Fight against resilience - Road to happiness part IV

Resilience is not easy to define. If you've time, look at its definition in Wikipedia, but to make the long story short, resilience is the ability to cope with stress and trauma. The human spirit is amazing in that respect, it can survive to nearly anything.

Death of loved ones, deprivation of freedom, prolonged periods of stress, psychical pressure, it can overcome that, and more. This is sometimes based on denial, partial amensia, or even worse.

Resilience is frequently linked with some kind of escape from reality, but not always. One of its common for is undue optimism. You probably know some of these persons who always say "It will get better tomorrow", don't you ? This can be a way to evacuate daily life pressure.

It's true that resilience is a powerful way of protecting oneself, but it's never the solution of a problem. The only correct way to deal with a source of frustration is to remove it, or go away from it.

Whatever your problem is, you should try to solve it, not simply try to "cope" with it. Resignation and non-action are of no help. Changing things require courage and energy, but it's the only way out.

Resilience shall be reserved to short period of times, and dramatic problems (death of loved one, being in jail, ...) which have no possible solution.

Nowadays, the most common source of frustration seems to be work, and working conditions. Because they're afraid not to find anything else, or don't want to go through difficult situations, most unhappy workers accept their unfortunate situation (resilience).

I went through that myself. My job became boring, and despite all my attempts to change it, it was getting worse each and every day. I complained a lot, but finally decided to change. The whole process was five months long until I got a new contract, and eight months until the new job started (3 months notice period are standard where I live).

I had to file 20 or more applications to find something interesting. I received many "No". I also had to make some sensitive things, like contacting partners and competitors. My new job is in another country, speaking another language, and the whole family moved there. This was not easy.

But what if I did not act ? I would probably be saying "It'll be better. If not tomorrow, the next week, the next month, or the next year". This is possibly true, but by far not sure.

This is the key point of this hub: resilience has a price. During the phase before I decided to change my professional situation, I gradually became a grumpier version of me.

Colleagues, friends, family members all told me that, in different ways. When I said to my boss I was leaving, he was not totally surprised. He felt that something was wrong, but he suspected some private reasons.

Solving problems is certainly not easy nor pleasant, but it's much better than simply bear them, and slowly deteriorate yourself. No one can resist stress, frustration and pressure eternally.

Taking care of yourself is your very own job. This, as many other lessons in this series, is one of the lessons I learned from Buddhism. I'm not a Buddhist, but I instinctively know and adhere to some of these values.

Don't expect things to improve by themselves, or by intervention of the others. As the French proverb says: "Aide-toi et le ciel t'aidera" - litterally "Help yourself and the sky (God) will help you".

You should not postpone that for too long. You've only one life to live, and if it's true that some parts of it are less brilliant, you should not let it deteriorate too much.