The definition of resilience: we

​It's Resilience Week in Virginia. As part of that, I've been blessed with the chance to speak at a Resilience Conference tomorrow in Danville, VA. Because of this, I've thought a lot about resilience and what it means to me the last week.

To me, resilience simply means having the capacity to see beyond the problem.

To have hope beyond the problem.

To believe beyond the problem.

Seeing beyond the problem doesn't come easy to everyone. It sure hasn't for me. There have been times this has felt like I have a character flaw. But resilience is much more complicated than character.

The emotions we feel in the middle of a problem: hopelessness, frustration, anger, sadness, anxiety, depression - all of these emotions take place in the bottom half of our brain.

A healthy brain - a resilient brain - will quickly feel those emotions as signals, as invitations, if you will, to go visit the higher level problem solving part of our brain to discover a solution to the problem.

But if you have a brain that's never been wired to take that path, to take the high road from problem to solution, you'll stay stuck in the problem. You'll stack stuck in a cycle of emotions that become very compromising to your health and wellness.

The thing about resilience is that it's much easier built than learned. I can't sit and read a book on resilience and suddenly feel like, ah, that's the ticket, I just need to leave these emotions behind for a bit and go visit the more logical part of my body's command center.

Our ramped up emotions will always make that a difficult road to discover and travel alone.

But when we have people show up in our problems and in our emotions and take our hand and walk with us toward a solution, we become bigger believers in solutions. Over time, this practice helps us build a staircase from our emotions to the more logical parts of our brains.

This staircase is very difficult to build on our own. Our problems will always make us feel like that's a construction project too overwhelming to tackle. Which is why resilience is almost always a construction project carried out with others.

It's why I've come to believe life is a we thing.

That's my one word definition of resilience: WE.

This is a great week to be reminded that if you're feeling stuck in the emotions of a problem, if you're feeling like there is no way out, chances are that's because you're trying to process it alone.

Chances are it's because your stuck in processing the problem and haven't begun making your way toward the higher-power parts of your brain where solutions live.

And if that's the case, it's likely because you aren't resilient.

That's not name calling. That's not judgment. It quite simply might be your biological reality.

The hopeful part of the message is it's never too late to build resilience. It's never too late to change your biology.

But it starts with reaching out for help. Reach out to someone and confess that you're in a problem you know you'll never find a solution to because you know you're stuck in that problem.

Talk to someone not stuck in your problem who might be able to see the path to a solution you'll never see without them.

Many of us stay stuck in the emotions of our problems because when we process our problems we never leave them. We just stay there, in our problem, processing and processing and processing.

This is a great week to better understand that about ourselves.

To change it.

To build resilience.

To find your WE.