There is a part of us that would like to believe the world we live in could be stable and unchanging…and happily ever after. The reality is we live in an endless cycle of change in every aspect of our lives.

As soon as we charge up our new phone, chances are high it will immediately need some patches to download to keep it functional.

As soon as the township re-paves a main road, it only looks perfect for about a day until we discover the sharp edge of a raised sewer drain.

As soon as we are a seasoned parent of a middle schooler, kids move into high school and we imperfectly face a whole new set of parenting challenges.

As soon as we gain a good degree of confidence in our chosen field, the marketplace shifts rapidly, and we find ourselves in need of some new skills to remain competitive.

As we continue on our journey to build and strengthen our character, improving our resilience is needed to effectively address the endless cycle of change in our lives.

The good news is that academic research and real-life experience would demonstrate that resilience can be consistently improved over time. As our world continues to grow more complex and uncertain, here are few thoughts to encourage a focus on improving our own personal resilience:

• Accept the Truth: It is important that we accept the universal and timeless truth that life is an endless cycle of change. It is not emotionally healthy to remain fixated on a false hope that change will not be a constant in our lives.
• Change Brings Growth: We only learn through change and disruption. For most of us, if we looked back on our own life experience we would see that when things did appear relatively stable, we typically became complacent, unproductive and may be even a bit lazy.
• Forget Perfection: For all practical purposes, it is impossible to be perfect in a world that is constantly changing. It is emotionally healthy to find some peace in our own imperfections. We should not become satisfied with our imperfections, but just find some peace as work to improve upon them. In addition, it would be helpful to find some peace with the imperfections of others, especially those closest to us. They are facing an endless barrage of change too.
• Principles Remain: Even in a world of endless change, there are timeless, universal principles such as loyalty, commitment, compassion and teamwork that can steady us and grow our resilience as we journey along.

As we continue to improve our resilience to address the reality of ongoing, disruptive change in our lives, we will build and strengthen our character and Character Creates Opportunity for us to reach our hopes and dreams and stay close to those we care about most.