For more than 20 years, researchers have been observing people disintegrate and reassemble themselves in a quiet corner of a London university. The long-running research on resilience at the University of Westminster doesn’t typically make headlines. The kind of research that accumulates over years of questionnaires, interviews, and follow-ups until a pattern eventually emerges is slower and more patient than that. After all this time, what has surfaced is surprisingly straightforward. Five elements. That’s all. There are five subtle indicators that appear to determine who gives in to pressure and who continues to move forward.
Most people undervalue the first one, which is connection. Researchers at Westminster have returned to it time and time again, almost reluctantly, as though hoping something more glitzy would replace it. It never does. Individuals who have someone—anyone, really—such as a sibling, a coworker, or a neighbor who is a little bothersome tend to bounce back from setbacks more quickly than those who don’t. Reading between the lines, the researchers believe that loneliness may be the most underappreciated risk factor in contemporary life. It’s difficult to ignore how frequently the lonely are the ones who fail to return.
Communication is the second factor, which may seem subtle at first. According to Westminster’s data, those who can accurately describe their emotions—even if they do so awkwardly—recover more quickly than those who cannot. Although therapists have known this for a very long time, the statistics support it. You can witness two friends fighting outside a Marylebone coffee shop over something that is obviously unrelated to the topic at hand. One of them will be heavier when they return home. The other won’t. The researchers contend that this gap is more important than we realize.
The third factor is confidence, and this is where the results become more intriguing. It’s not the boisterous, self-assured postings on LinkedIn. It’s more subdued, a self-assurance that endures in the dark. Westminster’s team makes a strong connection between it and what other psychologists refer to as self-efficacy—the straightforward conviction that your actions can alter your circumstances. Individuals who hold that belief, even if it is tenuous, get better. Those who don’t tend to stall. The researchers are cautious not to overstate this, but it’s possible that childhood has had the biggest influence on this factor.
Years of observation, not theory, led to the treatment of competence and commitment as a single fourth factor. Individuals who complete tasks, no matter how small, create a sort of internal framework. a completed essay. A bike that has been fixed. A challenging discussion that was completed. It reminds me of Calvin Coolidge’s well-known quote about perseverance, which the Westminster team has frequently quoted. It has an almost antiquated quality. Resilience seems to reward finishing, while starting is rewarded in the modern world.
Control, or more accurately, the conviction that you have some, is the fifth factor. Not everything. Only a few. Researchers discovered that those who perceived themselves as passive tended to recover more quickly than those who could recognize even a tiny bit of influence in a chaotic situation. It’s the distinction between climate and weather, between what’s happening to you and what’s inside of you. You begin to question whether resilience is more of a way of standing in the world than a trait as you watch this develop over 20 years of data.
This is not a formula. The Westminster team is cautious—almost obstinately so. Five factors are not as messy as people. If there is a recurring theme in their work, it is that resilience is not innate; rather, it is gradually developed in the little, everyday moments that the majority of us pass by unnoticed.
