Adaptability: Ability of an entity or organism to alter itself or its responses to changing circumstance or environment. Adaptability demonstrates the ability to learn from experience and improve the chances of survival and/or thriving.
Resilience: 1. The ability to recover quickly from illness, change or misfortune; buoyancy. 2. The property of a material that enables it to resume its original shape or position after being bent, stretched, or compressed; elasticity.
Adaptability and resilience are two different, but related attributes.
I have observed a lack of resilience repeatedly in my life. Like the rat mentioned earlier in this blog (post: December 8th, 2010) I seem to have no whiskers, give up and sink to the bottom.
Why does a sister coming from the same environment seem to have these two attributes in spades and I don't?
How is it, that people who have gone through far worse life experiences than I, not only survive; but thrive? Whereas I, with lesser life challenges have wanted to die?
A graph in one of the Psychology of Happiness books stuck in my head, and I have tried to reproduce it below:
I don't know how well you can see this graph; but the idea is, that life goes along, our well-being fluctuates between normal parameters. Then something traumatic happens. Something "bad". From this point forward, there will be those who never recover; those who go down briefly, and then recover enough to carry on--but at a point of well-being lower than originally--Survivors.
Then, there are those who may go down initially; but who somehow rise above the traumatic event and do even better than before--Thrivers.
How does this happen? Are there factors we can assimilate to make our lives better? Can we learn how to thrive? Rather than wanting to give up and die?
Over the coming weeks, I'll be reading and researching to see if I can discover the key to thriving, post trauma. What constitutes a resilient person?
Resilience: 1. The ability to recover quickly from illness, change or misfortune; buoyancy. 2. The property of a material that enables it to resume its original shape or position after being bent, stretched, or compressed; elasticity.
Adaptability and resilience are two different, but related attributes.
I have observed a lack of resilience repeatedly in my life. Like the rat mentioned earlier in this blog (post: December 8th, 2010) I seem to have no whiskers, give up and sink to the bottom.
Why does a sister coming from the same environment seem to have these two attributes in spades and I don't?
How is it, that people who have gone through far worse life experiences than I, not only survive; but thrive? Whereas I, with lesser life challenges have wanted to die?
A graph in one of the Psychology of Happiness books stuck in my head, and I have tried to reproduce it below:
I don't know how well you can see this graph; but the idea is, that life goes along, our well-being fluctuates between normal parameters. Then something traumatic happens. Something "bad". From this point forward, there will be those who never recover; those who go down briefly, and then recover enough to carry on--but at a point of well-being lower than originally--Survivors.
Then, there are those who may go down initially; but who somehow rise above the traumatic event and do even better than before--Thrivers.
How does this happen? Are there factors we can assimilate to make our lives better? Can we learn how to thrive? Rather than wanting to give up and die?
Over the coming weeks, I'll be reading and researching to see if I can discover the key to thriving, post trauma. What constitutes a resilient person?
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