Resilience v. Endurance – Who’s in the Driver’s Seat?
Burnout is real. And there are many, many flavors of this. We frequently hear about this as something that happens in work settings, though this can also emerge in our personal lives too – burnout with parenting, burnout with daily routines, and even burnout with our political and/or cultural landscape. Almost as common as burnout itself are the classes, workshops, and retreats to try to infuse some “resiliency” into us so that we can withstand all this. But are we gaining resiliency, or are we just learning how to endure? There’s a very important difference – one that determines if we continue to suffer or allow this to fall away.
Both resiliency and endurance are used to face challenges, though the difference rests in the level of flexibility in which we “ride the storm”. Endurance can be thought of as the “white knuckle” approach to facing difficult times. Sometimes seen as “grit”, it holds an air of rigidity while we “wait this out”. With endurance we are looking to the future, to when this will be over, while never spending time in the moment and softening into what is truly happening. This can lead to resistance, suppression, and more suffering. While we may appear “tough” on the outside, our insides are being eaten away, leaving shells of who we were. Sadly, this is very common in medical training. And the anecdote commonly being granted is a “self care” activity to make us feel better. But all this is really asking us to lighten the load temporarily so that we can endure longer, and the suffering in our spirit also endures.
What is true resilience? The Buddhist practitioner would say that one of the keys to developing resiliency is to find a space of equanimity, even in the hardest of times. This is a state of being able to sit with the most difficult of challenges and be able to remain in a regulated state without becoming rigid. I can hear my teacher, Koshin at the New York Zen Center, telling me to keep a “soft belly” and a “firm spine”. The soft belly speaks to the equanimity piece while the firm spine reminds us that we don’t need to give up our core beliefs. In fact, we can hold BOTH of these at once and it is at this intersection where we find true resiliency. Like the tree branch that bends in the wind and then bounces back, so can we be so in the face of adversity. Compare this to a rigid, unforgiving branch trying to endure the wind, only to break in the end.
Another way to look at this is through a lens of impermanence, another Buddhist concept that teaches that nothing is permanent and rather is of the nature to change. Whereas endurance FIGHTS time, resilience HONORS it. This, in essence, is what Mindfulness can bring – the ability to be in the constantly changing “now” which is forever full of possibilities. We can think of this as “can I be in the moment as it is, knowing that it will not stay this way” versus “how much more of this can I take”? Resiliency allows for compassion and invites us to the “observers of experience” rather than being “victims of circumstance”. The vehicles are different in very subtle ways, but the effects on our level of suffering and burnout are profound. Resilience or