If you’re anything like me, you like things to be labelled and easily identifiable; nicely organised into a memorable formula that you can use any time. So I’m going to break down the formula of success for you and turn it into something that is ‘easy’ as 1 + 2 = 3:
1. Resourcefulness is defined as “the ability to find quick and clever ways to overcome difficulties”.
The main difficulties that human beings encounter throughout their lives fall under these categories:
Work stress
Chronic health conditions
Unexpected health scares
Financial worries
Grief & Loss
Relationship stress
Have you ever been in an emergency situation where you’ve just gone into beast mode and handled every part of the emergency well, but hours or days later, you’ve just crumbled emotionally - or you still haven’t dealt with the emotional ramifications of the situation and it’s still causing problems for you years later — like PTSD.
Resourcefulness, while crucial to short-term success in any workplace, relationship and life crisis - is usually only evident in the BIG moments.
Resourcefulness is a great tool to have in a pinch, but resilience must also be a core skill to cope successfully with life’s difficulties. Resilience is the diesel fuel of resourcefulness - it keeps on trucking and keeps your engine running long-term.
What is it exactly?
2. Resilience is defined as “the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; [mental] toughness”.
The two concepts of resourcefulness and resilience go hand in hand if you want to be successful. A lot of people think that resilience is a sort of inner strength that you can tap into and handle anything without flinching. That’s kind of true - let me explain.
Understanding who you are, and most importantly, who you want to be, gives you the strength to live up to the expectations you have of yourself and the contributions you want to give to the world. Carrying this understanding informs your decision-making process and gives a stable base for identity and the ability to create and maintain boundaries. Knowing your boundaries is a form of self-respect and it teaches others how you want to be treated. When someone is demonstrating resilience they are demonstrating who they are - their character; and what they will and won’t allow in their life.
So, how does that lead to success?
3. Success is defined as “the accomplishment of an aim or purpose”.
Success means different things to different people. To a writer, success means published books; to a businessman, success means high profits; and to a child, success might mean happiness and friendship.
No matter what your definition of success is, Winston Churchill said that “Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm”. Not very scientific but, let’s analyse it:
There you have it! I promised you'd get there in only two simple steps: Resourcefulness + Resilience = Success.
If you’d like to go deeper and analyse your own version of success, download the free 3-page PDF worksheet below and write out your answers to four simple, but powerful questions.