“Resilience is the process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility and adjustment to external and internal demands.”
— American Psychological Association

About a month ago, I started listening to Soraya Chemaly’s book The Resilience Myth. I stopped after 20 minutes.

Not because I didn’t like it, but because that was enough to convince me of her thesis that “our modern version of resilience is a bill of goods sold to us by capitalism, colonialism, and ideologies that embrace supremacy over others” and that in reality “resilience is always relational.”

It made me realise how deeply the “resilience” myth — the delusion that resilience is only an individual skill — has been running through my veins, and even how I contributed to its propagation.

The reason? Individual resilience has served me to a point. During times of adversity, I would tell myself that I “just” had to build more resilience because, at some point, things would improve “somehow.” My mission was not to crack until that moment.

But then I realised that’s not serving us well in these turbulent moments. Individual resilience is becoming very close to resignation.

• “We “just” need to wait four years for the next election.”
• “We “just” need more male allies.”
• “We “just” need more diverse leadership.”

And in the interim, we’re asked to “hang in there,” “understand that’s tough for everybody,” and “think that others are worse off than us.” In summary, we’re told to be “resilient.”

Can you imagine somebody asking Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, or Jeff Bezos to be resilient?

Neither can I.

The people we tell to be resilient are those who have been laid off, are disabled and have had their benefits stripped, or have lost their house because they cannot pay their mortgage anymore.

Individual resilience is a weapon against those who suffer, have been disenfranchised, or whom we’re not willing to help. It’s a beautification of “shut up and keep your head down.”

Let’s examine who benefits from the “individual resilience industrial complex,” why it doesn’t serve us well, and what we should do instead.

The Resilience Sellers

The “grow your resilience” business

One of the core beliefs that makes extreme capitalism successful is individualism, aka “survival of the fittest.” Nobody will care for us but ourselves, so pillaging, stepping on others’ rights, and limitless profiteering are to be revered rather than chastised.

And if you happen to be bearing the brunt of this power imbalance? Be prepared to be shamed for not being “resilient” enough if you dare to complain.

But don’t fret. The business of building individual resilience is there to help you.

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