Resilience in the Broader Context
Like all psychological concepts, resilience does not stand alone but instead exists within both a physical and mental context, on which it both depends and impacts:
Internal locus of control influences responses to stressful events by improving coping strategies and reducing anxiety. Thus, perceived control is a key marker of stress resilience.
Tonya Jacobs et al. (2011)
[A]ny psychological resilience training program should, as much as practically possible, consider the broader environment within which individuals operate.
David Fletcher and Mustafa Sarkar (2016)
Resilience is fundamentally underpinned by the concept that it is not so much the hard times we face that determine our success or failure as the way in which we respond to those hard times.
Rachel Jackson and Chris Watkin (2004)
If we want to help vulnerable youngsters become more resilient, we need to decrease their exposure to potent risk factors and increase their competencies and self-esteem, as well as the sources of support they can draw upon.
Emmy Werner (1995)
Increasingly, researchers focused on identifying the characteristics of individuals, particularly young people, who thrived while living in difficult circumstances, such as poverty and parental mental illness.
David Fletcher and Mustafa Sarkar (2013)
[T]he concept of mental resilience is crucial to our understanding of how risks may be modified and disorders prevented.
Dmitry Davydov et al. (2010)
Resilience to the unsettling effects of interpersonal loss is not rare but relatively common, does not appear to indicate pathology but rather healthy adjustment, and does not lead to delayed grief reactions.
George Bonanno (2004)
Stable, healthy, and resilient physicians are also better equipped for the emotionally and physically demanding tasks of providing care, comfort and hope to patients.
Laura Dunn et al. (2008)
Mental toughness can, therefore, be conceived as an individual’s propensity to manage the demands of environmental stressors, ranging from an absolute resilience to extreme vulnerability.
David Fletcher and Jim Fletcher (2005)
Resilience is viewed as a vital attribute for nurses because it augments adaptation in demanding and volatile clinical environments such as operating rooms.
Brigid Gillespie et al. (2007)
Firstly, it is unrealistic to expect pupils to be resilient if their teachers, who constitute a primary source of their role models, do not demonstrate resilient qualities.
Qing Gu and Christopher Day (2007)
All mentally tough individuals are resilient, but not all resilient individuals are mentally tough.
Peter Clough and Doug Strycharczyk (2015)
Being able to move on despite negative stressors does not demonstrate luck on the part of those successful individuals but demonstrates a concept known as resilience.
Michele Tugade and Barbara Fredrickson (2004)
Resilience is a process and a staircase. You might be on step four of the staircase, and I might be on step one, but we can both keep moving up the staircase so that our resilience levels will hopefully exceed the rising tide of stress.
Glenn Schiraldi (2017)
Resilience is experienced as a global process relating to psychological, social and behavioral qualities involving genetic, developmental and neurochemical mechanisms.
Meetu Khosla (2017)
Resilience is believed to be a process rather than a single event and a continuum rather than a binary outcome.
Meetu Khosla (2017)
Family environments characterized by stability, cohesion, organization, and preservation of routines and rituals may be most conducive to resilience among adolescents.
Hyun Lee and James Cranford (2008)
Resilience research has substantial potential to guide the development of effective interventions for diverse at-risk populations … to forces that are protective in nature as well as to those that exacerbate vulnerability, and to the mechanisms that underlie their effects.
Suniya Luthar and Dante Cicchetti (2000)
[I]ndividuals who are exposed to moderately stressful experiences and who have the initial resources necessary to overcome those stressors may develop a resilience to the deleterious effects of later stress.
Lisa Neff and Elizabeth Broady (2011)
Resilience is a multidimensional and not a unitary concept. There is no one characteristic or trait identified as resilience. Rather, there are many behaviors and actions associated with resilience.
Russ Newman (2005)
In terms of fostering resiliency prior to the development of symptoms, current research suggests that certain aspects of military life, such as field training exercises, unit cohesiveness, physical fitness, and leadership may be beneficial as part of preparedness interventions.
Cale Palmer (2008)
[I]t also appears that coping and parenting skills and parent-child relations may be an important focus of resilience-based interventions following mass violence and disaster.
Cale Palmer (2008)
The study of resilience represents a special subclass of research on positive functioning as it applies to risk populations under adversity… one limitation of resilience research is the neglect of a large range of positive functioning beyond the absence of problems.
Joseph Mahoney and Lars Bergman (2002)
The conclusion that resilience is made of ordinary rather than extraordinary processes offers a more positive outlook on human development and adaptation, as well as direction for policy and practice aimed at enhancing the development of children at risk for problems and psychopathology.
Ann Masten (2001)
[P]ositive psychology poses important questions for resilience investigators about the differentiation of challenging experiences that undermine development versus those that promote development.
Ann Masten (2001)
Insightful quotes on resilience can inspire and motivate you to dig deeper and find your more resilient self while encouraging you to explore the vast literature on this exciting topic.
What our readers think
Thank for this interesting gather of quotes about resilience. I think it’s a huge part of well-being and one I keep going back to researching time and time again as a practitioner (and human with my own needs for development). The lack of resilience is the cause of much suffering and even physical ailments. I am always open to information about the development of resilience. It was nicely said in a couple quotes here that it’s a constellation of behaviors and believes.. it’s not just one thing. This can make it a bit allusive to many. The locus of control seems to be one of the larger keys, but any more on the “how” is always welcome!