Resilience – falling down, getting up and practicing again

There are many terms for the world we live in today. The best known is the VUCA world (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity). Ultimately, it’s always about the same thing, says Markus Renevey, founder and head of the Swiss Resilience Hub in Zurich and guest speaker at the CAS Leadership & Inclusion: “People are insecure because everything is becoming more and more complex.” One example of this is deep fakes – realistic-looking media content that is altered, generated or falsified using artificial intelligence techniques. While we used to be able to rely on photos and videos, we now have to ask ourselves which content is genuine.

This increasing complexity requires more resilience – that means getting up again and again after crises and, ideally, learning something from them. “Resilience does not mean that we condition ourselves so that we can withstand everything and nothing knocks us down. Resilient people are vulnerable and can feel overwhelmed. It is even important to allow such situations to occur. Resilience is about bouncing back and adapting to change,” says Renevey. In other words: the art of accepting adversity and learning to deal with it.

Where does resilience come from?

The US developmental psychologist Emmy Werner investigated the question of what makes certain people more resilient than others. She examined 201 children who all had a difficult youth. Contrary to expectations, 72 of them led a stable and good life despite their difficult past. The decisive factor that made the difference, according to Werner, was dignified and respectful relationships. The 72 children may not have had a good relationship with their parents, but they all had at least one person – teacher, relative, etc. – who offered them a positive bonding experience and made them resilient.

According to Renevey, there are other resilience factors or competencies, as they are called at the Swiss Swiss Resilience Hub. There are these seven:

• Self-management: Knowing and managing yourself in order to live in harmony with yourself.
• Health literacy: Relevant knowledge about nutrition, relaxation, exercise and also “living” according to this knowledge.
• Connectedness: Entering into and leading sustainable relationships (the aspect that Emmy Werner also emphasizes).
• Meaning and solution orientation: Promoting meaningful thinking and action and acting with a view to the future.
• Acceptance and adaptation: Accepting circumstances that cannot be changed and adapting to new situations.
• Personal responsibility: Taking responsibility for your own well-being and not blaming others or external factors.
• Realistic optimism: No “blind” positivism, but a confident attitude appropriate to the situation.

Resilience training

The bad news is that some resilience is innate or acquired in early childhood. The good news is that there is still a significant amount that can be learned throughout life. “Resilience is trained by practicing self-awareness, self-empowerment and self-control. The better you get at this and the more positive experiences you have, the easier it becomes,” says Renevey.

Self-awareness is about knowing your own feelings and needs. The method of mindfulness is also based on this – being in the here and now and connected with yourself in the world. Self-empowerment is not selfish – as you might think at first glance – but the basis for being able to be there for others. And last but not least, self-control means being able to regulate your own emotions, thoughts and actions.

Change leave love

The “Change leave love” model is very simple and helps to make conscious decisions. According to the model, there are three options in every situation: Change it, leave it or learn to love it. Renevey explains this with an example: “Imagine you are in an open office and someone is talking unpleasantly loudly on the phone. You can ask the person to speak more quietly (change), leave the room (leave) or accept the noise (love)”. If you are not in one of these three states, you automatically fall into the victim position, in which you can become aggressive, desperate or angry (Suffer).

It’s not about avoiding this fourth state: “Suffering is important,” says Renevey. It shows you how you are feeling and that you are aware of yourself. Resilience is not the absence of negative feelings, but the ability to deal with them. “Life is a constant back and forth of Leave, Suffer, Love, Change, then you try again with Leave…. and so on,” he adds. After all, all feelings are part of being human. According to the saying “You can’t get wet from the word water”, resilience must also be lived and not just studied. “I don’t have to know how to be resilient, but I can always try – fall down, get up and practise again,” concluded Renevey.