Resilience is Not About Hardship

To be resilient, you must adapt.

Resilience is not about enduring pain or stress. It is about adaptation.

Many people can withstand a lot of hardship, but that doesn't make them resilient.

To be resilient, you must adapt.

Adaptation is achieved by preparing for action and being able to respond to the challenges you face.

By being passive in the face of difficulty does not make you resilient.

You must take action against the difficulty by understanding the challenges you are facing.

Then you are prepared to solve the problem.

But remember,

In the quote on resilience in The Art of War, Sun Tzu says,

Hence, in the wise general's plans, he considers the advantages and disadvantages open to him.

When considering the advantages, he makes his plan achievable. When considering the disadvantages, he finds his way out of the problem.

Resilience is about the ability to adapt to make success achievable. You are resilient when you adapt and have the right strategy.

Here is an example to differentiate what is being resilient and perseverence.

Most people think being resilient and perseverant is the same. And some think that the combination of resilience and perseverance is necessary in order to achieve success.

The reality like in the Art of War, is that the philosophy of achieving success through resilience differs from that of perseverance.

It is NOT THE SAME!

Here is an example of being resilient:

A general that leads his troops into enemy territory, he will face many obstacles along the way. Being resilient means, he will look for ways to march his army by adapting to the terrain. He will pick roads that are safe to march his troops and away from places that the enemy can ambush his troops.

The general will look for opportunities to put his troops inan advantage position to fight against the enemy. He is always in a look out for leveraging and gaining an advantage against his enemy or competition.

However, having perseverance is different. Here is the example:

The focused, perseverant general will persist in pushing his troops to march for long hours without rest, no matter how hard and difficult the road ahead.

While the peseverence seems to work in favour by conquering more enemy territory, his troops will be tired and low in morale like also be burnout and want to go home.

You may win by being peserverence but you run the risk of defeat in the long run.

Sun Tzu, in his Art of War book, he mentioned,

If you order your army in full armor to march without stopping day or night, covering double the usual distance at a stretch and doing a hundred miles to push to an advantage, the enemy will capture the leaders of all your three divisions.

Success through perseverance incurs lots of casualties in war, what more in business and life.

Sun Tzu's Art of War philosophy shares the importance of adjusting, adapting, tweaking, or leveraging or taking advantage of your positioning to gain victory. Not through perseverance.

Following the Art of War, success is achieved by being resilient, not through perseverance.

Leaders like yourself who follow the Art of War philosophy will gain victory in all ventures.

Sun Tzu Art Of War teaches us to be flexible and adapt according to the situation of the battlefield.