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.