Why the Romans were right about resilience (we forgot this)

have you ever been told to just man up
to just tough your way out of any
whatever situation that you're currently
in no matter how difficult it might be I
think this stems from a lack of misund a
lack of understanding about the word
resilience and ancient people had it
right I think so in Latin the word
resilience comes from uh resilier in in
Latin which means to be like flexible to
return to its proper shape or whatever
kind of like a spring whenever you bend
a spring it'll Bend and then when you
let go it'll go back to its former
shape resilience um should be something
similar to that not some Unbreaking
stone that is always just strong right
humans aren't going to always be strong
and I think I I heard a really great
quote I don't remember what podcast it
was on but someone said that it
shouldn't be man up it should be human
up because whenever we're sentient we're
human we can we can be more ible in our
thought process in our planning to get
to what we want uh so for example if my
goal was to be um the most articulate
person on Earth and I failed once and I
just kept trying uh to do the same thing
again and again where I was failing I
mean sure you can consider that
resilient but if I'm doing the same
exact thing and failing the same exact
way every single time I I would argue
that that's more like insanity and resil
the the place where resilience comes
into play here is that you can be
flexible enough to adjust course to get
what you want and I think there's a
beauty in that
because in in a way we're all capable of
being resilient whereas it's I would say
it's physically impossible for someone
to be just strong all the time not
everyone is like David goggin I guess
and can can just have that unbreakable
will and and yeah so this week we're
going to be going over a bunch of
different uh applications of resilience
I'm going to be talking to my daughter
at some point about explaining to her
what resilience is to a six-year-old um
so she she'll probably have some great
questions about the concept as well um
our what we're doing here we're trying
to become as articulate as humanly
possible and uh we're doing that by
practicing through consistent practice
of telling stories um just using a
better vocabulary pretty much and so
this concept for this week is resilience
and we've done in the past sovereignty
Nuance authenticity and in my case since
I'm I'm the one making these videos I've
been able to be much more articulate
whenever it comes to using words that
I've covered in in the series so that's
the goal for me here uh for for you I
want to be a good input in your life so
that you can uh improve the quality of
your outputs so
uh as part of my practice today I'm
going to be talking about a story that
relates to
resilience in this story let's rewind
the clock back about 10 years um I'd
failed Cal 2 for the second time and I I
just remember it was just just
devastating because I was going to lose
my scholarship because of this um and
that ended up being the cascading effect
that made me drop out for the first
time uh I ended up I uh passing the
class A few years later but that was not
be so I want to get back to the point
here
resilience how did I get back on track
after failing calculus 2 twice and it's
funny because it all has to do with the
goal State you need to have goals in
order to do anything in the
present it's very difficult to do
something in the present when you don't
have a concrete vision of what you want
in the future
and um I'm being getting really
distracted right now I'm getting text
messages all over the place yeah I don't
do any edits in these videos uh no music
um I might add some music later in the
future but as of right now I just want
to be as transparent as possible and be
accountable for my articulacy because if
I just keep edit putting edits Cuts
everywhere um I never have any
motivation to speak more than 5 Seconds
at a time so yeah uh trying to get back
on track here telling the story of of me
failing capu for the second time uh the
the place that resiliency comes in is
that I mean I did go into deep depths of
Despair because of the situation um I my
whole entire identity at the time was
that I was this uh I guess relatively
smart guy in my opinion I had pretty
high self-esteem at the time and it
really dropped me down to Rock Bottom
where I questioned my entire reality
like am I uh smart enough to do this am
I capable enough to
um basically be a success in life make
the money that I want to make am
I enough to or am I just the type of
person that needs to work in a
restaurant and be a sushi chef for the
rest of his life that's what I was doing
I was a sushi chef at the time and that
was at that time I was doing it for
about 6 to8
years um oh actually when I failed I was
in my third year of being sushi chef so
at the time I was pretty much in the in
the weeds with this whole restaurant
career thing if you can call it that but
it was really scary Dr just having to
drop out and then uh I subsequently just
did sushi for years after that a few
years I ended up doing it for a total of
eight years but uh after about three or
four more after that initial fa second
fail after the second failure of Cal 2 I
took Cal calculus again and this time I
was in fear for my life because I was
severely depressed I didn't know where I
was going in life but I knew I did not
want to do sushi anymore um so that fear
is really what drove me to have to
create a concrete goal for myself and
that goal at the time was to pass
calculus to I didn't know what I wanted
to do after that I just knew I had to
pass this course to not only prove to
myself that I can I'm capable capable of
more but
that I can achieve something and after
passing Cal 2 that time I did actually
restore confidence in
myself I it was really pivotal in me
doing the things that I did later in the
future to get to where I am now making
more money than I ever thought possible
uh moving across the country uh with a
beautiful family and it's
just it it really is all about
flexibility and I think the Ancients had
it right whenever they uh picked up this
word and used it for like kind of like a
synonym for strength in a
way so yeah um I'm going to be telling
some more stories about this in the
upcoming week and then we'll be uh doing
a vote on another word so that's it for
today I'll see you next time