Resilience and Stress: Two sides of the same coin

In this third instalment we are going to explore the relationship between resilience and stress.

The World Health Organisation defines health as 'Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity'. 

I would drawn similarities to resilience and stress. The absence of stress does not mean we are resilient, within reason I would argue the opposite, we need to experience stress in order to become resilient.

Of course if we simply avoid stressful situations altogether we don't need to be resilient, however I suspect even the Dalai Lama gets stressed sometimes, probably at the increasing frequency that people are getting stressed. So in todays society avoiding stress is not that realistic for most of us, it's how we react and manage it that is in our control.

Now, we can improve our resilience through our general physical and mental health and wellbeing. Although, in order to become resilient against something we need to first experience it, and then experience it again, and again before we learn how to react and manage that situation. Being physically and mentally fit simply increases our ability to do this, time and time again.

Let me give you an example, how do we build up a resistance or resilience to a cold or flu, we get a flu jab i.e. inject ourselves with the flu virus in a small and controlled dose so our body and mind can adjust and develop a higher tolerance to this virus and we repeatedly do this year after year. Having a strong immune system will vastly improve our ability to fight off this virus so being in good health really helps.

So I have concluded that we can become stressed whether we are resilient or not, but we cannot become resilient without experiencing some degree of stress, pressure or resistance, therefore resilience and stress are truly two side of the same coin.

Resilience is relative

So we have established that resilience is our ability to return back to our original state after a period of stress without being permanently affected i.e. our ability to bounce back.

I believe that after repeated exposure to a controlled dose of stress we can build up a tolerance and therefore inoculate ourselves against stress. However, stress comes in many shapes, sizes and stains.

So building up a tolerance for a particular type of stress will not necessarily inoculate us against all forms of stress, just the one's that we are exposed to more often.

So let me use a body building analogy to explain. Body builders lift weights, load the muscles, release the weight and repeat, then there is a period of rest and recovery. What this process does is micro tear the muscles which are then repaired bigger and stronger thus increasing their resilience to this type of stress on the body and muscles.

Now I lift weights but I am unlikely to win Mr Universe, why?

The difference is the physical and mental focus and conditioning of those body builders, thus with the right training of the mind and body we can develop resilience to the stresses we experience.

I know many Executives that I consider to be very resilient and I know many athletes that are resilient but put them in each others environments and they are likely to get distorted because they have not developed the necessary type of resilience.

So resilience is relative to the stress we experience.

So just to conclude my body building analogy, I guess that a body builder who works in a corporate or 'political' environment would be extremely resilient - which might explain the catch phrase of a person that comes to mind and I will leave you with these words 'I'll be back' or should it be 'I'll bounce back'.

Next time - Stress and Resilience: two sides of the same coin

What is Resilience?

Resilience is a word we are hearing more and more in the work place these days, so what is Resilience?

Well as with most things resilience means different things to different people and there are hundreds of interpretations out there.

So I have decided to start my series of blogs on Resilience with the Scientific definition of resilience:

'Resilience is the ability of a material to absorb energy when deformed elastically and release that energy upon unloading. Therefore, resilience can be defined as the maximum energy that can be absorbed without creating a permanent distortion'

Sounds pretty scientific to me, so what does it mean to you and me? well this is my interpretation:

Resilience is our ability to deal with stress when put under pressure but more importantly have the ability to release that stress 'de-stress' back to a point of balance without it having a permanent affect. In other words its our ability to bounce back time after time.

In future blogs we will explore the relativity of resilience, its relationship with stress, resilience a state of mind and body, what comes first the chicken (resilience) or the egg (stress), and how do we become more resilient?

Until next time....be well