The Case for Getting Back Up

For the love of resilience

I have a love-hate relationship with the word "resilience." It's an adjective I'd use to describe myself, but I hate that we have to be resilient. My friends reading this will roll their eyes—the deep irony is that resilience is core to who I am and how I move through the world. If you knew it wouldn't kill you, would you do it? That's just my life motto.

Here's what I've learned: resilience isn't about bouncing back quickly—it's about adapting well in the face of adversity and sustaining forward progress. Beyond providing the bandwidth to stay flexible and curious, resilience is core to moving through the world with a bit of optimism and hope. When you do something once and it almost kills you, now you know what to do and how to potentially avoid a future rematch—or at the very least, you're ready for the rematch.

Here are some things I've learned about resilience:

1. A lot of it's perspective
I've been through two layoffs. The first time was devastating—it warped my sense of self and made me really think about the value of my degrees and who I am. As a Black woman in America, I have worked hard to insulate myself from the layoffs, firings, and all the terrible very bad things that can happen to you when you work in corporate. It was a devastating time, and it took me a long time to rebuild my sense of self.
The second time? I hadn't died the first time, so I took another approach—leaned into friendship and community, traveled, hosted things, and the experience was a lot more expansive. Gone was the massive anxiety; welcome, the small anxiety but optimistic. As Carol Dweck writes in her research on growth mindset, "failure can be a painful experience, but it doesn't define you. It's a problem to be faced, dealt with, and learned from." It was not a matter of if but simply when.

2. Accept you won't be the same
The thing about resilience and putting yourself back together again is that it's a great opportunity to rebrand who you are, get closer to what you want, and find more things that align with your values. Brené Brown's two decades of research emphasizes vulnerability as a mechanism for building resilience and connection—being honest about where you are creates space for authentic growth.
During my first layoff, I went from being a HIIT girly into Pilates, yoga, and slow movement. In my second layoff, I revived my Substack and started writing about travel, introspection, and the practice of possibility. People with a growth mindset see challenges as opportunities to grow, view effort as the path to mastery, and are resilient in the face of setbacks.

3. Focus on the journey
If you focus on the goal too much, you will miss the small wins and steps that you're making getting closer and closer to your goal. Research shows that 76% of professionals who successfully navigated major career transitions had been actively developing secondary skills before they needed them. Research on psychological resilience shows that certain personal resources like self-efficacy, work-life balance, and social competencies, along with positive emotions and social support, facilitate workplace resilience.

4. Practice possibility
The beautiful thing about life is that it rarely turns out the way that you expect, and most of the time I have found that's for the best. As Brené Brown notes, "Vulnerability is not about winning or losing. It's having the courage to show up when you can't control the outcome." Meet new people, start a creative project, do something new, expand and push at the boundaries of who you are. Practice possibility in order to see the world through different lenses and shapes.

How do you practice resilience? Let me know what resonates!