What Does it Mean to be Resilient? by Cindy Stradling CSP, CPC

Leaders and entrepreneurs need several character traits in order to be successful. The willingness to adapt, take advice and be persistent are all critical to achieving big goals. However, many experts have suggested that there is one trait even more important than any of these. The trait that will most benefit you as you grow a business or take on any other serious professional or personal challenge is resilience.

Resilience, simply put, is the ability to bounce back. Resilience works side by side with persistence, but is different. Persistence refers to not giving up, while resilience is the trait that keeps you positive and ensures you don’t lose your passion for the goal.

People who have resilience are not only focused on achieving their goals even after suffering through failure after failure; they are also stronger and more focused because of those failures.

Resilience takes many forms in our personal and professional lives. It helps us continue to love an imperfect spouse even after he or she has hurt us. It keeps us believing that our children will turn out to be contributing members of society even after they have gone astray. Resilience prevents us from giving up on life being everything we want it to be.

Developing resilience requires having some failures to bounce back from. It also requires having a goal that you are passionate to pursue. As you see persistence pay off, resilience becomes more natural. Like many other positive character traits; resilience is developed through trials in life and personal setbacks.

Once you’ve developed some resilience, you’ll find that you are happier simply because the failures in life don’t affect you so dramatically. You bounce back easier, with your eyes continually focused on the prize.

Over the next few weeks we will talk more about resilience and examine its benefits more closely. This is one character trait you must work to develop in order to realize your most important dreams.