What if resilience is a state we receive not a skill we achieve?

Is resilience the rule or the exception?

What do you think?

I'm fascinated by the concept of resilience in part because everyone's definitions are so different -- and often mutually exclusive.

Bestsellers on resilience tend to center on extraordinary feats of endurance, cultivated through intense focus and effort.

Meanwhile, some theorists claim that resilience is the rule rather than the exception, noting that most people bounce back after tragedy without major interventions.

Then there's the emerging trauma research which acknowledges the major impact of abuse and neglect on our nervous system and describes the need to nurture resilience in those who've experienced shock or deprivation.

But at the same time, deprivation is the reason resilience is necessary at all, and we intuitively understand that difficult situations produce resilient attitudes.

So which is it? Is resilience the human default, or does it require intense effort? Is it easy to come by, or is it rare? Does deprivation tend to make us more resilient or less?

There are answers to all these questions, which I'll leave for another post. For now, I want to suggest one thing:

Resilience in the truest sense is not a skill we achieve, but a state we receive.

When we're faced with deprivation in our lives, it prompts us to go deeper and find a source of shelter and a sense of self within. This experience, in turn, tends to promote organization and regulation in our bodies and mind.

This experience of self and shelter is not something we invent or earn -- it's already there, available to each of us.

All we need to do is receive it.