Hardiness

CHAPTER 15Moving From Life Stress to Life Success

The Role of Hardiness in Turning Around Your World

“Note to self: every time you were convinced you couldn’t go on, you did.”

—Unknown

We’re sure you’ve heard about people who have gone through terrible life experiences, yet, somehow, they have essentially turned their lives around for the better. Many people “get through” bad experiences or bad times. But not everyone makes a life-changing decision to change their circumstances significantly towards what we’ll refer to as thriving.

The term resilience often comes to mind in this regard. However, resilience, as defined by the dictionary refers to “the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.” Resilience is about returning back to where you were before the crisis. What about people who excel above and beyond where they were before the crisis? Some people get through difficult times by becoming more engaged, more challenged, and more in control of their lives. We call it hardiness.

We wanted to conclude this book by providing you with some real examples of how hardiness has played a role in people’s transitions through serious life challenges. In this chapter we focus on how individuals high in hardiness overcame stressful experiences, and used them as a springboard to a better, more fulfilling life. We’ll present some examples of people who experienced life-changing events, yet managed to emerge, not just where they were prior to the event, but in a new place ...