“Resilience” is everywhere lately. We constantly see the word in the news, pop-psychology articles, and self-help literature. But rarely is the mention accompanied by a description of resilience that gives us a clear understanding what it means, what it looks like in real life, and how we can get some. So, this article is my attempt to clarify what resilience is, and what it is not.
The Egg and The Tennis Ball
There’s a simple, but deeply flawed, demonstration often used by Army Master Resilience Trainers to illustrate what we mean by “resilience.” The instructor stands in front of the audience holding a raw egg and a tennis ball. They hold the egg straight out in front of them and drop it to the ground. Of course, the egg smashes open and makes a big mess (that gets everybody’s attention!) Next, they drop the tennis ball. The tennis ball simply bounces back up and the instructor catches it. The “lesson” is simple – A tennis ball is resilient, but an egg is not; when resilient people fall down, they bounce back up instead of breaking.
The “egg and tennis ball demonstration” is certainly memorable. If we were talking about resilience of materials, it might suffice. But we’re talking about HUMAN resilience here, and our definition of human resilience is a little different. It states that resilience is “the ability to grow and thrive in response to a challenge and bounce back from adversity.”
That tennis ball bounces back, but it does not grow and thrive. But the tennis ball analogy is not flawed only because it’s incomplete. It has problems that lead to serious misconceptions about how we can be more resilient in our lives.
Problem 1: The egg breaks, and the tennis ball bounces because of how they’re made.
This might lead us to believe that resilience is something you have to be born with, that you “either got it, or you don’t.” The truth is that resilience results from a set of skills that almost anyone can learn.
In a series of studies, Dr. Martin Seligman and Dr. Karen Reivich demonstrated that teaching basic skills to various populations resulted in improved resilience, performance, and quality-of-life outcomes. These populations are as diverse as schoolchildren, employees, and Army Soldiers.
Resilience isn’t something you’re born with, it’s a set of skills that you learn and practice.
Problem 2: The tennis ball bounces back immediately, quickly, and with no effort whatsoever
Let’s be clear, the tennis ball doesn’t bounce so much as it gets bounced. For humans, it’s the opposite. Bouncing back is something we do, not something that gets done to us. And in reality, it’s often more like climbing than bouncing – it’s slow and difficult work, with lots of slips and setbacks on the way up. That’s not as sexy as the tennis ball metaphor, but it’s real, and it’s better than staying knocked down.
Resilience isn’t automatic, it requires deliberate effort and application of skill.
Problem 3: The tennis ball is unchanged by the experience
This is the biggest and most important problem with the “egg and tennis ball demonstration.” In real life, our experiences change us. Our positive experiences change us, our challenges change us, and our adversities change us. This stays true no matter how resilient we are. In fact, human resilience requires that we grow in response to a challenge; and growth is a form of change.
Human resilience is achieved by integrating difficult changes into our lives in a healthy and meaningful way. Dr. Victor Frankl described this powerful concept in his book Man’s Search for Meaning. Dr. Frankl describes how he and others found deep meaning and sometimes even joy in the worst circumstances imaginable – as a prisoner in the Nazi concentration camps. Dr. Frankl went on to help many thousands of people improve their lives by finding meaning in their unavoidable suffering.
Hopefully, you will never experience anything remotely close to the suffering of a concentration camp. So, let’s consider a more subtle example of meaning-making that comes to us in the form of an ancient Japanese art. Kintsugi is a centuries-old technique of restoring broken pottery. But kintsugi artists never attempt to make the broken item perfect or “like new.” Instead, they mix gold, silver, or other precious metal colors with their repair glue. Then, the restored cracks shine bright and become an important part of the item, making it more unique and telling a story about its history.
Kintsugi artists don’t hide the previous damage, they highlight it. In doing so, they make the item entirely one-of-a-kind, much more interesting, and much more beautiful than before it was damaged. Kintsugi artists make meaning from mishaps.
Here’s one last piece of encouragement for integrating change in a healthy way, and it’s only 10 words long:
“If your heart is broken, make art with the pieces.”
Shane Koyczan
A Better Demonstration of Resilience
If the tennis ball is not a good metaphor for human resilience, then is there a better one? I think so.
Let’s make a very simple change to our “egg and tennis ball demonstration.” Imagine that we dropped a ceramic coffee mug instead of an egg. Like the egg, it smashed into the ground and broke into pieces. After using the tennis ball to highlight some of the misconceptions about resilience, as I just did, we then produce an identical coffee mug that has been repaired in the style of Kintsugi pottery. The mug is more unique, interesting, and valuable because of having been damaged.
Yet, the mug isn’t our model of a resilient person any more than the tennis ball is. Because they’re both inanimate objects, they didn’t do anything at all. The real model of resilience in this story is the Kintsugi artist. First, they learned the skill needed to mend the damage. Then, they applied that skill with deliberate effort and attention in order to integrate change in a meaningful way.
Conclusion
Resilience is the ability to grow and thrive in response to a challenge and bounce back from adversity. It’s a set of skills that can be learned and practiced by almost anyone. Resilience requires deliberate effort to accept our negative experiences and integrate them into our lives in a healthy and meaningful way.
When life calls on you to be resilient, model the Kintsugi artist who creates meaning from mishaps and makes art from broken pieces.