“Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.”
    -Ralph Waldo Emerson
    
What do Wile E. Coyote and marshmallows have to do with determining the future success of you and your nieces and nephews?

It’s all about resilience – a word that keeps popping up in discussions about the economy, the future, and tough times we’ve had for the past couple of years.

We use quite a few words to describe resilience: waterproof, tenacity, bravery, optimism, stress resistant, hearty, and far-sighted. However you describe it, resiliency is one of the most important factors in being successful. By being resilient, you can thrive when under pressure and change.

So Savvy Auntie, are you resilient? More importantly, how resilient are your nieces and nephews?

When speaking at the National Association of Professional Organizers’ conference this year, Dean M. Becker, co-founder of Adaptiv Learning Systems, says, “More than education, more than experience, more than training, it’s resilience that determines who succeeds and fails.”

Becker also pointed out what is not resilience by using a familiar example – Wile E. Coyote. Our favorite perpetually frustrated coyote is always chasing the Roadrunner, but his plans go awry. You would think that since he keeps trying that he is resilient. “Blind persistence is not resilience,” Becker said. “It would be better for Wile E. Coyote to go to KFC and forget the Roadrunner.”

The simplest explanation of resilience comes from borrowing the Serenity Prayer, said Becker. If you’re resilient, you know when to accept things you cannot change and the courage to change the things we can and the wisdom to know the difference.

Other oft-quoted examples of resilience are people like John McCain, who survived as a prisoner of war. The prisoners who said, “We’ll be home by Christmas” gave up when whatever self-imposed date passed by without them being released. The prisoners like John McCain who said “we don’t know when but we’re going home” were more likely to survive their captivity.

Authors of The Resilience Factor: 7 Keys to Finding Your Inner Strength and Overcoming Life’s Hurdles outline the seven strengths you need to be resilient. These strengths are closely connected to Emotional Intelligence, another factor determining the ability to thrive and change.

-Emotion regulation. Do you have the ability to keep emotions in check? Can you move forward without having a breakdown and maintain your composure?

-Impulse control. Do you have the ability to delay gratification? In a Stanford Study in the 1960s, a researcher offered hungry 4-year-olds a marshmallow, but if they didn’t eat the marshmallow while the researcher was out of the room, they would get two. Those who waited the 15 minutes for the researcher to return had delayed gratification and impulse control. In a follow-up once they graduated high school, those who had waited for the marshmallow were found to be more successful in their relationships and careers and had higher levels of confidence, happiness and impulsive control.

-Causal analysis. The good thing for me is that this one doesn’t involve math problems and determining how fast two trains will reach Chicago. So how well do you problem-solve? Can you determine the root cause of problems you’re facing?

-Self-efficacy. This is closely related to mastery. Can you handle the problems that come your way? If there’s a small crisis at work, let’s say, can you deal with it effectively and efficiently?

-Realistic optimism. While wide-eyed optimism won’t get you where you want to go, having a realistic, optimistic attitude will. It’s perfectly okay NOT to be optimistic when things are bad. Otherwise you may be avoiding very real problems.

-Empathy. Do you have the ability to walk in another’s shoes? Can you see issues from other people’s points of view?

-Reaching Out. Like the Starship Enterprise, you should seek out new challenges and boldly go. Somewhere. By expanding your experiences, you expand your ability to be flexible and adaptable.

Our resilient thinking is developed from childhood by using our five senses, but we can find ways to boost our resilience. How can a Savvy Auntie make a difference in the resiliency of her nieces and nephews? Simply be there for them when the going gets tough.

Resiliency studies of adults who came from broken, abusive, or stressful homes showed each one had one person in their lives who made the difference: the one who encouraged them, called them out on their stuff when needed, was a constant presence of love and acceptance.

 For these resilient adults, the person was a parent, grandparent, teacher, minister, uncle or yes, a Savvy and Resilient Auntie.

Janice Marie Simon, MA, CPO

Published: July 20, 2010