How to Cultivate Resilience: A Four Part Framework

As Diane Coutu so eloquently explains in her luminous “How Resilience Works,” “Resilient people possess three characteristics — a staunch acceptance of reality; a deep belief, often buttressed by strongly held values, that life is meaningful; and an uncanny ability to improvise. You can bounce back from hardship with just one or two of these qualit

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Learning to thrive in a resilient culture is essential. Being indoctrinated into a rigid and fragile mindset is not.

I study resilience as it relates to disaster response, and contemporary scholars are more or less in agreement that the concept of resilience is used as a way to place responsibility that belongs with the government onto individuals and communities that are hit the hardest by various extreme events (almost always low income communities of color). O... See more

Resilience isn’t about being unshakable; it’s about getting up every time you’re knocked down. It’s about facing challenges head-on, knowing that you might stumble, but you’ll always find your footing again. Adaptability, on the other hand, is about flow—it’s the ability to pivot, to shift gears when life takes an unexpected turn, and to thrive in ... See more

Resilience requires a kind of elasticity, an ability to stretch and reach but then to return, to spring back into a former shape—or perhaps to shapeshift into something new if the circumstances require it. Resilience is stretchy where optimization is brittle; resilience invites change where optimization demands continuity. But whether we’re talking

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TRANSMISSION #38

DISCOVERY: As I contemplate the evolutionary nature of inspiration, I've begun to sense a deeper connection between creativity and resilience. Just as species that are able to adapt to changing circumstances are more likely to survive and thrive over time, so too are individuals and organizations that are able to innovate and evolve... See more

How can I maintain my creativity, optimism, intellectual vitality, and sense of agency in the face of the stress that comes from building a company and the endless forces luring towards conformity?

We start raw, then our hearts and minds get boiled by constraints, pressure, feedback, and challenges. How do we keep our head up and maintain our creat... See more