Resilience Is a Survival Skill, Not a Life Purpose | Opinion
Resilience helps us survive, but shouldn't define us. AmiLynne Carroll argues for agency, support and self-discovery in our lives.
Resilience is often mistaken for a life purpose, but it is actually a survival skill. We praise those who persevere through challenges, yet we rarely ask who gets to define their life after the tough times. The World Health Organization reports that depression and anxiety account for 12 billion lost working days each year due to excessive workloads, limited support, and job insecurity.
Treating resilience as the ultimate measure of handling adversity can become another burden imposed on people already struggling. It can turn an experience into an identity that must be maintained. My own experiences with quadriplegia and a stroke in 2022 could easily place me in the survivor category. However, I refuse to let survival define me.
While such experiences form our stories, they do not determine who we are. The danger arises when praise becomes a prescription. Borrowed beliefs – ideas about ourselves accepted from influential others – can limit our potential. When someone is praised for being strong and independent, they may feel that asking for help would betray their perceived identity.
This can make them endure quietly, feeling increasingly unable to express their needs. Cultural celebration of resilience deserves scrutiny, as we often applaud overcoming adversity but fail to help individuals discover what they want afterward. Survival answers how we got through something, but not who we want to become. The consequences extend beyond extraordinary hardship.
A person who has spent decades being dependable may struggle to change careers. A caregiver may abandon their own ambitions. Someone who endured a painful relationship may carry its lessons into future relationships. The experience changes them, but the label can keep them living inside it. A world where people receive support to pause, assess, and decide could be one where resilience coexists with collaboration, compassion, and the freedom to ask for help.
The LifeCharter Yellow Light Method suggests pausing, assessing, and deciding when life disrupts our plans. This requires honest self-examination, the courage to question expectations, and the willingness to act on what we learn. Leaders, employers, educators, and healthcare professionals must change the conversation, stop measuring recovery by returning to former roles, and build support systems to help people identify their needs, reclaim agency, and determine their own next steps.
We can acknowledge someone's endurance without making it their defining quality, celebrating courage while recognizing that asking for help takes courage too, and allowing people to change, even when it unsettles others' expectations. The author, AmiLynne (Babs) Carroll, is a speaker and certified life coach offering paid LifeCharter coaching and programs related to this framework.
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