Resilience is the ability to mentally and emotionally cope with a tough situation — from a minor mishap to a downright disaster — and bounce back from it quickly, returning to the healthier emotional state you were in before that disruptive event took place. It’s the quality of rebounding easily after experiencing trauma, stress, tragic events or adversity. It’s also a collection of behaviors, actions and thought patterns that anyone can develop. Resilience helps you maintain balance in your life and bolsters your confidence by giving you mental tools to manage whatever comes your way. Life has a habit of throwing curveballs. But with resilience, you can catch them and toss them right back.‎

You should learn about resilience because it’s important to develop resilience. In studying it as a concept, you can learn actionable ways to incorporate it into your emotional repertoire — that collection of life skills you’ve built that help you process feelings and events to create an even stronger version of yourself. From learning how to manage workplace stress to standing up for yourself during a family dispute, life throws situations at you that all can benefit from a little resilience. And when you learn how to cultivate resilience, you’re empowered to work through those challenges in a way that keeps them from interrupting your life too deeply. If you’re looking for a way to enjoy more stability in your life even when things get rough, being resilient helps you achieve that.‎

Resilience skills equip you to manage your emotions and the methods you use to handle the feeling of stress itself, which you can synthesize with job-specific problem-solving skills you gain from working in your particular field. These skills are beneficial in every career you can imagine — there’s always a chance you’ll experience something disruptive or stressful at work, no matter which field you go into. It’s normal for this pressure to feel outside your control. But you can determine your response and the ways the situation affects your stress levels when you’re resilient. You can come out of the experience feeling like you rose to the challenge and grew as a person. That’s what resilience is all about, and its applications aren’t limited to a few specific careers. It’s like your own mental support network that boosts all areas of your life, from work to home and beyond — that’s how essential resilience is.‎