The art of resilience

Resilient organisms

Since the age of the Stoics, resilience - the ability to persevere even in adverse circumstances - has been viewed as one of the most important human traits.

It can be argued that the history of humanity “itself is the story of resilience—correcting ourselves one failure after another, and coming back even stronger.” Life itself - a product of evolution which, as a process, relies on the continued stress and adaptation of organisms - can be viewed as a billions-of-years history of resilience and adaptation.

Listen to Mithi’s podcast in full here.

When it comes to finding and doing our best work, resilience is especially important. Here, we share insights from the Best Work Podcast into why resilience is such a useful tool when finding and performing work, as well as perspectives on how to cultivate greater resilience ourselves.

The benefits of resilience

Looking for work

The process of looking for work inherently tests our powers of resilience. It is at once a gruelling process which necessitates sustained, repetitive effort (a form of work in its own right), and simultaneously often a process of repeated rejection.

This rejection quite often hinges around aspects of ourselves that can prompt feelings of insecurity. To be told after an interview that you are not “the right culture fit” for an organisation you wanted to work for, or simply not skilled enough at the craft you have made your vocation, is tough to take, especially multiple times in quick succession. (More demoralising still is the impact of being rejected with no constructive feedback at all).

Hear Kemi's whole story here.

Resilience, therefore, is integral to finding work. Without it, we are unable to pick ourselves up after a setback, dust ourselves down, apply whatever learnings about ourselves are offered, and bring our full energy and attention to the next interview.

Hear more of Lucian’s story here.

Taking feedback constructively is an art form in its own right; a subset of the suite of attitudes and behaviours that, together, comprise resilience. Approaching job search as an opportunity to collect, assimilate and enact a sequence of data points about ourselves through which we can improve and grow, enables us to approach each setback along the way with greater positivity and energy.

In work

In the same way that the history of human life can be viewed as the history of adapting ourselves to the pressures of our environment, so the act of working van be viewed as a process of productive growth through overcoming successive challenges.

Head of Product Sophie maintains that overcoming such challenges is not just a vital component of becoming a good manager, but also of finding fulfilment in our work.

If work can be viewed as a series of challenges, which have to be testing in order for us to grow, it stands that we won’t always meet these challenges. Failure, in other words, is a part of work and life. Resilience in the face of failure is perhaps the most important trait in work.

According to Engineering Manager Hannah’s experience, the technology industry may, on the whole, embrace this concept more readily than other industries, including the world of art where she began her career.

Discover Hannah’s whole story here.

Cultivating resilience

One of the most important things to remember about resilience - as with any character trait - is that it isn’t something we are born either with or without, but something that anyone can cultivate and refine.

Stoic philosophy divided the world into those things that were outside and inside our own control, and posited that nothing in itself was either good or bad, but that our responses to them dictate their relative value. Adopting this stance is an inherently resilient thing to do, but it also frames resilience itself as something within our control.

Psychologist David Westley, on the Forum for Philosophy podcast, encourages considering resilience as an outcome, rather than as a personal quality. He also perceives resilience as a “complex interaction… of person, situation, the physical and social environment… A team sport.”

This concept of resilience as something collaborative and shared is encapsulated by Sophie’s experience of setting up her own consultancy.

Hear Sophie’s whole story here.

The Stoic approach emphasises preparation as a means of cultivating resilience. In other words, before encountering circumstances of stress so great that they could be detrimental to us, we are best-advised to anticipate them through pre-emptive actions. Saving helps us endure periods of financial hardship; exercise and a healthy diet improve our ability to endure physical challenges and avoid sickness, or to recover more swiftly from it.

In the context of finding work, building a broad and deep skillset will enable us to find work more quickly when searching, and this will also benefit us when it comes to performing work as well. However, this doesn't necessarily equip a person with the resilience to persevere when things are going against us. As Kemi's story shows, having the skills to perform a job, or many different jobs, doesn't necessarily make getting hired (or facing repeated rejection) any easier.

Here, it's worth splitting the two aspects of work from one another and approaching them separately. When looking for work, few people are going to be able to take "no" for an answer indefinitely. We all have bills to pay. Lucian's approach, of staying constructive throughout the process and learning as much as we can whilst dusting ourselves down, is one approach to staying committed here. As Stoic philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius, and psychologist and author Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi have both argued, introspection and an identification of our end goals can also help to cultivate resilience. During periods where the strain of the means feels overwhelming, remembering the end goal is a vital component in persevering.

When in work, however, it can be a warning sign if we're drawing too frequently on our reserves of resilience. Christian makes the point that if our gut is telling us something isn't right, that can be a sign that it's time to search for something new.

True resilience

Resilience - the ability to withstand periods of stress, adapt to them, and emerge stronger for the experience - is an innate part of not just human, but all forms of life, and is especially pertinent to the experience of finding and performing work. Facing challenges, and embracing the failures that come with them as readily as the successes, is not only a crucial component of personal growth, but also of finding fulfilling work.

Resilience isn’t something we’re born with a certain quota of; it is a quality that can be trained, nurtured and cultivated. When we do so best, we realise that true resilience isn’t even something that is confined to ourselves, but which thrives in our connectedness to our environment and to those around us.

References and further reading

https://open.spotify.com/episode/6vRTbrcEtNEUQRzfFZ5QTe

https://www.thephilosophyofeverything.com/blog/2017/9/25/the-philosophy-of-resilience