damage.
It didn’t help that my career change 14 months ago did not go as plan. It did not help that I was laid off a couple of months into the COVID pandemic without a primary job for almost over a month. It did not help that my family dealt with a multitude of things from remote learning to career changes for both parents. IT ESPECIALLY DID NOT HELP that I chose to push through and not take care of my mental health.
This took a toll. From a severe lack of energy to large mental blocks with projects, I was not only suffering mentally but also physically and emotionally. It strained my relationships and my work. Finally, the past few weeks with support of my wonderful wife, I worked on multiple things to help me both short-term and long-term. As a result, my drive, energy, and career path are taking off again.
So, it is common to think of resilience as how much you can endure since that is often how it is perceived. Instead, think of resilience as how much awareness you have to reset and reshape when you are being stretched into something unrecognizable. Only then can you truly get past all of the issues you are facing.