For many years now I have grappled with trying to understand what that magic something is that helps us create a beautiful life. The millions of self-help gurus out there often find us great gold nuggets to work with but what we need changes and often differs from person to person.
We all know it’s easier to create what we want when certain things are in place like education and health and a clear vision for our future. But some people have these in good measure and still struggle to build amazing careers, for example.
I was in the very lucky position of being exposed to a good education as a child and being able to continue building that education base throughout my career. At the risk of sounding flippant about this privilege, I believe education is not the panacea or elixir for successful lives. It’s an essential base, make no mistake, but as Duckworth says in her bestselling book GRIT, we can be distracted by talent and forget that effort is worth twice as much.
This is where Resilience comes in, the main aspect to the concept of Prosilience. Resilience is defined as the ability to bounce back after adversity or difficult experiences. But you will notice that the definition focuses on the past, on the ability to return to a previous state.
When we’re creating our beautiful lives, stepping into the unknown and trying new things and falling and failing and winning, we don’t necessarily want to return to a previous state. In fact, we are specifically creating a new state of being for our new beautiful life. We want to be able to use the learning and challenges and fails as building blocks for that new state.
Two things are key here:
Firstly, what is true is that every time you go through something difficult you build a resilience muscle – whether it’s a small frustration or a big, huge trauma, you are adding to those muscles. There is even a theory that is referenced in therapeutic circles called Post-Traumatic Growth (PTG) - the psychological or emotional struggle that occurs during adversity changes us: it may rock our belief system till we rethink our beliefs, our personal strength increases, we may gain a deeper appreciation for life or for certain relationships. We land up better or more empowered than before the crisis, more impressed with ourselves and with what we are capable of.
But why do we need a crisis before we strengthen? Why do we need a difficult challenge to grow? We don’t.
This is where Prosilience comes in, the second key idea.
Prosilience is the active intention to build resilience muscles for your future self. In the wonderful world of dictionaries, the word actually means something else but its slowly being changed by the psychology and business communities. Essentially Proactivity + Resilience = Prosilience (Hoopes, 2017).
And to be honest, the word Prosilience has a positive, upbeat ring to it. I like that. These days we need all the positivity and lightness we can muster as we create our new, beautiful lives.
In my next article I will unpack the layers of Prosilience and the teachings I bring through The Prosilience Project – a program that guides and teaches you in developing those wonderful muscles for change and growth.
You are welcome to message me if you are interested in The Prosilience Project or in Coaching sessions to prevent burnout, recover from burnout, manage your stress like a master or superproof yourself for your future.
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