Week 5 Post 2: Resilience

In class yesterday Kyle and Erin discussed the topic of change. Before class they had the class read an article in the Harvard Business Review titled, How Resilience Works, by Diane Coutu. I really enjoyed reading this article because I gained a lot of knowledge on resilience, which I wouldn’t have learned if I didn’t read it. Resilience is a key characteristic of successful individuals. The thing that stuck out to me the most was when Dan Beaker, the CEO of Adaptiv Learning Systems which is a company that develops programs on resilience training, was asked if resilience matters in business. He responded by saying. “More than education, more than experience, more than training, a person’s level of resilience will determine who succeeds and who fails. That’s true in the cancer ward, it’s true in the Olympics, and it’s true in the boardroom”. I liked this quote because it shows that you don’t have to be the smartest or most experienced person, but if you have resilience you can still be a successful individual. I also liked how the author describes resilience. He says, “Resilience is neither ethically good nor bad. It is merely the skill the skill and capacity to be robust under conditions of enormous stress and change”. The author also explains how resilience is usually shown when an individual has to face a hardship or tragic event in their life. Unfortunately I can directly relate to this. My oldest brother unexpectedly passed away about 3 and a half years ago. This was a tragic event for me and my family and certainly one of the biggest changes in my life. I consider myself a lot more resilient because I could have felt sorry for myself, however I used it as motivation to pursue my dreams. It has also taught me to never take anything for granted and appreciate the little things in life. I believe that resilience is an important quality to have because you are going to be faced with hardships at some point in your life and resilience makes it that much easier to get through them.