Resilience… is it born, or is it learned?

Your level of resilience is determined by your ability to cope with three different environments. The first is the physical environment. This is your ability to cope with things, like viruses, or physical stress. The second is the psychological environment, which refers to your ability to cope with things like workload stress, or task complexity. And the third is the social environment, which is your ability to cope with things like interpersonal conflicts, or receiving harsh criticism from others.

Research from the past two decades shows that certain resilience traitsー certain things that help us to cope with those environmentsー are born. This includes having an easy temperament, and having a good sense of humour. These are personality traits that you’re either born with, or you’re not. The second is having strong cognitive abilities that can help you with problem solving, and then there’s biological resilience. Biological resilience is, again, something that you’re either born with, or you’re not, for example in terms of having a genetic tendency to ward off things like flu’s and viruses, or being susceptible to those things.

The good news is that certain resilience traits, or certain resilience abilities, can be learned, and these include self-awareness, self-regulation, and mental agility.

Self-awareness is the ability to pay attention to your thoughts, your emotions, your behaviours, and your physiology, in any given moment. Self-regulation is your ability to change or adapt your thoughts, your emotions, your behaviours, or your physiology, in the service of a desired outcome. And then, mental agility is the ability to look at situations from multiple perspectives, to think creatively and flexibly in your problem solving.

And if you need proof that these abilities can be learned, then we only have to look to the training that many elite Athletes, Frontline Healthcare workers and Military Personnel such as Army Marines and Navy SEALS around the world receive. These individuals are trained in Resilience skills for thriving through the most extreme circumstances, including mindset and behaviour strategies for monitoring their wellbeing and performance on a daily or situational basis. The psychological, emotional and social challenges faced across the world in 2022+ require us all to apply practical and proven Resilience awareness and skills to endure and thrive day-to-day. Our wellbeing depends on it.

The good news is, what you are born with gets you started and is a sort of baseline level of Resilience you may have, but it’s what you learn to think, feel and do that determines the level of Resilience you can cultivate for navigating life’s challenges.