I see, hear and read a lot about resilience and what it means. It’s something that can be cultivated, worked on, a seed planted that can be nurtured and grown to create strength. It’s not the same for everyone. Each of us feels it differently, and some feel they don’t have any at all.

Google definition: Resilience is the ability to adapt well to adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or significant sources of stress. The Merriam-Webster dictionary goes so far as to define resilience as the capability of a strained body to recover its size and shape after deformation caused, especially by compressive stress. Wow, that is heavy!

Language is so important – the words we use to each other and to ourselves have a profound effect on how we perceive situations, life and the world around us.

So, hang on, let’s take a look at that very first word from the google definition above: adversity, and apply it to what we’re talking about. Resilience is the ability to keep going in the face of adversity.

Have you ever really thought about that phrase: in the face of adversity? Google says adversity doesn’t actually have a face, but what if we did literally give adversity a face? What would that face look like for you?

• Would it be angry, frustrated, arrogant?
• What colour hair, eyes, skin?
• Does it have a gender?
• What clothes would adversity wear?
• Is it tall, short, wide, slim, heavy, light?

What happens if you give it a silly voice or a clown face? (apologies to those who have a fear of clowns)

Could adversity ever be your friend, and if so, what name would it have?  If you went out for dinner, or a coffee, with your new “friend”, what conversations would you have, what would you like to say to her/him/it to build rapport, trust and understanding?

Now you have personified adversity, had an intimate conversation and made friends with it, does it carry the same adverse connotation, hardship or overwhelm? Does it create the same sort of anxiety it did before? Are you more able to see a path through or around the adverse situation?

By changing perspectives and looking at difficult things from a different angle opens the doorway to find solutions to things we may have considered to be, up until now, insurmountable.

Does the above exercise belittle a situation, make it any less important to navigate and overcome? No it doesn’t, but by changing how our brain perceives a threat, by showing our brain that it doesn’t need to freeze or run away, opens the gateway to problem solving in a more creative way. We’re then able to find that extra resource inside ourselves and build that little bit more resilience to enable us to move forward with confidence, knowing we can do it. We do have the capacity.

Turn adversity into your friend, find your resilience and use it as your superpower!