My 2024 word of the year: Resilience
Merriam-Webster deemed Polarization the word of the year, Oxford University Press chose Brain Rot, and I decided Resilience is mine. Combined, I think the three illustrate the kind of year we had.
Resilience is a commonly invoked quality, with many iterations of its description, and I found the one from the US Department of State most resonant:
“Resilience refers to the ability to successfully adapt to stressors, maintaining psychological well-being in the face of adversity. It’s the ability to “bounce back” from difficult experiences. Resilience is not a trait that people either have or don’t have. It involves behaviors, thoughts, and actions that can be learned and developed in everyone.”
This statement beautifully encapsulates the two interdependent phases of Resilience: adaptability and the “bounce-back.” Some descriptions also include qualities of “toughness,” but to me, Resilience isn’t like a formidable castle wall protecting oneself from the environment; instead, it is like a highly elastic balloon that can stretch to take in water, air, or an object, and bounce back to its shape, one that can more easily stretch again after the first time.
At last night's holiday dinner, my friends and I shared what we were most proud of in 2024. Upon reflection, I am genuinely proud of how I have met this year's challenges with Resilience. I wanted to share the three types of Resilience I am proud of developing: 1. Physical, 2. Intellectual, and 3. Emotional, and for each, how I adapted, bounced back, and what I will carry forward into 2025.
Physical Resilience
I started the year in a recovery mode after a significant health issue in 2023. My doctor likened it to my organs “being run over a few times by a Mack Truck,” even if there were no visible injuries. As an avid gym goer who finds intense workout sessions therapeutic, getting winded just walking around the block was incredibly frustrating. For the first few months, I was angry at my body and even scared, especially as I turned 40. Studies like this show that a key attribute in physical aging is a decline in one’s ability to recover from an adverse physiological event. Am I resigned to accepting that this is how my body will feel going forward?
I decided if my old ways of training weren’t right for my body, I must adapt to new ways of taking care of it. I read up on the latest research on changes in women’s hormones and which workouts and nutrients I need to modify (which was hard to find because of the dearth of research on women’s health). At the gym, I couldn’t “just push harder across the board”; instead, needing to be methodical, one aspect at a time: endurance, strength, cardiovascular, endurance, strength, cardiovascular. I knew what my body was capable of before, and pulling myself back from the compulsion to force performance was a daily internal battle as I laced up. The new pace of progress was very slow and difficult to accept and adapt to—why have my split times not changed in three months?
Eleven months in, I am almost back to my baseline fitness. I can finally do short sprints, breathe deeply, and even do a few burpees and tuck jumps (although I try to avoid harsh landings for my joints). Oh, that challenging one-block walk? I am up to 8 miles in one go. 2025 will be a continuation of improving my athletic performance, and I am confident I will be able to adapt to my continuously changing body with age.
Intellectual Resilience
The last couple of years have been turbulent for biotechs, especially as we entered 2024. Even as a seasoned leader, the number and pace of difficult decisions I was compelled to make were jarring, compounded by volatility at many levels (e.g., political, economic, industry, and scientific data). A leader builds conviction through knowledge, information, and experience, and the constant churn of situations makes the process unsettling.
Appropriately firm resolve is one thing, but if you cannot take in new information, especially in a rapidly evolving environment, to refine your hypothesis, it’s a problem. To remain intellectually agile, I started to seek out even more situations of intellectual discomfort because our brains are like muscles; when constantly exposed to changes, we will begin to see challenging situations as the norm.
I attended lectures on unfamiliar topics like the deep sea, quantum mechanics, and 11th-century world history. I also tried out a figuring drawing class, tended bees, and even learned to fish with a pro (this one was probably the most uncomfortable)! This persistent pursuit of knowledge, cultivation of curiosity, and practice of turning to others for answers enabled me to adapt to market changes and prevent intellectual rigidity. In a recent conversation, a colleague asked how I could show up for the team with stability and measured optimism every day. I think it’s because outside of work, I am exercising my brain to accept ambiguity, surrender to lack of information, and be excited to tackle new questions.
Emotional Resilience
I pride myself on my ability to read people, see what talent and contribution they can bring, and thoughtfully decide what projects will grow and incentivize them. More importantly, I can tell if someone has high values and principles, a skill critical in my personal life, too. This means I have let very few people into my close inner circle, and even fewer (if rarely) have ever disappointed me. This year was different.
A person I trusted deeply shocked me with his negligent and duplicitous actions. It was extremely hurtful. I thought there was reciprocal respect and care, but it turned out he held me in very little regard. Once the haze of betrayal wore off, I began questioning my ability to assess someone’s character. Does adaptation mean I stretch what values and behaviors I am willing to accept?
After much introspection, I decided that the best change I could make was to make no change at all. I don’t want to lose my ability to fully trust people because of one bad person, and more importantly, I am not willing to lower my moral caliber to adapt to someone else’s. Sometimes, the scope of adaptation is narrow, and bounce-back speed is more vital in developing resilience.
However, I am more cautious about determining whether I see people for who they are or who I project them to be. As a result, I emerged more confident in my sense of value and boundaries. Had this experience happened in my more impressionable years, I might have come out with shakier confidence in what I deserve from others.
If you ask me the one secret to developing and learning resilience, being kind to yourself would be my answer. Resilience is born out of our internal struggles, and the only way to emerge victorious is to allow yourself to heal, feel, and accept. As the above definition states, it’s not an inborn trait but a collection of behaviors, thoughts, and actions you decide to take. I learned that I get to decide the scope of adaptation and speed of bounce-back that will work for different types of resilience.
If the word of the year choices like “Polarization” and “Brain Rot” indicate 2024, I am sure you had a challenging year, too, and I hope you also emerge from this more resilient, empowered, and kind, ready for 2025.