By Antigone Hall
We’ve all heard the term “resilience is key” but do we even understand what that statement is saying?
There are lots of meanings and interpretations of this commonly used phrase and I want to understand how it relates to surviving in your workplace.
Let me start with its origin. It is from the Latin word resilire which means rebound or recoil.
It came on to the scene in the 1600s but if you look at the Google Books Ngram Viewer below, you can see the surge in popularity very recently.
There was a rise of the term in the 1970s, which was the start of the self-help, psychology and business management trend that was all about bouncing back from adversity.
It dipped back down in the early 80s until the early 1990s where it was growing slowly but surely until it BOOMED! From 2001 to 2022 there was an increase of nearly 1700 per cent.
Dictionary.com’s definition of resilience is:
- The ability of a person to adjust to or recover readily from illness, adversity, major life changes, etc.; buoyancy.
- The ability of a system or organisation to respond to or recover readily from a crisis, disruptive process, etc.
For a simpler definition, merriam-webster.com states, “an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change.”
In other words, suck it up and get on with it no matter what.
Why am I even talking about the word resilience? I asked full-time worker Brendan from CPN Media some questions about his working life and what he said at the end is what started this journey.
Q: How long have you been working in your life?
A: 35 years.
Q: How many years at CPN?
A: 8 years
Q: What’s the hardest thing about your job?
A: The people.
Q: How do you deal with it?
A: As best I can. Sometimes it’s combative, sometimes it’s not. Humour is a good thing.
Q: What ways do you release the stress of your day?
A: I struggle with that, a lot. I generally don’t. There is no release anymore.
Q: Self Care?
A: Not really, none at all.
Q: What advice would you give newcomers into the workforce?
A: Resilience is key because people are normally not what you expect.
His definition is exactly what we have been taught and it is often because of people. We can’t control other people but we can control how we react.
If we could get back to basics where we stop working so hard and have more time to play, then resilience wouldn’t be drilled into us all the time and we could all just … be happier.
Featured image: It’s time to fight for something more than resilience. Photo: Sora Shimazaki/CC/pexels
