Resilience and Adversity are two important factors that can impact our lives and our performance.

Friedrich Nietzsche's famously wrote, "What does not kill me, makes me stronger".

At Peak Dynamics, we use a resilience assessment with our clients. This is incorporated with our decision-making assessment gives our clients a useful amount of data and feedback that can allow them to make changes in their lives, whether they are in business, elite sports or extreme adventurers.

Much research has been completed on resilience over the past 30 years. More recently it has been shown that soldiers returning from Afghanistan and Iraq suffered less from PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) if they had a higher resilience. This has been particularly true if they felt what they were doing was meaningful.

Research has also shown that those with higher resilience tend to have higher HDL (High-Density Lipoprotein) cholesterol. This is the good cholesterol. LDL cholesterol is the bad stuff. So resilience is linked with diet and wellbeing. 

To close the loop, we also see a very high correlation between high stress and poor decision-making. Stress is not all bad, however. Some stress is good and helps us to perform better. Take it too far and you tip over the top and it can impact you adversely. Look up the Yerkes-Dobson curve if you are interested.

Those who have suffered adversity at a young age, such as Jean-Paul Bedard, who has written the article below, tend to have a higher resilience later in life.

As Samuel Beckett's last words in his novel, 'The Unnamable' say:

"You must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on"