Resilience is defined as an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change. Resilience enhances emotional intelligence by helping individuals manage their emotions under pressure, persevere through difficulties, and recover from disappointments without losing motivation. It also fosters a positive growth mindset, allowing individuals to view challenges as opportunities for learning and development. Being resilient helps people regulate their emotions and navigate stressful situations, which are critical for personal and professional success.
Detailed below is my "resilience artifact", some object that helps me be resilient. Starting spring semester of sophomore year, I had a very stressful and loaded semester. Near the end of that semester, during finals week, I felt burnt-out, stuck, depressed, and hopeless. My emotional, physical, and mental health all reflected a sense of hopeless. I had difficulty getting up in the morning, motivation to study or complete homework, or even just cook. After looking an photo album of my dog, I was able to become more resilient. Even though I wasn't able to fully recover in time for my most important final, I was still able to show strength under great misfortune. Having this resilience artifact has helped me since, whenever I feel down, I look at this album to become more resilient and help manage my emotions.
Resilience is defined as an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change. A resilience artifact that represents my resilience is an album of my dog. I have this album of my dog as my login page for all my devices, my phone, my iPad, and my laptop. Furthermore, on my phone and iPad, I have an album of 200-300 photos and videos of my dog with my family. If I am having a bad day or feeling down, these photos help me stay resilient. There have been multiple instances where using this artifact has helped me stay resilient and keep my head up.
I want to share how my resilience artifact helped me through an especially difficult time last semester. I had a very heavy schedule last semester, having multiple exams, labs, and assignments due before spring break. At that time, I had an exam, one of the hardest labs I have completed (with an unhelpful partner), a homework assignment, and an essay for the general education class I was taking. Furthermore, I was coming off some all-nighters from the previous week because I had to complete a time-consuming lab. This leads to a whirlwind of bad emotions. I felt stressed, overwhelmed, stuck, hopeless, all of the above. My exam was on a Wednesday and I hadn’t started studying on Sunday. From Sunday to Tuesday, I spent most of my days in bed, staring at the ceiling. I was so burnt out and stressed that I couldn’t get myself to leave my bed throughout those days. I would watch Youtube videos, order Doordash for lunch and dinner, and occasionally play some video games during the night. However, I couldn’t get myself to study, even though I kept telling myself I needed to study. It was a vicious cycle of self-loathing. I would try to study, get tired and stressed, play video games and procrastinate, and then realize that I needed to study by the “panic monkey”. However, I would never be able to fully study. For those three days, I looked at 1-2 practice exams and procrastinated on my lab and homework assignments. There was nothing I could do to get myself to study. I just fell deeper and deeper into a whole lot of stress and hopelessness. On the day of the exam, Wednesday, I woke up and felt even more hopeless. I stayed in bed for the entire morning and stared at the ceiling. I had no motivation to study or even get out of bed. Even thinking about going to the bathroom seemed too difficult. Eventually, as the day dragged on, I pulled up my phone. The first thing I saw was the photo of my dog. After seeing my home screen, I opened up the album of videos and photos on my dog. I spent an hour scrolling through these photos and videos, helping me find some motivation. I knew that I just needed to finish this week so I could see my dog. After viewing that, I still didn’t do the best on the exam but I was able to complete the essay, lab, and homework assignments on time. I didn’t beat myself over it because I knew I couldn’t change the past and whatever goes. Having this album of photos from my dog helped me stay strong and resilient in times of misfortune and change. I was able to dig myself out of the hole of hopelessness and find something I could work towards. Even though I didn’t come out unscathed, I still came out relatively okay. To this day, on all my devices, I have an album of my dog to allow myself to be resilient in times of misfortune.
Resilience ties emotional intelligence because it helps you understand and manage your emotions. In my case, I knew I was at a low point, I felt hopeless, stressed, and couldn’t get myself to do even the most basic tasks. By being resilient, I was able to use self-awareness and recognize when I was feeling overwhelmed or stressed. Furthermore, I used self-regulation to find healthy ways to cope with stress and burnout. Having this resilience artifact also helps me regulate strong emotions. Being able to look at the album of pictures allows me to reflect and refocus on my current situation and emotions. The class activity where most of the class shared their resilience artifact and the story behind helped me build empathy and social awareness. I almost cried during the activity since I was able to understand and empathize with everybody’s story. Being able to empathize with others and their resilience artifacts helped me improve one of my weaknesses in emotional intelligence.