What is resilience?
According to the American Psychological Association, resilience is the process of positive adaptation to difficult life experiences. Originally borrowed from material physics, the concept has undergone significant evolution in the psychological field. But what does it truly mean to be resilient, and what benefits does it offer in our lives?
Resilience as adaptation and life strategy
Resilience is an evolved form of adaptation, allowing us to respond flexibly and creatively to life’s challenges. Like a living organism that transforms to survive in changing environments, resilience represents our ability to continuously reshape our internal boundaries and balance, for example by adapting rather than merely enduring, thus actively processing experiences, integrating even failures into the natural process of growth and improvement.
From a resilient perspective, every difficulty becomes a turning point for a new configuration of ourselves. Resilient adaptation is an evolutionary process that simultaneously engages our emotional, cognitive, and behavioral dimensions, allowing us to redirect our energy, learn from every experience, and build increasingly complex strategies to face life’s unpredictability and surprises.
Resilience is an inner, fluid movement, similar to a river encountering obstacles, overcoming, bypassing, or even transforming them, with the persistent patience of water. This demonstrates that true strength lies not in rigidity, but in the ability to be flexible and open to change.
How important is adaptation in evolution?
Evolution is based on adaptation, requiring a continuous balance between natural drives for stability and change. Biologically, adaptation determines the survival capabilities of species in ever-changing environments and ensures the genetic variability necessary for life through mutation and natural selection.
From a psychological and human perspective, adaptation allows us to respond effectively to challenges and changes, developing emotional, cognitive, and behavioral flexibility, and to evolve in the face of significant cultural and technological transformations, fostering innovation, creativity, and collective learning.
Why do we need resilience so much today?
Today, we strongly need resilience because our world is changing very rapidly, with major technological, social, natural, and geopolitical transformations. In our era, we need to develop strong digital resilience, enabling us to face the challenges of the technological revolution, such as online risks, hyperconnectivity, technoference, phubbing, or anxiety about AI’s impact on our lives.
The increasing digitalization is also revolutionizing the world of work, demanding resilience, by updating both technical and emotional-relational skills. Resilience is also crucial to prevent social isolation and counter loneliness. Research in neuro-psychopedagogy by the Fondazione Patrizio Paoletti has shown how resilience contributes to a sense of peace and enables a greater connection with oneself and others, becoming a bridge of empathy and sensitivity, where care and attention are directed both inwardly and outwardly, in an expanded human dimension.
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