Change is coming by Barbara Beggs

Persistence and Resilience

March 3rd, 2010

I have spent a lot of time meditating these last couple of weeks on the ideas of persistence and resilience.

Persist is the verb: to go on resolutely or stubbornly in spite of opposition, importunity, or warning.

Resilience is the noun: has an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change.

Said another way, persistence is the behavior and resilience is the character trait.

As a coach, I often notice the degree to which clients will stick with it, hang in there, and stay after it. With the recession, resilience will certainly play a role in how well someone is able to recover from downsizing, switching careers, or adapting to a new standard of living.

I spent much of last year in treatment for breast cancer. My refusal to let it get the upper hand built my resilience in ways I never imagined .Trust me, there is nothing like being on a cancer journey to test one’s resilience.  It required that I keep on keeping on. The more I hung in there the more I hung in there.

Can you build resilience by upping your persistence? For a long time, psychologists didn’t believe people could truly build resilience. To tell the truth, there have been times I have had a hard time bouncing back after an injury to my pride and sense of self.

I now believe you can build resilience.  A cancer journey requires that you recover from the assault on your body and adjust to change. I used to be a brunette with straight hair. Now I have what I call my “chemo curls” and I have had to embrace them (and a lot of other things that aren’t the same. Trust me.)

I used to have a sailboat. When you sail, you rarely get a wind that pushes you magically to your destination. You use your  jib to tack back and forth, using the wind you have to get where you want to go.

Times like now remind us to persist in spite of storm warnings or dead calm, to use what we have to adjust to the wind, to persist and be resilient.

Entry Filed under: Coaching, Sales