Defining Personal Resilience
The concept of being stretched and challenged, while being able to bounce back is intriguing. It is attractive to individuals who would like to cope with life’s daily problems and the bigger knocks that we all inevitably have to endure, as well as to employers who would like their workforce to be able to adapt and cope with organizational changes and difficulties. Resilience is the term commonly used for this desirable trait, although there is no common understanding as to its nature or process.
Luthans and Youssef (2004) state that there is a general misconception that resilience is an extraordinary gift, a magical, mystical, rare capacity, a trait that results only from genetic variables. Masten (2001), though, describes resilience as a common adaptive human process, rather than a magical process applicable to a select few. Tugade and Fredrickson (2004) similarly describe the process of resilience as being characterized by the ability to bounce back from negative emotional experiences, and by flexible adaption to the changing demands of stressful experiences. This understanding seems to be closely related to the concept of hardiness, described by the researcher Kobasa (1979). Resilience also enables us to ‘bounce back’ after experiencing stressful life events such as significant change, stress, adversity and hardship (Maddi and Khoshaba, 2005). Most importantly, it incorporates the concept of emerging from the adversity stronger and more resourceful (Richardson, 2002).
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