Our speaker, Jerilyn Willin lead us through a presentation on change and resilience. She started with the differentiation between change and transition noting that change is an event that happens outside of us, while transition is the psychological process that we go through when adapting to the new situation. Resistance is a normal part of transition and there are many reasons that people resist change, including loss of control, loss of competence, and loss of identity. Resilience is an important mechanism for adapting to transition, and according to Willin it can be learned and cultivated.
She identified 5 characteristics of resilient people and discussed different ways that resilience can be cultivated. The characteristics include connection to others, an optimistic outlook, working to stay healthy, spirituality, and giving back. To get a sense of your resilience, take the attached quiz, and then to validate the results, ask two people who know you well to rate you on the factors listed.
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Scoring:
35-40 Highly resilient
30-34 Self-motivated learner
20-29 Somewhat resilient
<20 Not so good at handling pressure