Are You Resilient? Research reveals the mindsets and behaviors we need to cultivate resilience.
Resilience has become the hot topic of today. You can barely enter a parenting, business, or school conversation without hearing about it.
Some resilience researchers worry that we’re asking narrow questions about individual behavior and overlooking social context. They’re working to elevate the conversation to include systems analysis so we can foster collective resilience.
Using social network analysis theory, an interdisciplinary research team comprised of Jessica Shaw, Kate McLean, Bruce Taylor, Kevin Swartout, and Katie Querna point out that most of our stories of resilience are conjured up through the lens of highly romanticized, individualistic, against-the-odds ideals. We can’t get enough of rags-to-riches and setback-to-comeback stories, but we rarely stop and look at why they were necessary at all.
The authors make the point that hyping displays of grit and mental strength while ignoring the social context, which created the need for these traits, to begin with, reinforces a narrow, dominant group view of resilience.
There is also a lot of public judgment and blaming that goes on, which critiques and points fingers, making people internalize shame instead of seeing the social forces bearing down upon us.
This can give the toxic inner critic license to nag. We think and say things like:
If I haven’t earned perfect scores or followed a straight and narrow academic or job path, I’m a failure. If I didn’t do well in school early in life, I’m done. This string of bad relationships means I’ll never find love. When I mess up, I’m an idiot.
Resilient people know that it’s not productive to marinate in anxiety and take everything personally without factoring in context. Research shows that resilient people have learned to catch themselves in the act when thoughts start to spiral downwards. Instead, they rely on the mindsets and behaviors that allow them to push through and ignore the chirping of the toxic inner critic.