What Resilience Means, and Why It Matters

The second characteristic of resilient people is a sense of purpose — being motivated by a sense of meaning rather than by just money. Although purpose and money are not mutually exclusive, you’re more likely to be resilient when you know that even in awful or stressful situations, you’re working toward a greater and larger good.

The first trait that resilient people have is an acceptance of reality. They don’t need for things to be a certain way and don’t engage in wishful thinking. Instead of imagining “if only this changed, I could thrive,” they have a down-to-earth view that most of what happens in our lives is not entirely within our control and the best we can do is t

The most resilient people in the face of uncertainty—the ones who feel the least anxiety, the ones who are more likely to take the most worthwhile risks, the ones who get back on the horse when they get knocked off—adopt the perspective that the goal of life is internal and that the results are partly outside their control.

To build competitive advantage, organizations must help employees to cultivate qualities that have never before been critical—among them authenticity, empathy, self-awareness, constant creativity, an internal sense of purpose, and, perhaps above all, resilience in the face of relentless change.

Resilience is the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or significant sources of stress.

What makes some people pursue the unknown with zeal despite setbacks while others give up when the going gets tough? Resilience, a trait that we are not born with, involves the interplay between our natural dispositions and external experiences. Even as children, we can learn the skills that make us more resilient, more willing to tough it out as w