why Resilience?
RESILIENCE IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER
We all live within a set of intricately nested systems. How these systems function and connect us to one another has a profound impact on our experiences. Our ability to interact with these systems is the barometer of how effectively we can adapt and influence our lives and the lives of others around us.
Building resilience is the process of understanding the systems at play within and around us. It’s consciously shifting ways of being, thinking, and doing in order to forge new pathways. These shifts allow us to adapt to a changing world by enabling us to take action on what’s most beneficial for ourselves and for those around us at any moment.
As individuals we collectively make up the human system, which is the foundational driving force behind our larger societal (and other) systems. As emotional, physical, and cognitive individuals, we are nested within these systems that we’ve helped create.
The key for all of us is to recognize that we all have the power to change these systems.
We are, each of us, the authors of our world.
The science of resilience
Resilience is the capacity to adapt and thrive in all situations. Whether you are building resilience for an individual, organization, or society, resilience does not operate in a silo.
I apply a systems-based resilience approach to personal resilience. This is a science-backed, unique approach that I’ve developed through my 20+ years of working with resilience from the personal, ecological, infrastructural, societal, organizational, and even geohydrological levels across the US and around the world.
This approach holds true whether we are governing ourselves or contributing to the systems that surround us. I invite you to try on the concepts and processes my approach is founded on.
Systems Resilience is the ability of a system to resist, absorb, adapt, and recover from disturbances or unexpected events while still maintaining its basic function and structure. A resilient system can withstand and recover from various stressors and impacts, such as natural disasters, economic downturns, social unrest, personal tragedies, and everyday challenges, without collapsing or experiencing severe disruptions. It’s founded on the principle that interconnected systems mimic the dynamic systems and structures of the natural world.
Our society, for example, is like a biological ecosystem–made up of interdependent components, subsystems, and feedback loops that adapt and change in relation to each other over time. Overall success is dependent on the adaptation and evolution of these smaller subsystems, which connect directly to each of us as members of society.
Resilient societies depend on resilient people. When we are personally resilient, we contribute to society in generative ways and experience a more aligned, empowered, and fulfilling life.
Personal resilience is the capacity to sense, integrate, and relate to ourselves and the world around us in beneficial ways. It exists in our personal ecosystem, which is made up of our history, our emotional center, and our recurrent thoughts and actions. Our personal innerworkings operate as their own system, with many parts interdependently woven together to create our complex life experience.
Building systems-based personal resilience is a unique and holistic scientific approach to sensing, analyzing, and adapting that cultivates the capacity to withstand regular challenges and impacts in order to be successful in changing circumstances. By deepening our understanding of the systems both in and outside of ourselves we are able to fully collaborate with the world around us, embrace our core selves, and thrive in uncertainty.
Through the practice of Resilience, we have the power to transform our own lives, uplift the systems around us, and facilitate positive change in the world.
Resilience in people
Our unique personal ecosystem determines how we interact with ourselves and the external systems around us. It comprises our thoughts, feelings, processes, and conscious and unconscious beliefs and behaviors. It determines how we build relationships, how and where we work, what we choose as play, as well as the communities we are a part of. At the core of our personal ecosystem is the nervous system, which consists of stored memories and neural pathways that define our behavior. This is where resilience resides.
The things we think and do regularly over time carve grooves in our neural pathways, systematically increasing the speed at which our neurons fire along those pathways and ingraining those behaviors more deeply. While these well-worn pathways are beneficial for productive behaviors, they can also entrench maladaptive patterns. Such patterns limit our neuroplasticity, creating barriers to change.
Furthermore, when we operate in maladaptive ways, our system is more vulnerable, particularly when disruption occurs. This fragility amplifies the ripple effects of any impact or stress we experience. The most vulnerable parts of us suffer the harshest consequences, and the rest of our system focuses on bringing everything else back into equilibrium to prevent those parts from being damaged or destroyed.
Is change possible? Yes, it is. Certainly it’s true that making changes when we’re young is easier. This is because our neuropathways start forming during gestation and continue to develop through our twenties. Beyond that, forming new pathways becomes more difficult–but absolutely possible.
By developing new pathways that put us in sync with our innate strengths, we can bring our personal ecosystem into alignment with our core self and change our overall behaviors.
building personal resilience
Building Personal Resilience enables us to carve new, more favorable pathways. Through a combination of thought-expanding tools and somatic (body-centered) practices, we’re able to interrupt dysfunctional historic neural pathways and facilitate the creation of new ones. This supports shifting ingrained behaviors from maladaptive to beneficial. Creating new, more resilient pathways in our nervous system equates to tangible resilience in our daily lives.
Somatic tools work to de-escalate our nervous system’s automatic responses so that we can move away from triggered reactions and into awareness and understanding of our deepest selves. From this softer, more genuine place we introduce new, more authentic pathways through mind-expanding tools (such as awareness and sense-making skills, pattern interrupters, and story-shatterers).
This work has changed my life. I’ve been able to shift from a historic triggered response of reactivity and defensiveness when feeling threatened or challenged to a grounded place of listening with curiosity. This has transformed my relationships with myself and others. It brought me into greater internal alignment and empowered me with choice - the ultimate freedom. When our maladaptive neural pathways aren’t leading us, we get to choose how we show up in the world.
By supporting new neural movement and integrating somatic practices, we begin to access new, beneficial pathways more easily. Through repetition, we deepen our new neural grooves, enabling us to sustain our resilience.
When we are personally resilient, we have the capacity to adapt and relate to the circumstances that surround us. We are able to maintain balance in our lives, and relate to ourselves and our needs so we can take action in an aligned and enlivened way. This propels us forward into the future we seek.
The 7 qualities of resilient People
| Integrity |
You understand your personal ecosystem and are authentic, transparent, and equitable in your interactions with yourself and others.
| Adaptability |
You are capable of sensing complex influences, being flexible, and pivoting beneficially in changing situations.
| Resourced |
You are supported and have access to the resources you need.
| Discovery |
You are able to learn, turn learning into action, and innovate.
| Collaboration |
You participate and engage with the world around you in generative and complementary ways.
| Diversity |
You are diverse in your thinking and have a range of options to achieve your goals and meet your needs.
| Fail forward |
You are able to withstand the regular impacts of day-to-day life and are set up to fail forward in the event of a larger disruption.
Resilience in society
Everything is connected. A resilient society is similar to a resilient person, both in terms of characteristics and dynamics of interdependent systems and subsystems. It operates at a much larger scale with additional complexity and includes interconnected individuals and organizations, legal and cultural norms, institutions, flows of communication and transportation, and infrastructure.
The 6 Qualities of resilienT societies & organizations
| Robust Systems |
Systems and people are interconnected; they share resources and information, are designed to function in complementary ways, and provide mutual support.
| Equitable |
Resources are accessible for all and power dynamics are equitable.
| Diverse |
Functions can be delivered in multiple ways and people have a range of options to achieve their goals and meet their needs.
| Transparent |
Processes and communication are transparent.
| Knowledge + Integration |
Groups and individuals are able to learn and integrate that learning now and in the future.
| Fail Safely |
There is a capacity to withstand regular impacts, fail safely in the event of a larger disruption, and adapt and thrive in response to changing circumstances.