Dr. Cone-Silver Character Analysis

“Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it’s less good than the one you had before. You can fight it, you can do nothing but scream about what you’ve lost, or you can accept it and try to put something together that is good” — Elizabeth Edwards. Becoming resilient is not an easy thing to do, because it takes mental strength and time. For example, in the book Once by Morris Gleitzman, a fictional story, Felix the protagonist is a Jewish boy who was able to stay strong despite all the hardships he faced. Felix becomes resilient by putting others before himself which helped him get over the many struggles he was faced with.

People have learned to be resilient in order to overcome serious hardships. A person’s resilience can be seen through how they handle bad experiences; to be resilient in the face of adversity. People who never give up and always fight back even when it gets hard are resilient. Some believe that resilience is a trait that can be learned.

Adversity has a way of bringing up challenges unexpectedly, most people shrink away from it and get consumed, but when they push through it people come out stronger than they were before.

Without it, many things wouldn’t exist today. By overcoming challenges, we learn from our mistakes and are better prepared for our future. Wilbur Wright and Steve Jobs are great examples of showing how resilience is key to achieving success. Next time you are faced with something tough, try your best to not let it get to you. If you are knocked down, get right back up, push through it, and prove how strong you

Edward’s says: “Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it's less good than the one you had before. You can fight it, you can do nothing but scream about what you've lost, or you can accept that and try to put together something that's good.” (Edwards). This quote from Elizabeth Edwards speaks about how people should respond in the face of adversity and how this response creates a resilient person. A resilient person in the face of adversity will gather their bearings and find a new solution to their original problem. However, people who do not possess this quality are more likely to drop everything and give up. This quote supports my definition because in my definition I state that human resilience is “the ability to come from your lowest point, back to your highest” and Edwards’ quote states that “Resilience is accepting your new reality… and try to put together something that’s good” or in other words, to come back from your low

What Oaklander believes is that resilience can be built, and that all it takes is simply for a failure as a trigger event to get us going, putting up our “natural” mental defenses that act as a coping mechanism, and of course with some resilience it can determine how well you will bounce back from a triggering event considering it does not take much to trigger stress as Oaklander himself says. “It does not take a predator to trigger a stress response in “modern” humans”(Oaklander). Oaklander like Perez can see that we as humans are not the most durable of people and that certain things can impact our lives a lot more than they should. From failing one simple assignment to not being acknowledged by others it can lead to a recognized stress trigger creating any residual feeling from the original stress event to have the same effect on the individual as the first time it happened. To ever think that a simple thought makes people cower and mentally impairs them is simply highly illogical when one thinks about it, but it shows how much resilience an individual might lack. Of course, Oaklander believes that resilience can be built up like someone would a fine tuned body with the most desirable human traits, meaning peak athletic condition, and a mentality like a rock. Within the article, Oaklander states “ In an interesting twist, scientists have learned that working the body’s muscles makes people’s minds more resilient as well.”( Oaklander). Allowing the body to enter a prime condition gives for a harder mentality as stated before as things no longer seem to become overwhelming, but obstacles in a path, and of course with that level of confidence an obstacle may seem easier than breathing. Resiliency is finally shown when the body is properly exercised. Resiliency from that point now is finally no longer just a mental thing, but a physical one

like not being able to recognize failure, which results in the loss of purpose as well as the loss of willingness to improve. By not being able to deal with failure, one’s life can be put to a stop and lead them on a bad path. One must be able to recover from failure and see that failure is only a stepping stone to a better and brighter future. Failure is difficult to recover from and often leads to more failure, but it is not impossible to recover from. With resilience and drive, a person who understands what failure is, is able to conquer it.

During our lives we come across many difficult times in which we learn important skills. However, our actions choose what skills we've gained. For instance, a person who makes rational choices, keeps aware of what these choices do, and never letting the situation over take them have the characteristics of a resilient perosn. People with resilience have a way of dealing with problems in the most effective way possible, like Louie Zamperini, who was lost at sea for months after his plane malfunctioned and crashed. His fight for survival brought forth these traits and caused him to outlive his situation.

In this week’s reading, Anna Harrington uses a quote from Victor Frankel: “The last of human freedoms… is the ability to choose one’s attitude in a given set of circumstances. What a great way of restating, “Your response is your responsibility.” (Eggerichs, 2014). She communicates some ideas about resiliency she calls elements: emotional, spiritual, social, family, and physical. (Harrington, 2012).

Resilience has been topic that we have learned and are discussing in my English class. When you can overcome hardships faster and easier when you are more resilient person. We have been analyzing an article called “The Science of Bouncing Back” by Mandy Oaklander. Oaklander discusses methods of many people on their experience, becoming a more resilient person. People respond to emotion and hardships in their life differently, and people with more struggles overcome it more gradually, and Mandy Oaklander made me consider the possibilities resilience has, and can offer in everyday life.

1. p.138 “This large body of research shows that although traumas, crises, and tragedies come in a thousand forms, people benefit from them in three primary ways… Rising to a challenge reveals your hidden abilities, and seeing these abilities changes your self-concept... Adversity is a filter [that separates] fair-weather friends from the true; it strengthens relationships and it open’s people’s hearts to one another…Trauma changes priorities and philosophies toward the present.”

In the article, ‘Resilience in the Face of Potential Trauma,” written by George A. Bonanno, we learn about the resiliency of humans when they are faced with potentially traumatic events. Originally, it was thought that resiliency was an outcome of favorable factors in a person’s life such as supportive relationships. In Bonanno’s first conclusion, he discusses how individuals who experienced a potentially traumatic event are distressed or struggle for a short period of time keep functioning effectively. In his second conclusion, we learn that resilience is the most frequent outcome following a potentially traumatic event. In one study that he conducted, he observed middle aged individuals who had lost their spouses and discovered that more

Resilience of the human spirit is the most important trait a person can possess in order to overcome the obstacles of life.

When someone experiences great adversity they can obtain from it one of two things, resilience or pessimism . These outcomes depend on a person’s attitude. If has an optimistic view throughout this time, they will learn that they are stronger and more capable of accomplishing tasks they never dared to face before. I strongly believe that during a time of misfortune a person can learn more about themselves and have a better grasp of what life is like.

How a person handles adversity can be compared to how items react in hot water. Hot water causes things to become either hard, like an egg; soft, like a carrot; or change the environment, like coffee beans. The same can be true for individuals and how they react to adversity. In my seventeen years of life, I have handled adversity like an egg by becoming hard when hurt, a carrot by becoming soft regarding school, and flourishing as a coffee bean by making mature decisions.