Building Resilience by Asking for More.

• Resilience is a muscle.

• Muscle builds when you create small tears in healthy tissue, which heal stronger. It’s called hypertrophy. Your body builds fibers by filling in the gaps between the tears with new muscle tissue.

• So how to create small tears? Ask for hard feedback, show your thick skin, be willing to get uncomfortable, demonstrate the kind of sharing you expect from others.

• Then what? Know that the damage is purposeful. Knowing the truth can make you stronger. Honest feedback helps everyone improve. While you do that, also keep a grain of salt close at hand. Not everyone’s truth is your truth. You’re just trying to understand their perspective.

• Protect yourself by respecting yourself: Lean into your support system, get enough of what you need (sleep, sun, physical activity, friend time, alone time, something else…).

• Find the funny in your failures, and in the snafus that happen every day.

• Sometimes you’re up. Sometimes you’re down. Know that you’re never alone on the trampoline. We are all here, just bouncing around.