What Resilience Really Is (And Why It Has Nothing to Do With Being Tough)

What exactly is resilience, if not courage, strength, undying hope and stubbornness all together?

Because that's what I thought it was. However, my today's years wisdom (hehe) and many read books, conversations and observations, had me rethink about it.

Resilience is not what you feel.
It’s what you practice.

Courage is a moment.
Strength is a capacity.
Hope is a light.
Stubbornness is a temperament.

Resilience is the craft of choosing, again and again, not to abandon yourself when things hurt. 

More precisely:

Resilience is the ability to stay in right relationship with reality under pressure.

Here is the difference:

• Courage is stepping into the storm.

• Strength is standing upright in it.

• Hope is believing it will pass.

• Stubbornness is refusing to move.

Resilience is learning how to bend without breaking, remember who you are while shaking, and return to yourself after being scattered.

It’s built in the space between pain and response.

(I wrote about all the invisible work that happens in the exact "between" while I had different things in mind, but here I am now, connecting the dots, and this is how we get a little wiser, a little smarter, a little stronger.)

Two people can suffer the same thing.
One becomes smaller.
One becomes deeper.

The difference isn’t moral superiority, it’s not toughness and it’s not optimism (that would be hope).

It’s whether they learn how to stand with their pain instead of being swallowed by it, or running from it.

If courage is a spark, resilience is the hearth.

And (this matters): resilience is quiet.

Resilience doesn’t announce itself. It looks like:

• getting up without believing in tomorrow yet (discipline)

• doing the next right thing without applause (consistency)

• staying soft in a world that rewards hardness (self control)

• choosing not to become someone you wouldn’t respect (self respect)

So, basically, it's a decision, conscious or not. Right?

Yes: resilience is a decision, but not a single decision and has nothing "heroic" or "epic" in it. And it's not always a loud, conscious “I choose this!” either.

(No "manifest and you'll receive" motivational SM posts here.)

It’s more accurate to say that:

Resilience is a series of small, repeated decisions made under pressure.

Sometimes conscious, like: "I will not numb this." and "I will not become cruel." and "I will take responsibility for what is still mine."

Sometimes almost instinctive: Getting up, telling the truth (even just to yourself), not letting one bad day rewrite your entire story.

That’s why it feels like traits when you look at it from the outside. Courage, grit, hope, discipline, stubborness etc are expressions of resilience, they are NOT the source.

Traits are what you have, 

Resilience is what you do with what you have.

Because...

Someone can be brave and still break.
Someone can be hopeful and still collapse.
Someone can be stubborn and turn bitter.

Resilience is the thing that says:

“Given the reality in front of me—what is the most honest, dignified next move?”

(And here’s the part where I suggest you to read "Resilience", by Eric Greitens.) 

Resilience is not about resisting (or enduring) pain.

It’s about refusing to let pain decide who you become.

In the end it’s a decision, even when you don’t feel like you’re deciding.

(Fun Fact: Not deciding is also a decision, and pain is very happy to decide for us if we let it.)

The "magic" of resilience is that it isn't forged or built when life is hard; that has already happened, much earlier:

In habits, values, meanings, and the quiet rules you live by when no one’s watching.

Okay, that was a long intro! Let's go a bit deeper.

Endurance vs Resilience (they look alike… until they don’t)

Before you ask "okay, and why is it so important to separate endurance from resilience?", I'll explain what happened: I was reading, as usual, a bunch of books, alltogether. Yes, I read like that. I have many "reading now" books: On my bedside table, on my workbench, in my backpack and of course in my phone's SD card. 

Couple of years ago, I had read "Make Your Bed" by William H. McRaven and my follow-up read was "Can't Hurt Me" by David Goggins (obvious follow-up, wasn't it?) and then life moved on, and then I read all David Goggins' books, and then Atomic Habits, and the list goes on, and then something clicked inside me.

I swear to you, I heard that sound. Which got me in a brief panic-mode on for a nanosecond, and then I breathed. 

Why? Because I had to genuinely ask myself: "Wait, did I decide to build a whole world based on the wrong definition of a word?"

Because that's more or less what had happened: I took my experiences and my point of view for the world and life, and transalted it into my craft - you can take a first look at what shaped my work here.

And my very first collection of "Spirit Animal Bracelets" was born from resilience - at least from what I thought resilience was. And I was mortified from the possibility of having given to it a wrong meaning. 

