Resilience & The Shawshank Redemption

One of the most beautiful HBR articles I have read is called “How resilience works”. It was written by Diane L. Coutu and essentially involves three simple practices to cultivate the habit of Resilience. I quote from the article almost verbatim:
  1. Face Down Reality
    Instead of slipping into denial, accepting reality can help you prepare yourself to act in ways that enable you to endure.
  2.  Search for Meaning
    Instead of viewing yourself as a victim devise constructs about your suffering to create meaning for yourself. This meanings will help you visualize a better future and make the present manageable by removing the sense that it is overwhelming
  3. Continually Improvise.
    When disaster hits, be inventive. Make the most of what you have, putting resources to unfamiliar uses and imaging possibilities others don’t see.
In the evening I was watching the movie, “The Shawshank Redemption”. It was as if they had implemented the HBR article verbatim. I saw TSR when I was in college and I fell in awe of the character of Andy Dufresne.

I remember I was channel surfing and happened to land on Star Movies at a very interesting juncture of the movie. The character of Andy seemed suicidal and as I was waiting for him to hang himself I experienced a truly amazing cinematic twist. For those who haven’t seen the movie let me not put in any spoilers here.

But the thing is that Andy was an amazing guy, and if there was in reality a guy like that he sure would have come out of terrible situation just like Andy did :)

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