The Strongest Material That Exists Is The Resilient Soul

The strongest material that exists is not graphene or diamond, it is the resilient soul and that heart that has sealed the sharpest wounds of adversity with golden thread. This concept is by no means the perfect ingredient for happiness, it is an attitude towards life, it is hope inviting us to move on.

To say that we live in a resilient time is evident, circumstances push us to do so, although if there is something we all know, it is that it is not always achieved with the same efficiency. Not everyone copes equally with a circumstance of stress or personal difficulty. We each drag our private anchors, our oceans of injustice, our degrading seas, and we don’t always know how to get out of them.

For this to be so, different factors intervene framed in our own culture. We live in a society accustomed to labeling : you are smart, you are clumsy, you are a maniac, you are a failure, the other is weak and the other is strong.

That obsession to take each feature to an extreme and put a permanent label on it often plunges us into a state of absolute hopelessness, where we stop believing in our own potential, isolating ourselves in our private corners, in our fleshly suffering, tears and dejection. Sometimes it is not enough for us to be told that we can all be resilient, because resilience, and this is important, hardly springs up alone.

Why some of us are more resilient than others

The key that makes some of us more resilient than others is found in our brain’s ability to withstand or resist stressful situations. There is therefore a biological factor and that neuroscience has been in charge of studying. In fact, through works such as the one published in the journal “Nature” we understand a little more about this fascinating but at the same time highly complex process that shapes the resilient brain.

These would be the main mechanisms that determine our greater or lesser resilience:

• The upbringing. Having had an attention characterized in continuous affection and in that nurturing based on the attachment that attends and guides, favors the optimal maturation of the child’s central nervous system. However, growing up in a traumatic environment or where there is no affect, causes physiological and biochemical reactions that will make us less resistant to stressful situations.

• The genetic factor is also determining in many cases. Fear or the ability to overcome adversity leaves an emotional mark, an imprint on our genes and can be passed on to other generations.

• Our neurotransmitters. Another aspect that has been observed is that people with great difficulties managing stress or dealing with trauma have low activity in neurotransmitters such as endorphins or oxytocin . Their limited interaction with the limbic system or the prefrontal cortex puts these people in a state of continuous helplessness, emotional chaos and a greater tendency to anxiety or depression.

As we can see, these three factors can make us more vulnerable, that we perceive ourselves as weaker and the world a threatening scenario. However, let’s avoid embracing this belief. Our potential is there, like the ship waiting to be raised from the depths, like the bird that walked on two legs because it had forgotten that it had wings to fly.

The strongest armor is your own heart, your own mind to clothe with resilience, self-acceptance, self-esteem and renewed hope. In fact, and although it is difficult for us to admit it, there are battles that are better to be considered lost, because leaving the past in that drawer where the old calendars are kept is allowing us to live in the present, it is allowing illusions to sprout in the fissures of our wounds.

Little by little and day by day, these illusions will grow new projects, new people and new winds, those that start smiles, those that remove weeds from the past. Finally, the time will come when we can do it, when we will look back at the past without feeling the fear and anger of yesteryear. The calm will come because we have finally allowed ourselves what we deserve so much: to be happy.