Thankfully, I was wrong about that. By clarifying resilience and separating it from its expressions (what I called "traits" earlier), I realized that I was indeed crafting from the understanding of resilience, I just didn't have the language to name it back then. 

Clarity revealed it. 

So, to continue with today's painfully long post (That’s resilience again — meta-level 😌):

Endurance is the ability to withstand pain.

Resilience is the ability to recover, adapt, and remain whole.

Endurance says:

“I can take it.”

Resilience says:

“I can take it without losing myself.”

Elementary School Example (because it fits - I have kids, so I am used to explain stuff in the simplest possible ways):

• A mule has endurance.

• A seasoned sailor has resilience.

The mule keeps walking until it collapses, yes?

But the sailor adjusts sails, reads the wind, changes course, rests when possible, and survives the storm without destroying the ship.

Here’s the confusion:

Many people, especially responsible, strong, dutiful ones, are praised for endurance when what they actually need is resilience.

Endurance alone can lead to emotional numbness, bitterness, burnout and “I survived, but I’m not sure what for”

While Resilience allows bending, learning, selective letting go (letting go is NOT giving up) and repair after strain.

Endurance is about how long you can suffer, but Resilience is about how well you live after suffering.

That difference matters. A lot.

Is resilience genetic or built?

Short answer: both.

But it's mostly built.

Genetics may influence:

• temperament (sensitivity, impulsivity, emotional intensity)

• baseline stress response

• how quickly your nervous system activates

But genetics do not determine:

• meaning-making

• moral choices

• self-discipline

• values

• the stories you tell yourself about pain

Those are taught, practiced, absorbed, and yes, chosen.

Resilience is closer to be a skillset than a trait.

And like all skills (same applies to talents):

• some people start with better tools (sucks, but that's life)

• no one starts finished (getting started a few steps ahead of others means nothing in the longrun)

• everyone can improve (like Chef Gusteau said in Ratatouille: Anyone can cook!)

Resilience is a trained character.

And it was taught through ritual, responsibility, limits/boundaries, example and service to something larger than oneself.

Modern life stripped many of those away and replaced them with “be strong” motivational posts, “don’t feel this” because you'll be characterized as weak, soft, or too much,  “push through” more gym-bro mantras and “optimize yourself” - more self-centered crap.

That can produces endurance - which is good to have yes, but it's NOT resilience and as I mentioned earlier, endurance alone is a double edged sword.

To say this clear (because we often throw a "it's genetics!" and "it's in their DNA!" as an excuse for our own lack of effort and at times, laziness)

If resilience were purely genetic, pain would always ennoble the same people.

But we know that’s not true, don't we?

Some grow kinder.
Some grow cruel.
Some grow wiser.
Some grow smaller.

Does their DNA change? Obviously not. What changes is how they learn to meet suffering.

(Of course a This is Sparta fits here)

Why (or how) modern life stripped many of the ways resilience was taught?

It wasn't on purpose (I hope).

Modern life simply replaced resilience with efficiency, comfort, and speed.

Apparently resilience doesn’t grow well in those... soft conditions.

But let's see how that happened:

1. Pain used to be integrated. Now it’s outsourced or hidden.

Traditionally, hardship was visible, shared, expected and talked about plainly.

People saw birth, illness, joy and failures, aging and death. 

Children watched adults struggle and recover. They lived with it, they lived in it, they learned.

Pain had a place in life. It was not treated as a weakness or something unwelcome or unpleasant - well, it was, but it was accepted as part of being human, as part of being alive, like breathing 🤷

On the other hand, modern, today's world life treats pain as a problem that needs to be eliminated, as a personal failure that needs to be fixed, and worse, as something embarrassing to show, so we end up totally confused and isolated, believing that it's us that did something wrong or handled things the wrong way.

We anesthetize it (literally and metaphorically), medicate it, distract from it, avoid it, monetize it, but rarely teach people how to live with/in/through it.

Resilience needs exposure + guidance.
We kept the exposure. We removed the guidance.

2. We broke the chain of example.

Resilience used to be modeled, not explained.

You learned it by watching how your family handled grief, how they faced and responded to failure, how elders spoke about loss without collapsing or dramatizing. 

But now generations are separated, families are shrinked, parents are too busy, kids are growing up in the system, elders are sidelined or treated as pure parking lots, public role models "perform" instead of guide, inspire, teach.

