Bending or Breaking

This post, you may have guessed already, aims to talk about Resilience. It’s so important for me that I have talked about this already at least twice, from different perspectives. I’ve wrote about how important is Learning in my life, and the hidden meaning behind Innovation. And I’m going to talk about it at least once more (probably many times), because it’s just that important!

You know, my wife is a psychotherapist. During the last month I supported her (meaning i helped in the editing process, mind you) in writing the final essay for her specialization school, which is about Resilience in family systems. This gave me plenty of time and thought starters about this topic, and I would like to share some with you. I would also engage you about this, because it’s a very normal problem in everybody life!

First thing first, let me start from something extremely simple. Everyone get stressed in their lives. My wife calls that a critic event, and talks about small, everyday ones and big, exceptional ones.

The distinction is important because in your life there will always events that stress your inner equilibrium. One morning your car may not start. You may be ill, or a document you were working to would crash making you lose some hours work. These crises, in fact, are kind of normal and you have probably experienced at least one not only in your life, but probably in the last week. The idea is that small crises are a great gym for developing your resilience, in case a great one comes. Like a separation. Or losing a job. Or unexpectedly losing a family member (ok, she also talks about bug but normal crises in life, like losing a parent, but let’s not add too many details here).

Somehow, Resilience is a muscle. Like the more shitty your life is, the more resilient you are as a person, because you were continously forced to adjust yourself to unfriendly circumstances.

Now, that’s an interesting thought! I believe that the TED talk by Regina Hartley is basically about this: if someone had to fight for everything, he or she will be the better fighter, it’s that simple.

There is a Chinese saying that tells that if you want to straighten something, you must first learn to crook it more. That said, and in a Strategic Problem Solving way, I would like to collect (and involve you, reader) all the ways to be less resilient and bendable, more breakable. I will ask you:

If you wanted to deliberately and willingly be less resilient, and break whenever a small crisis comes into your life, what would you do and not do? What would you say and not say? What would you think and not think?

Here is my unordered list. I hope that with your comments you will help me in making it more complete!

• Never assume different perspectives: searching for more perspectives of a topic helps you in finding new and creative solution, thus if you want to be less resilient you should avoid it at all costs!
• Be always coherent: never change your ideas! You know, world change around you, but your idea must not! Only this way you will be forever rigid.
• Keep trying the same solution: probably if something worked in the past, it should still continue working. Never mind that everything about it has changed, you should just keep trying more!
• Never question anything: questions generate doubts, but if you want to be a truly iper-fragile-super-rigid person you should never question anything. Never!
• Assume you are always right: obviously the only person in the world who is truly every time right is you. Again, you should never question this, nor assume different perspectives!

This is it , for now. Obviously, as you surely understood, my list aggregates many dangerous behaviours, that still many people more or less knowingly assume. I hope to have helped you, even if just a little, and I hope that you will help me in making this list much more complete!