The Real Value of Resilience in Creating Success
Being resilient is a key requirement in overcoming difficult situations as a life coach. And emerging victorious from those events is instrumental in attaining success.
Are you familiar with the sailboat?
This is a transportation vehicle that moves on the sea. It’s made up of several important parts that its captain uses to direct its journey on turbulent sea waters.
Well, the sailboat can also be used as a metaphor for your life, with you as the captain.
That’s because several events can affect the course of the sailboat. Likewise, several circumstances can affect the course of your life. But it’s how you respond to those events that determine if you will get to your destination or not.
And the key to that is resiliency.
When you’re resilient, you have a good chance of weathering the storm and getting to your desired destination.
But what does being resilient really mean?
That’s what we’ll talk about in this article. We’ll also explain how valuable being resilient is to your life and your journey to becoming a successful life coach.
What Resilience Means
The reality is that resilience has different meanings based on the contexts and situations in which it is used.
For example, it could refer to one’s ability to accept their faults and weaknesses, and then be ready to work on them. It could also mean being passionate, determined and persistent in pursuing a desired goal.
In the context of this article, resilience is your ability to bounce back from a setback. This could be a physical setback, a financial setback, or a career setback. So, resilience is about how you react to difficult life events and emerge stronger and better afterwards.
Resilience is the reason some people survive and thrive in certain life events and others don’t. It’s a quality that is present in the life of successful life coaches and serial winners.
The Challenge of Resilience
As mentioned, the concept of resilience is abstract. Different people from different walks of life will give different meanings to it. And those definitions may not be similar to each other.
However, most people who have researched the idea of resilience agree on three things about it:
- Resilience thrives in adversity and positive adaptation.
Most people agree that resilience has two core concepts: adversity and a positive adaptation to that adversity.
- Resilience changes over time.
A lot of people believe that resilience is a dynamic process that changes with time. This means that exposure to bad things or difficult situations is not always bad. We can always learn from those events to become better.
- Resilience is influenced by numerous factors.
Just because you were resilient when facing certain adversity doesn’t automatically make you resilient against another adversity. Resilience can be influenced by the event, time, place or even one’s state of mind.
The Sailboat Metaphor
As mentioned, we can use the sailboat as a metaphor for your life. It’s because a person with a really high level of resilience can be likened to a capable captain of a sailboat.
This captain can ride out a storm at sea and handle the boat effectively. They can also adjust quickly to changes in the weather. And if the storm causes the boat to divert from its course, the captain can take charge and guide it back to its original course.
What’s more, the captain can utilise the positive potential of good weather. And they know how to work through bad weather. It’s because they have the tools they need to navigate safely through the storm. For instance, they know how to hoist the sails, when to hoist them, and when not to.
That kind of captain is a resilient captain.
The 2 Types of Resilience
There are two distinctions that we can make with resilience itself.
- Trait-level resilience.
Also referred to as “ego-resilience,” trait-level resilience is an individual’s general ability to deal with adversity. It has to do with the characteristics that enable people to adapt to the difficult circumstances that they encounter.
When we talk about trait-level resistance, we’re looking at things like genes, history, personality type, and so on.
Now, I personally believe this is the zoomed-out approach to resilience for most people. And for us coaches, changing this type of resilience in our clients is quite hard. It’s not really malleable as it is intrinsic in people.
- State-level resilience
This type of resilience is about an individual’s ability to deal with specific aversive situations or moments of difficulty. Here, resilience is a process rather than a static state. It changes from one situation to another throughout one’s life span.
And the good thing about this type of resilience is that we can help our clients develop or improve on it.
Leverage Resilience For Your Growth
Resilience has a ton of meanings based on the context in which it is used. Although many people disagree on its actual meaning, most people agree on 3 things about resilience:
Resilience thrives in adversity, it changes over time, and it can be influenced by a number of factors.
You can also liken resilience to the captain of a sailboat who can weather any storm and keep the boat on course to a destination. Because when you’re resilient, you have a better chance to weather the storms.
Needless to say, being resilient will help you achieve growth on a personal level and business level. And your understanding of resilience will give you the opportunity to help your clients be resilient as well.
