Resilience and Growth

This is Yet Another MAEKAN Briefing Intro.

This month, I've rejoined Nitzan Hermon's Critical Business School (I originally participated in January) and during our first session had a fantastic discussion about resilience - for many definitions of the word - which inspired today's intro.

In the conversation, one of the definitions of resilience that was used was "the capacity to navigate uncertainty" and I posited that resilience is very much contextual. While we describe people as "resilient," we often mean emotionally resilient, financially resilient, physically resilient, or some combination of these and more. As we talked, I realized that resilience in some ways can be a double-edged sword, both helping you deal with difficult situations that arise, as well as shielding you from the friction around you.

If you're incredibly resilient and the "impact" of something is very low, you may not even register that an event occurred, compared to being not as resilient and being dramatically shocked by something. We wade through many of these "low impact" moments during our weeks, often thanks to resilience, but by ignoring them, can't prepare for the effect of them compounding.

Case in point, I'm in decent physical shape, but I'm absolutely terrible at stretching and mobility work (there's no Family Form in Seattle... yet). Running a 5K here and there doesn't impact me much physically, but running a few of them in one week really took its toll recently. It was a good reminder to be more intentional about interrogating where my own resilience may be "protecting me" from opportunities to grow or be more self-aware. It's also a good reminder to stretch a bit more - both my body and my mind.

Wishing you a week of resilience as a shield from unnecessary difficulty, but not growth.