Is anyone Born Resilient?
It is an ability that we have to develop as we meet the challenges of daily life. It’s why babies aren’t born running – they have to learn to crawl, stand, stumble, walk, and finally run! And If you watch this process in babies, you’ll see their struggle, their determination to move their legs, and their gleefulness when they can finally run.
However, building resilience is not only about the weak becoming strong but also about the strong, or even the strongest, becoming stronger.
How? Or why would the strong or even the strongest need to become stronger? Because we can only develop resilience when we are thrown through the stormy rollercoaster of life, and no one is immune to storms.
We all admire the late Nelson Mandela, but his life story was not an easy victory. He was sentenced to life imprisonment at the young age of 44 because he fought against apartheid in his country, South Africa, and he eventually spent 27 years of his life in prison.
For most men, this would have been the end of the road, even after being released. But Mandela was not broken by incarceration – instead, he used the time to pray and plan for the future. And when he was finally released, he rose to become the first black President of South Africa and a global symbol of hope.
Our ability to recover from difficult situations, manage stress, and still maintain a positive outlook in life, despite adversity, is what is called BEING RESILIENT, and it is a crucial aspect of our mental and emotional well-being. This does not mean that we become immune to life’s challenges but keep developing the capacity to navigate through them. Like I once said,
“What shapes us does not make us; we have innate abilities and unlimited capacity to change our trajectory and allow God to determine the outcome, so we can make the world a better place, one person at a time”.
Another such story is Tobi Amusan, the current World, Commonwealth, African and Nigerian Champion in track and field athletics. But she wasn’t always a celebrated champ. For so many years, she struggled to be noticed, and even once tweeted;
“Unknown now, but soon I will be UNFORGETTABLE, I will Persist until I SUCCEED.”
She had to overcome various challenges, including an injury that kept her out of competition for several months. However, she persisted and went on to win at global levels and is now seen as a role model for aspiring athletes.
In my own case, one of my tests of persistence came when I was setting up the first structured non-bank unsecured consumer lending companies in Nigeria. I was struggling so much to scale the business model because the target market found it hard to believe our offering is for real. The group I worked for recruited a fierce, experienced, and well-travelled man to serve as the group’s chief operating officer. In his effort to streamline the various businesses in the group, I was invited to his office for a meeting. Initially, I thought it was meet-and-greet, smiling my usual way until he started addressing my business. “We cannot continue to support this business; I have seen it in many places, they always fail”. Finally. he said, “This will also fail, so I will advise you to look for another job”.
Shocked and stunned, trying to bring myself back to the reality of what I had just heard, he summoned the chairman of the company to his office and repeated the same thing. What! My dreams, hope, desire, efforts, people I had recruited, their careers, and other stuff, flashed through my mind, while still in that zone, as if the chairman of the company could read my mind, he said, “You can continue and let me think about what’s next.
Fast forward to 2 years after. I was invited on stage to receive the award for the fastest growing and fastest to turn a profit company in the group. Guess who was cheering loudest and came running to join me on the stage? Your guess matched mine. He said, “I always knew you would succeed because of your persistence (resilience)!
Seasons of life are ever-changing, and in many cases, we have no control over eventualities or circumstances. We sometimes have; seasons of joy and abundance, seasons of uncertainty, seasons of loss and pain, and seasons of silence. We have all heard of or experienced these. And in the hardest of these seasons, the capacity to survive, embrace change and persevere becomes essential – and THIS IS WHERE OUR RESILIENCE IS BORN.
We are forced to develop resilience when we encounter an unfamiliar season in life because it always leads us down unfamiliar paths, stretches us beyond our normal limits, and forces us to grow – but building resilience is impossible without expanding, stretching, and growing beyond our comfort zones. This means that to be resilient, we have to view and embrace challenges as opportunities for growth and to learn rather than as setbacks – thus cultivating the willpower to succeed.
Resilience is also developed when pursuing purpose, as RESILIENCE and PURPOSE share a symbiotic relationship – Finding and achieving purpose feeds on resilience, and building resilience, is impossible without purpose.
So, what is PURPOSE? It is the driving force that provides a sense of direction and meaning to life. It fuels our values, beliefs, identity and aspiration and is the only accurate measure of fulfilment in life.
It was purpose that powered my resilience to pioneer the non-bank consumer lending industry, in Nigeria. Purpose is what kept Nelson Mandela alive whilst in prison and then to the presidency and becoming a global icon, and it is what kept Tobi Amusan going till she clinched championships.
Hence, to find fulfilment in life, we must become resilient. This often requires us to be flexible and adaptable, cultivate a positive and growth mindset, build a supportive network, communicate better, and develop the essential emotional and mental capacity to tackle challenges and setbacks.
There is no perfect time in life to start building resilience – it is an ongoing process that involves continuous learning and intentional effort towards succeeding in our pursuits. Resilience is not about being perfect or invincible. It is rather about learning to overcome adversity with strength, courage, and grace.
Much Love,
AA.
