Developing Resilience During Hard Times

Over the course of my lifetime I have been faced with many hardships. Each time I have been able to recover, assess how it has made me a better person, and move forward with my life.

At some point in our lives we will all experience hard times. This could range from losing someone that we are close to, being in an accident of some type, being diagnosed with a serious disease, losing our job, or any number of other things that may immediately come to mind for you.

It’s how we learn from these incidents that defines who we are. It’s how resilient we are.

The dictionary defines resilient in three ways:

“1. Springing back; rebounding.

2. Returning to the original form or position after being bent, compressed, or stretched.

3. Recovering readily from illness, depression, adversity, or the like; buoyant.”
— Dictionary.com

Overcoming a hardship entails moving forward every single day, no matter how slow that may be. When I lost my mom or suffered my injuries, I wasn’t back to 100% the very next day by any means but I realized there was nothing that I could do, unfortunately, to change it. I couldn’t ask “why me?”.

There were times that I cried, just like when I lost Sasha. I was vulnerable in each of those incidents and I know that it won’t be the last time in my life that I’ll have to deal with something that’ll leave me feeling that way. To put it bluntly, when you’re exposed like that, it sucks. But, it also provides you with an opportunity for self-reflection. As the first definition in the dictionary says, it’s how you spring back and rebound.

When I was recovering from my shoulder surgeries and as I was approaching my brain surgery, I was bed ridden 100% of the time and on more pain killers than I could list. The corner of my counter was filled with them. Against doctors orders I began weaning myself off of them because I was primarily afraid of becoming addicted to the pain meds to the point that it would cost me my marriage and I would end up homeless. And when I did start to wean myself off of them, I woke up in night sweats because during that short period of time my body, without me realizing it, my body had become addicted at a certain level.

During this period of time was when I decided to prove my orthopedic surgeon wrong and made a promise to myself that I would rebound and recover to the point of being able to workout again, even if it was in a different form than I was used to. It is my belief that this determination, that this moving forward each day, is what helped me to swim in open waters 5 months later and compete in my first Spartan Race 11 months after my surgeries.

While these may be extreme examples that some may or may not be experiencing in their lives, one example that millions of us, including me, are going through right now, is being unemployed due to the pandemic. If you’re currently like me, you’re spending hours per day looking for new jobs, submitting your resume, and hoping to find a sliver of hope that things are turning around. Sadly, who knows when they will. But, that doesn’t mean that you can’t be searching for other avenues for either immediate or long-term income.

One of my friends, Jay Acunzo, posed this question on Twitter a few days ago:

Jay is highlighting how we can be developing resilience during hard times. While looking for full-time work I have begun to focus hours per day on the Built Unstoppable brand, something that I hadn’t been doing over the last few years (though I should have been). Therefore, when life fully rebounds for me with a full-time job I will have, not only overcome the adversity of the pandemic, but I will have been stretched by it. Though being out of work is extremely frustrating and scary as it continues to last for months on end with no end in sight, I can’t change anything except focusing on the future.

I hope that these various examples helps to showcase how not only I try developing resilience during hard times but also how you can as well.


ArticleJustin LevyArticle, Resilience, DeterminationComment