Resilience
NOUN
1. The capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.
2. The ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape.
Recently my department at work had an 'offsite day': a day consisting of talks and workshops which primarily focused on department level and company wide objectives - certainly not my usual topic of choice for a blog post. However, one of the talks which stuck with me was about resilience and how it can be applied on a large scale for the company (publishing is an industry which is constantly working to find its place and adapt to an increasingly digital and technological world) and on an individual, more personal level. The session centred on how important 'bouncing back' from challenges and difficult situations can be in a variety of contexts, it also emphasised that this can be harder for certain types of people.
I'll be the first to put my hands up and say that I often struggle with unexpected changes or overcoming challenging situations, especially when they all seem to come at once. Anyone who knows me well will be aware that I've had a pretty rough few months recently. I won't be going into details here, but I think it's why this particular talk resonated with me so much. A combination of events knocked my self confidence and left me feeling like any optimism I once had, had been squeezed out of me entirely. Instead of having the outlook that these things would shape me as a person, I was letting them debilitate me. I certainly wasn't being resilient. Thankfully though, I'm surrounded by some fab people (friends, family & colleagues) who kept me grounded, took my mind off things and were super supportive. So I did eventually 'bounce back', just not quite as quickly as I would have liked...
If someone had asked me a couple of months ago what five traits or characteristics I'd like to be described as having, I don't think 'resilient' would have even entered my mind. Yet now it's definitely something I'm working on becoming better at myself and I admire anyone who has the ability to be resilient, it's definitely an inner strength that more of us should strive to master.
Laura.
River by Bishop Briggs
