Finding my true meaning of resilience
Words: Tom Warburton
From a young age, we're taught that resilience will bring results and access success. Therefore, growing up, I followed the mantra of keep going no matter what. The military-esque tough man resilience told me ‘it’s only one more step’ or ‘it’s only one more exam’. Resilience was like a drill sergeant shouting in my face to keep going. Then, after one too many in the pub, for my sins, I decided to attempt to become the youngest person to walk to the South Pole solo. The South Pole became my life. I sacrificed everything - from the much-wanted degree results, turning down jobs and not to mention the thousands of pounds I have spent. Whilst my friends were out enjoying their careless university day, I was tackling the miserable blistering cold of Norway. As the rest of the world were sat comfortably in their everyday lives, I was out pushing myself. Resilience was my bread and butter and my friend. For a large part, it worked. I used it to push past the pain the coldness and terrain of Norway. When my stove stopped working whilst on the largest glacier in Iceland, I pushed through by using my resilience.
In my mind, resilience was necessary for the biggest challenge. No, not walking to the South Pole but simply getting to the start point. It’s hard for anyone to take a 19-year-old seriously. Tens of thousands of pounds, corporate sponsorships, insurance policies and permits all stood in my way. Again, I used resilience to navigate my way through to success. I was all set to head off, much to my mother’s worry, in November 2020.
Skip forward to March 2020, COVID and its subsequent lockdown hit. I was ready; I had plan B and backups, but more importantly, I had resilience. Later I realised how wrong I was to think it could get me through anything. I was just a small cog in the big bad world, resilience had failed me.
I sat helpless as I watched my dream and efforts crumble before me; sponsorships I’d worked for tirelessly disintegrating overnight, borders closing and permits denied. Although my worries were minuscule to what so many others were facing, they felt like the world. Being so young, I felt foolish due to already having postponed my expedition. It was a running joke that one day I’d complete it. Each year putting my life on hold, to watch my friends from school and university achieve their dreams. Whilst it felt like I had achieved nothing.
So I stopped, there was nothing I could do and resilience had failed me. No matter how hard that drill sergeant could shout, it could not get me over this obstacle. As much as I tried to get back up over the turf, I couldn’t. I lacked the will power and became defeatist. The reality is I’d burnt out.
Yet, I’d been viewing resilience the wrong way, for the most part, we all have. The commonly held definition of resilience isn’t to keep going regardless. Merriam Webster defines resilience as “an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change”.
What I was missing was the recovery. My expedition cancellation allowed me to recover, take a step back, analyse and plan ahead. This view is shared, not by business gurus or by performances coaches but by biologists. Neuroscientist, Brent Furl devised the concept of “homeostatic value”.
As we overwork, or push on using traditional resilience, our body and mind get out of sync, we cause damage. As we push on as we all do, I included we waste our mental and physical efforts trying to return the body to its status quo, something we can’t do if we want to carry on more efficiently.
Think of your work, whatever it may be, a fast-paced project, managing home life, planning an Antarctic expedition, as a 100-metre sprint. Usain Bolt doesn’t win a hundred-metre dash, then immediately go onto training for his next victory, he doesn’t keep on running under the impression this resilience will bring him victory. He stops, he gets in an ice bath and brings his body physically and mentally back to where it belongs, at an equilibrium.
My lockdown recovery allowed me to look at resilience in a different light. Resilience is a broad subject. Commonly when discussing human resilience we’re referring to psychological resilience, whilst academics argue that psychological resilience is the ability to return to a pre-crisis state.
Yet, if I was to return to my pre-COVID status quo expedition attempt, that wasn’t pre-crisis, it was mid-crisis. My traditional view of resilience of keep going no matter what, had made my attempt crisis-ridden. The tough guy keeps going mentality had led to sleepless nights, constant emails and unknown stress. At the very core of the issue, you can’t be resilient if the object you’re trying to overcome is crisis-ridden. Your first step to overcoming anything is to take a step back. To solve it from the start not to keep on pressing on.
My expedition cancellation has allowed me to understand the true meaning of resilience and that the traditional view of it is more damaging and less productive. By taking a break and recovering, it allowed me to identify my previous shortfalls and not only get Antarctica going again but also begin to enjoy what I had fallen in love with at the start. Now with my new form of resilience, I’m back to planning for Antarctica and even more expeditions, such as planning a traverse down the Ganges in much warmer climates than my previous endeavours.
I’m looking forward to bringing my new-found resilience to Antarctica in my trek. The continent is full of stories of endeavours, of pressing on and achieving amazing feats, notably Colin O’Brady’s unbelievable 32 hours non-stop slog to his finish. Yet, Antarctic resilience has caused tragedy in the past. Think of the tragic sacrifice undertaken by Captain Lawrence Oates, notable for his final words “I am just going outside, and may be some time” during the ill-fated Terra Nova expedition.
Ultimately, we’ve seen resilience is about recovery not how far we can endure. Now when I find myself in front of an obstacle, I don’t try and grabble trying to push myself over it. I stop, I recover, and get myself back into equilibrium to effectively overcome it later.