Save your strength for repairs

What does it take to make a go of this life?

Skills and smarts help. So do character, connections, timing, and health.

But there’s a quieter edge that decides more than we admit: resilience—the ability to be knocked down, find your feet, and carry on with new clarity. Your “bounceability” as a human, in other words.

Because make no mistake, life will floor you. You will, more than once, be disappointed and blindsided; bereft and betrayed. You will lose people, roles, and money. And yet, you have to keep going.

What makes a human resilient? Plenty around you helps—family, friends, mentors, savings. But the real strength isn’t out there; it’s in how your mind appraises events and chooses the next move.

Resilience begins with acceptance. We first have to recognise the idea that this life is going to be a shitshow at certain points. It just is. When we mistake adversity for anomaly, we waste energy on outrage and self-pity. When we come to terms with hardship as part of the contract, we release energy for repair. Acceptance removes the second injury—the “why me?”—so we can deal with the first.

If you’ve lived long enough, you’ll have your list. I have mine. Many deaths, degradations, indignities. And yet, here we still are. That’s not because we’re heroic; it’s because we kept taking the next useful step when the face had been smacked unexpectedly.

Obstacles aren’t aberrations. They are built into the deal. When we’re given a life, we’re also given a lifetime of mishaps and misfortunes, upsets and upheavals—punctuated by quiet stretches and sudden joys. You can’t wish or pray your way out of that volatility. What you can do is make peace with it—and then act.

None of this denies the good. Life also bestows rewards—expected and unexpected. But you need stamina to be present when those rewards arrive. If you buckle at the first hit, you won’t be around for the harvest. If you steady yourself—by seeing clearly, conserving energy, and taking modest steps—you give good fortune more chances to find you.

Resilience is not bravado. It isn’t a permanent grin or a social-media posture. It’s economy: spend less energy resisting reality; spend more doing the next helpful thing. Over time, that practice builds a kind of quiet backbone.

Acceptance isn’t surrender; it’s dropping the futile wrestling match with what already is. Psychologically, it cuts rumination and self-blame, calms the threat response, and frees attentional bandwidth. With less noise in your head, you can see the next small step. You react less and respond more. You sleep a little better, make one honest call, fix one small thing. Those small wins stack, your confidence returns, your nerves steady. 

Keep that rhythm and calm becomes your default—and that’s your resilience growing.

THE SIGNAL IN THE NOISE

You don’t need to be unbreakable; you need to be recoverable.

 

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