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Growing high in the mountains of the western United States is the bristlecone pine. The tree looks gnarled and old. It often grows out of a small crevice in rock, in places where winds can be high and snow accumulates through the fall, winter, spring, and doesn't melt until mid-summer -- in a good year. Here, a growing season is just a few short months yet, these trees have been known to live upwards of 5000 years.

They are resilient.

Resilience in humans has been described as the ability to use personal qualities to withstand pressure. (Fletcher & Sarkar, 2016).

As individuals, we have the capability of fostering resilience to find success despite adversity, physical difficulties and mental challenges.

Like many athletic endeavors, ultra-marathons provide plenty of opportunity to highlight the resilience of an individual. Conditions can often be harsh. Rain, snow, heat, lightning, hail and altitude are just some of the environmental challenges. The physical challenge of moving your body through these conditions while running and walking for hours or days requires a person to be resilient. A recent race in Steamboat Springs, Colorado provided many examples of resilience. One woman, Courtney Dauwalter, slowly lost her sight during the race. She stumbled often, tripped, hit her head and struggled to stay on the trail. Nevertheless, she persevered and finished the race in 6th place overall, winning the women's division.

How do athletes do it? How does anyone keep moving forward after getting hit again and again?

Researchers have identified a number of traits in resilient people that may be the keys to their success. These traits include: strong social connections, an ability to set long-term and short-term goals, a focus on mastering skills, optimism, positive self-talk, a growth mindset, and strong belief in self.

Strong social connections indicates that you have an ability to rely on others and that you know it’s OK to ask for help. In order to have strong social connections, it is important to create a network of positive people that support you. It is also equally important that you support others. Recent research into well-being recognizes that focusing on other people through kindness and gratitude can have tremendous benefits towards thriving.

Setting long-term and short-term goals allows you to be focused on the future. If we take a look back at the ultra-runner who lost her sight during the race, we can see that she focused on the short-term, getting to the next tree or the next aid station, while keeping her long term goal in mind, finishing the race. How do you eat an elephant? – One bite at a time!

Resilient people are able to contend with problems that appear because they've learned the skills to contend with the problem. Mastering skills provides the individuals a way of improving by letting go of their ego. In order to master a skill, a person must be open to learning something new and be willing to ask for help when they need it.

Resilient people cannot go through life without having optimism. Having a mind that says "Well I have a 50/50 chance of making it.", is not going to cut it. Optimism has to be realistic and we have to remind yourselves to remain optimistic when our mind plays tricks on us and tells us that something is “impossible”.

This is where positive self-talk comes in. You have to be able to manage your self-talk. This is a skill that has to be learned and practiced often. Therapists and counselors through your Employee Assistance Program (EAP) can assist individuals in developing techniques to examine and restructure automatic thoughts and beliefs so they become rational, realistic and more positive.

Above all, developing a growth mindset is a key component in developing resilience. A growth mindset, discussed in Mindset by Carol Dweck, is a way of thinking and approaching our goals while recognizing that we grow and learn from our failures. While they may set us back, our failures are temporary. It is what we learn from those failures that allows us to grow.

How you believe you have control over a situation is known as self-efficacy. The knowledge that you have control over the situation is another important factor in resilience. Taking ownership for what you can control gives you power. Placing it on outside sources takes that power away from you.

Embracing challenge and placing yourself into progressively challenging situations allows you to practice and learn all the skills listed above. This is why a football coach will take out their best players for a time during practice. This is why running in all sorts of elements prepares you for a race.

Resilience isn't something that comes overnight. It takes practice and it takes mastery. Work your mind and body together to build that protective layer called resilience.

References

Fletcher, D. and Sarkar, M. (2016) Mental fortitude training: An evidence based approach to developing psychological resilience for sustained success, Journal of Sport Psychology in Action, 7 (3), 135-157, DOI: 10.1080/21520704.2016.1255496

Interview: "Angela Duckworth Talks Grit"

This blog has been edited from its original form which was used for a school project, and may appear in https://blogs.adams.edu/chpce/