Resilience??!! What We Need is More Rē-Zilience!

             “What’s your ‘word’?  Mine is Zilience.”   Me

We were gathered together for one final time – a bittersweet moment.  The end of the in-person 2022 AAFP Physician Health and Well-being Conference had arrived and as conference chair and “head coach” for the event, it was time for my closing thoughts.   What the attendees didn’t hear from me was “Go and be more resilient!”  Instead, I sent them forth with the poem “Zilience,” my attempt to capture in words the experience of living in and from my highest state of well-being.  I shared the final lines:

“(you are) Now Called … to enter into the I am Rē deemed, leased, plenished, vivied, juvenated … zilient!  Pick one.  It’s a New Day …  You are  … in Love … again ….”

Then we parted, with hugs, tears, laughter, and a renewed sense of hope ….

Over the past decade, “resilience” has been all the rage as a recommended response to the epidemic of distress and burnout.  The dictionary defines resilience as: “the power or ability to return to the original form, position, etc., after being bent, compressed, or stretched.  The ability to recover readily.”  Those of us in healthcare have been told we need more of, and a whole industry has been created around this aim. 

For too long now, too many of us have been returning over and over again to “survival mode,” and in the process, in no way advancing our well-being, but rather reinforcing the status quo.  While perhaps well-intended, our striving for greater resilience as an end in itself has become the emotional equivalent of “Groundhog Day,” where one continues to get compressed, deformed, and distressed, only to return to the same, often struggling state.  Sound familiar?!   Certainly, having resilience is necessary, but far from sufficient to achieve an optimal state of personal and professional well-being, whatever you would call it … unless ….

If one is going to recover in such a way, it would certainly be desirable for them to be at their highest functioning, so that this would be the state they would bounce back to.  But there is no word “silience” in the English language to attach the prefix “rē” (again) to!  So I created my own – “Zilience,” which I define as “The state of being one’s highest self, including having and living from a deep sense that your life is about something larger than you.”   Zilience is a transformation of the word resilience.  This is the higher state I aspire to return to when distressed, and doing so has literally transformed my life. 

How about you?  How might you find your way to “zilience,” or thriving, fulfillment, joy, flourishing or whatever word you would use to describe your highest, best self – and then spend more of your time in that state of being?   While there are many paths to get there, all have some things in common:  a vision, a plan, and a team.  No one arrives there accidently, or alone.  The time has arrived for you to name your word, and then define it, embrace it, embody it, share it, and repeat – to keep bouncing back to that state of being, again … and again.  It’s time for each of us to live into our equivalent of rē-Zilience!  Afterall, it’s a New Day … and none are guaranteed, so let’s continue to encourage and support each other to choose wisely ….