Resilience

When I was feeling quite low and was trying recover from a rather rather long and arduous day at the office, I saw a column in the news paper speak something about how to cope with stress. It said that one needs to be resilient to do so. The word resilience for living beings is the ability to recover from physical and emotional setback; where as, for inanimate objects, it is the physical property to regain original shape, such as the property of plasticity, elasticity. As I belong to the first category, so I tried to find out how one can cope with stress: It reminded me of the words "hardy" and "stoic". I remembered my Father asking me to be hardy enough to rough up in any stormy weather and he still compliments my Mother for stoically withstanding the onslaughts of the partition of India in the 1940s.

Resilience means the ability to cope with stress. "Resilience can be learnt and nurtured." Rapid global changes have increased stress levels affecting the individuals as well as organizations. Some individuals excel in coping with stressful conditions while others buckle under stress. Close study of those who can cope up with stress has shown a particular pattern of attitude such as "Hardiness" and "Stoicism". They are equipped with a skill set called "3Cs": COMMITMENT; CONTROL; CHALLENGE.

1. COMMITMENT: ability and above all, the determination to cope with stress causing events rather than get away from them. This will help in charting the course of events to favourable outcome.
2. CONTROL: When we commit to cope with the unfavourable events so that we can face the changing circumstances so that we can understand the situation and the problem and find ways or solution to control the events/situation.
3. CHALLENGE: we prefer to resign to fate rather than face the adversities, come what may. Through self motivation and courage we can take up challenging situations posed by the changing circumstances.

The "3Cs" help to develop the skills of:
Coping With Transformation: ability to transform oneself to cope with changing circumstances
Social Support: ability to get others too who are trying to cope with similar challenges to jointly develop a solution.

Escaping from difficulties cannot solve them as they will continue to pursue us. In order to cope with them we need good health, morale and conduct. These will help us to find innovative and civilized ways to face the challenges.

HOW TO BE RESILIENT: We tend to be resilient when we cope with hardships and challenges. The following attributes make us resilient:

1. Exposure to stressful situations early in life.
2. Sense of purpose.
3. Well nurtured self-confidence.

These help an individual to:

1. Commit to exist positively influence an individual to positively influence the adverse situation rather than avoid facing it.
2. While doing so, understand the problem to plan and devise beneficial solutions to solve the problems posed by the changing circumstances.

REASONS FOR LACK OF RESILIENCE

1. Lack of Sense of Belonging: Little or no encouragement from family and the group to cope with the challenges posed by changing circumstances, that alienates an individual from the environment he/she exists in, so the individual avoids the challenges posed by it.
2. Lack of Sense of Purpose: The alienation from the society at large causes loss of objective and sense of purpose to effectively and purposefully exist in the group/society therefore demotivating the individual to develop resilient attitude.
3. Lack of Involvement: When an alienated individual faces the challenges by the environment viz group/society, the demotivated individual undermines ones ability to cope with them. So, such individuals tend to be escapists, passive or aggressive in nature with low morale and is easily overpowered by fear psychosis.

(A) TRANSFORMATIONAL COPING This is a proactive mental and behavioural style to cope with challenging circumstances. This helps helps an individual to take essential mental and physical steps to analyze and devise methods to solve the problems. This involves three important steps:

1. Broader perspective of challenges posed by changing circumstances.
2. Deeper understanding of the factors influencing the environment to pose the challenges.
3. Then decide on the plan of action or solution to meet with the challenges.

STEP-BY-STEP PROCESS OF TRANSFORMATIONAL COPING

• Determine the magnitude or criticality of the challenge posed by the changing circumstances.
• Try to understand the problem in terms of:
  

a. How common or rampant the problem is. b. Its manageability. c. Improveability. d. Time factor e. Unpredictability. Then try to understand whether these stressing causing factors are due to:

1. Ones own personal limitations.
2. Misunderstandings.
3. Clash of ego.

These can be understood through introspection or personal reflection; feedback from others and the results of the actions taken.
NOTE: To be resilient, we need to constantly practice it until it becomes our second nature.

(B) SOCIAL SUPPORT

We can develop social support by constantly interacting with those around us. We follow the pattern of social interaction with positive exchange of help and encouragement rather than competition and over-protection.

1. We can develop social interaction map.
2. We can resolve conflicts/problems by mutually discussing it in a constructive manner.
3. Free channel of communication should be a two-way street to help encourage finding a solution to solve a problem.
4. Actual plan of action should be effectively implemented and insights along with feedback collected to assess the efficacy of the solution to solve the problems.
   

The key to this is shared views and beliefs that help in reducing conflicts in a given situation. This means that both individuals as well as organizations have to stoically explore conflict free ways to find similarities and differences in order to understand the environment they exist in and which is posing the challenges. This eventually can transform failures into opportunities to growth and development.