And social media made it worse, because all we see is outcomes and not processes.

We only see success stories, AFTER the struggle, and no ones wants to talk about the ugly behind the scenes and the struggle of the in-between.

We glorified victory, and we forgot what it takes to get there.

Resilience is forged in the middle. We just don’t show the middle anymore.

3. Responsibility was replaced with self-expression.

This one is touchy, but important.

The “You matter, but so does what depends on you”, is now replaced with the “You matter.”

What happened here?

Meaning shifted from duty, contribution, service, responsibility, to fulfillment, identity and comfort.

The problem isn’t self-expression, but self without anchor.

Resilience grows when something (or someone) needs you, even when you’re tired, fed up, afraid, broken, or hurt.

Remove obligation, and you remove one of resilience’s main teachers.

Simple as that.

Life is responsibility FIRST. 

(And now I remember something I read somwehre "the only humans that have the right to live a life without responsibilities, are infants".)

4. We confused endurance with resilience (and praised the wrong thing).

I am returning to endurance again, because the line is thin.

Modern culture glorifies hustle, grind, optimization, productivity, and so people learn to push through,  to override signals,  to ignore limits and delay (or avoid) repair.

That trains endurance, sure thing.

But then, when they break, we’re surprised.

Resilience on the other hand, would have taught pacing (and not speed), rest without guilt (boundaries and self-respect), strategic withdrawal (no ego lifting) and long-term thinking (plan ahead, preparation)

Those don’t photograph well, so we crop them off 🙄

5. We lost rituals that gave pain meaning.

Rituals mattered!

And they still do. Rituals marked transitions, acknowledged suffering and gave structure to chaos.

Now pain is private, rushed, or worse - pathologized.

(I've talked before about the importance of transition rituals, when I explained how my Ring Holder Bracelets Collection was born.)

Without ritual, suffering feels random, often without reason, or too personal (no one understands!), or even worse - pointless (maybe am I too much? Too soft? Too dramatic?)

And meaning is the soil resilience grows in.

(Here we go again, back to meaning.)

6. Speed broke reflection.

Resilience requires reflection, memory, narrative, PACE.

Yeah, good luck with that. In today's world? It feels and often truly is impossible.

Modern life says “TY Next!"

Update. Refresh. Move on. Chop-chop. 

When resilience asks “What happened to me and who did I become because of it?”

You never slow down enough to answer that.

Today there's barely enough time to even think in general, let alone slow down on purpose to digest things.

And pain remains, unproccessed.

Here's the hopeful part tho:

Since resilience today is privatized, people have to build it differently.

That's the good news. Intentionally, consciously, you build resilience.

The bad news is that in this journey, you will be mostly alone, adding an extra difficulty level to it.

But hey, that's life! And yes, you can do it (anyone can cook, remember? 🙃)

The million-dollar question is - HOW?

The people who rediscover resilience today often do it through:

• craft (amen, my fellow handcrafters!)

• care for others

• discipline (this has nothing to do with dominance and force)

• limits 

• silence

• choosing depth over noise (don't you feel sick of the massive SM platforms?)

Funny how that works, isn't it. Everything seems to return back to the same core roots. 

(Next time, I will tell you about Seneca, the boring one of the Stoics. No, he wasn't boring at all, he simply reminded everyone of the obvious stuff and the same core roots.)

To summarize: What is resilience?

a) It’s the structure that keeps you standing when everything else falls apart.

b) Resilience is a spine and spines are built slowly.

You don’t grow a spine by just wishing, meditating, manifesting.

You grow it by showing up tired, distracted, uncertain, and still doing the work that matters.

By repairing instead of discarding, by choosing alignment over relief, by returning to meaning when motivation fails.

Motivation won't take you anywhere!

That’s why resilience feels so familiar to craft.

Craft doesn’t rely on mood, but on rhythm.

The hands learn what the mind forgets - and you know that "the mind quits long before your body" (thank you, David Goggins or Joe De Sena or both)

You work with what is there, accepting limits, embracing flaws (wabi-sabi!), respecting materials+labor+time or you ruin the piece (or you lose your meaning).

Life is not different, don't you agree?

[Read Next: 10 Symbols to Wear When You've Lost Your Way (and need a guide back - do it like the seasoned sailor, not the mule 😏]