Today, I want to talk a bit about resilience.
When we think of resilience, we ask ourselves: How do people recover after something terrible happens? Imagine a timeline where life goes up a bit, down a bit, and continues as usual until disaster strikes. In my case, I suffered a severe injury, and my quality of life plummeted. We often define resilience by how we recover from such drops. Do we bounce back partially or fully? Do we achieve a better state than before, known as post-traumatic growth? Essentially, how well do we recover after the fall? Is it quick or slow?
When discussing resilience, we usually focus on our reactions to adversity—how we handle those moments. I call this resilience type one. It's crucial and something we all need to master. However, there's another form of resilience to consider. Before any disaster occurs, life has its ups and downs. This pre-disaster phase is what I call resilience type zero.
Why type zero? Because it's not about acting resilient; it's about believing in our resilience. During this period, nothing catastrophic has happened yet, so we don't need to test our actual ability to overcome challenges. Instead, it's about perception—do we feel resilient?
This phase is fascinating because most of our lives are spent here. Do we believe we have resilience or not? A concept that ties into this is secure attachment. Imagine you have a four-year-old child at a playground. You tell them to play, and they confidently explore the swings for an hour before returning. This indicates secure attachment—the child felt safe trying new things without needing constant reassurance.
Now imagine a different scenario: the same child goes to play but looks back every 90 seconds to check if you're still there. This indicates less success with secure attachment. The core idea is that secure attachment and resilience involve the belief that someone will catch us if we fall.
Think about how wonderful it is to navigate life with this assurance—knowing that if you stumble, someone will be there to catch you. This feeling is part of resilience type zero and is akin to having an insurance policy for life's risks.
Where does this sense of resilience come from? We get it from our parents, friends, significant others, society, and even the government. Unfortunately, these days, we're experiencing less resilience type zero due to weakened social relationships and declining trust in institutions.
So what's the takeaway? Resilience type one is essential for handling disasters when they occur. But even in everyday life, resilience fuels our ability to take risks and try new things. To cultivate this resilience, we need to invest in it—build close friendships, create trusting relationships, develop secure attachments, and establish support systems that catch us when we fall.
That's the message: nurture both types of resilience for yourself and society.
