Everyday Canvas

Resilience or Salir Adelante

Prompt: After learning what’s right and wrong, what is the most important psychological asset to cultivate within oneself? Why? Tell us what you think.

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The way I look at things, after one grasps and masters what’s right and wrong, the cultivation of resilience is the most important thing for one’s life. But then, what’s resilience?

Resilience is the capability to live with and work through adversity in a way that the person ends up being better for the experience and with no or the least amount of harm. Resilience can be fostered as a quality of character and the tenacity of spirit to let a person rebound from a trauma, difficulty, or just plain bad luck. A side benefit of resilience is also acquiring a clear sense of knowing who one is and what his or her purpose in life is for a better future.

Although much of resilience is provided by life experiences, relationships, and community, we can also teach ourselves resilience by beginning again with vigor after a setback, reaching out to others, never letting go of righteousness while taking care of our bodies and psychological needs and staying away or eliminating stress, and if stress should occur, to forge ahead without feeling overpowered.

In Spanish, there is an idiom that has inspired me greatly: salir adelante. Its dictionary meaning is to get ahead, but there is more to the meaning that the idiom’s translation implies. Salir alone may mean to go through, leave behind, and emerge. Adelante is ahead, onwards, or forward. If I were to write a dictionary, I would probably say, leave behind by extricating oneself from a situation and emerge to go onward. In other words, for to cultivate resilience, we have to leave behind the offensive stuff, and without looking back, we have to continue on with strong steps. In this quest, leaving behind has to be the toughest part, the part that causes PTSD and other types of sadness and anger.

Yet, once we learn to bounce back from defeat or disaster, we can handle pressure and respond to change with flexibility and even cheer. Once we learn resilience, we can also gain a positive view of and confidence in ourselves, better skills in problem-solving and communicating with others, and proper management of our strong emotions and impulses.

In short, with resilience comes insight, knowledge, and interpersonal skills. Thus, I have to ask, what can be more helpful than that?