Recently, I spent a week with my niece and her children. Her youngest is a newborn, and her oldest is, without exaggeration, the most energetic child I have ever met. I know, I know, everyone says the kids in their lives are the most this or the best that. However, this is not just any child. This child is charismatically remarkable. Watching her do her toddler thing illustrated several truths about how to handle life.
We often admire children’s capacity to learn, bounce, forget, and forgive. Their joy is contagious as much as their tantrums are unnerving. They are a spring of renewed disposition that never ceases to empty itself and never runs dry. They bounce back because they seem to have resilience. They try again. And again.
Dr. Jeremy Sutton, a psychology lecturer at the University of Liverpool and an expert on endurance, explains that though we often think of resilience as bouncing back, it is a more complex attribute. In his article What Is Resilience, and Why Is It Important to Bounce Back? he explains:
Psychology recognizes that resilient individuals going through significant life events do not always recover effortlessly; they often find a new path. Even when knocked by what has happened, the darkest times still typically lead to growth.
My niece’s child is two years old. I will call her Ivana to protect her privacy. She has a bottomless source of joy and energy, which she expresses in several ways. She might engage in a fierce but assertive negotiation (the kind that makes you think she will become a well-paid lawyer someday). If that does not work, she then tries to be the sweetest and charismatic charmer in the room and asks for what she desires in a way that completely melts your heart. When that does not work, she engages in repetition—a proven tactic to wear someone down.
Ivana has a repertoire of behaviors to try and see which one is successful. She adapts or finds a new path. While her experience with adversity is limited to her desires not being granted, her capacity to adapt surpasses her lack of experience in adversity. She is practicing resilience in her context with the tools she has.
Ivana does not know that what she is doing is practicing resilience, and this is what I found remarkable. Her ability to adapt, change strategies, test methods, and leave it alone for a bit comes naturally to her. But, when she is focused, she is focused. She finds a way. It may not look like she is patiently waiting, but make no mistake, her little mind is looking for the opportunity to get what she wants. That is the type of focus I don’t always come across.
Observing Ivana made me think of what we want to achieve, the failures, the bumps, and the obstacles. There is a saying that if you fall from a horse, you must get back on it right away. Ivana may or may not fall from a horse to test this aphorism. My time with her, though, taught me much about adapting, changing, and finding new paths. In short, if something does not work, move on or find another way.
Once, I met a counselor who gave me advice I try to follow: if you lose something, whatever it is, give yourself time to mourn it. Then, get up and move on. Don’t dwell. When you need to visit it, do so and give yourself a short time. Acknowledge it. Accept it. Allow yourself to be sad. Then, move on.
It seems like a bouncing ball. Go where you need to go, don’t stay too long. Keep going to get where you really have to go.
Alma Hoffmann is a freelance designer, design educator, author of Sketching as Design Thinking, and editor at Smashing Magazine. This is an edited version of a post originally published on Temperamental amusing shenanigans, Alma’s Substack dedicated to design, life, and everything in between.
Imagery © Alma Hoffmann.