Become more resilient by drawing upon your inner bricoleur.

When life unravels, why do some cope better than others? Were they born tough? Who are these gifted beings who are staunch and steady in the face of adversity while the rest of us thrash around, unable to cope with daily demands? Are they more resilient because they are blessed with loads of optimism?

Maybe not. Resilient people are not necessarily optimistic. They are realistic and understand that change is a way of life. Embracing uncertainty, which many find hard, is the hallmark of resilient people. They know things change and that the future is unpredictable. They have the foresight to prepare. The resilient tribe does not waste time blaming external factors. They focus on action – even tiny actions – to discard situations that do not help them thrive.

If all you can do is crawl, start crawling. – Rumi

Resilience is a skill that can be built over time. It helps you cope with situations that you perceive as highly stressful because they imply some major change in the way you function. The core of resilience does not lie in your immediate reaction to a situation. Rather, resilience is about what happens after and how you decide to move forward. How you cope depends on your capacity to handle your thoughts and feelings in a way that spurs positive action. It also means trusting yourself and the voice within. To develop resilience, you need to become a bricoleur.

Have you heard of a bricoleur? It is a French term meaning ‘handyman’ and was introduced by the anthropologist-philosopher Claude Levi-Strauss in the 1960s. Bricoleurs make the most of whatever they have on hand to make things work for them. They make connections between unfamiliar things and imagine possibilities in situations that could leave many confounded. They rustle up startling combinations and make those combinations work in their favor. Bricolage can apply to physical creations or your inner self. As a budding bricoleur, you can keep tinkering away at your thoughts and feelings to understand what makes you work best. This constant tinkering enhances your self-awareness and with it, your resilience.

“The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one’s freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstance.” – Viktor E. Frankl

Resilience requires consistent inner preparation and the awareness that life offers no guarantees. We base our lives on an impossible assumption – that everything is permanent – although everything keeps changing, including us. Resilient bricoleurs comprehend this better than many. They keep innovating and improvising on what is most important: themselves. They understand that resilience is the ability to shift with change rather than resist it. Since this can only be done by regulating within, they keep innovating and improvising their inner selves.  

Resilient souls do not try to predict the future nor do they believe in luck. They think about what they might need most when change happens and prepare as best as they can. And when it does, they move on with minimal excuses. If they experience a profound loss or tragedy, they do not ask ‘Why me?’. Instead, they ask ‘Why not me?’ They grieve, go with the flow, and continue loving life because every change helps improve their self-awareness. They develop a tough inner core that remains untouched by external circumstances.

It becomes far easier to enjoy life and be kind to ourselves if we learn to bricoleur our way through life, assembling whatever we have on hand in innovative ways to make it work for us. Our inner voice – long ignored because we were busy listening to ‘someone’ who told us to do something or act in a particular way – becomes our trusted guide. We make decisions after listening to it carefully because it helps us remain true to ourselves. Sometimes these decisions seem hard, but they always work to our benefit.

Soon, changes don’t seem so terrifying after all. We take a deep breath and dive right into the next change, confident that we will surface. Action, we know, is what matters. We become more curious with every change and learn more. Life is fickle as always, but we now get to experience its more playful and generous side. As we tinker on, we have a hearty laugh at ourselves and look forward with joy instead of fear. We recognize that the only way to be an active participant in our lives is through complete and uninhibited involvement in every experience it offers us.

“There is something to be learned from a rainstorm. When meeting with a sudden shower, you try not to get wet and run quickly along the road. But doing such things as passing under the eaves of houses, you still get wet. When you are resolved from the beginning, you will not be perplexed, though you will still get the same soaking. This understanding extends to everything.” ― Tsunetomo Yamamoto, The Hagakure: A code to the way of samurai