In another riff on an article I find particularly reflective, motivational, and inspiring, this week I take on "The Secrets of Resilience," published by psychologist Meg Jay in the Wall Street Journal on November 10, 2017. As someone passionate about becoming an educator and mentor in disadvantaged communities facing adversity, the opening lines immediately hooked me in: "Does early hardship in life keep children from becoming successful adults?"

In the second paragraph, however, Jay immediately counters this thought by showing a surprising pattern of immensely successful people who "draw strength from hardship and see their struggle against it as one of their keys to their later success." These people cultivate "resilience," but resilience, as defined to Jay, is often oversimplified in our society as "bouncing back" or "rebounding" from your life sufferings and adversity. The American Psychological Association (APA) defines adversity as "adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or significant sources of stress." What resilient people do in response to these stressors is much more complicated than a "rebound": it is a way of confronting life that makes you grow and become a more elastic person.

The primary example that Jay, a clinical psychologist, relies on is a 1962 book by psychologist Victor Goertzel and his wife, Mildred, that selected 400 individuals who had at least two biographies written about them and made positive contributions to society. Subjects included Eleanor Roosevelt, Louis Armstrong, Henry Ford, and John D. Rockefeller.

What the Goertzels found was that less than 15% of famous men and women were raised in supportive and untroubled homes. About 75% of these individuals grew up in families with some severe problem, including poverty, abuse, absent parents, or alcoholism. To extrapolate the observation of the Goertzels today, Jay says that we would "find many more examples of women and men who rose to great heights after difficult childhoods - Oprah Winfrey, Howard Schultz, LeBron James and Sonia Sotomayor."

Meg Jay, a clinical psychologist and educator for two decades, then cites the Kauai Longitudinal Study, a project begun in 1955 that assesses 698 babies born on the Kauai island of Hawaii at ages 1, 2, 1, 18, 32, and 40. This study identified some of these children as being at risk for future problems because of facing many adversities from birth. One-third of these children fared well. They would perform equal to or better than their low-risk peers from affluent, stable homes, and would find supportive families they grew up in that contrasted greatly with the families they grew up in. They would become "competent, confident, and caring adults." "How did they do it?" Jay asks.

For me, this part of the essay reminds the reader to take the benefits of suffering and adversity ("whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger") with a grain of salt - two-thirds of the high-risk children still had their own expected difficulties, ranging from delinquency, unplanned pregnancies, and underemployment. Being raised in adverse and unfavorable circumstances is not at all advocated, and shouldn't be sought, according to Jay. It is also incredibly important for us to not see the high-risk children who didn't "make it" as somehow lesser than the ones who did - Lord knows how much luck and circumstance goes into the outcomes of the future.

But we can and should learn a lot from these resilient people. One of these things is that they are active problem solvers, most of whom had a unique strength that they used to their advantage. This strength could be "a particular talent, an engaging personality, a ready intelligence." Another thing that these resilient people do is that "they sought out friends, teachers, neighbors, or relatives who cared." For these people, mentors were instrumental in the formation of the successful people they ended up becoming. "It is a myth that resilient people don't need help. Seeking support is what resilient people do." For the majority of these resilient adults, their most important reported asset was their determination.

One woman who survived an abusive childhood said this: "I give it 100% before I give up. I will never lose hope." Another person who became a bookkeeper said this: "I am not the type of person to run away - no matter how difficult the problem."

These resilient people are, above all, fighters who refused to give up. Jay also cites a 2010 paper by Anke Ehlers of the University of Oxford that reported on 81 former political prisoners in East Germany, who were subject to constant mental and physical abuse. Two-thirds of former prisoners, at some point, developed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), while one-third of former prisoners did not.

Dr. Ehlers would go on to find that certain mindsets made these people more likely to suffer from PTSD. The ones who felt mentally defeated, that felt like they were "nothing," were more likely to report these symptoms. The prisoners who resisted from within and had an "inner defiance," fared better down the line. One officer in the military who survived years of bullying as a child told Jay this: "I refused to accept what they said about me was true."

In one of the strongest parts of the article, Jay accepts the immense uncertainty and variability that goes along with resilience "resilience isn't a single quality someone does or doesn't have...but rather it is a phenomenon - something we can see but may never be able to neatly explain."

There is a parable similar to the Parable of the Prodigal Son that captures the phenomenon of resilience. Two twins were raised by a violently alcoholic father - one grew up to be a drinker and abuser, much like his father, while the other becomes a model parent who never drank in his life. When asked how they turned out to be who they were, they both responded: "Given who my father was, how could I not?"

Again, we cannot see this as a Jekyll and Hyde, winner or loser side to resilience. Overcoming childhood adversity is a "heroic, powerful, perilous, often decades-long endeavor." And in reality, very few people growing up in high-risk environments end up like either of the twins - they end up like a little bit of both. Very few of us will end up being LeBron James, Oprah Winfrey, or Sonia Sotomayor. The majority of people reading this article, or Jay's article, are reading because they want to have more resiliency themselves and be closer to their ideal selves.

So how does Jay say we do this?

Throughout her article, she has laid out the guideline. But one way to own the phenomenon of the resiliency within is to "remember the ways you have been courageous and strong." A lot of people reading this article feel a lot of doubt and shame at the dysfunctional circumstances they grew up with compared to their friends with happier upbringings. But I'm here to tell you that you have survived, and even thrived until now because of your own strength and own resiliency.

"Think back on a time when you were challenged and give yourself credit for how you made it through." The resilient fighter in us is there - it has always been present deep in our souls. Remember when it was there - and now allow yourself to awaken it.