• Resilience is the ability to modulate and constructively harness the stress response, a capacity essential to both physical and mental health.
• Success can hinge on resilience. Setbacks (serious or minor) are part of any endeavor, and those who react to them productively will make the most progress

However, I can think of many real success experiences without serious setbacks (though resilience is like the protective rope on a rock climber — you need it sooner or later.)

• Case: I feel my wife went through the diploma training without serious setbacks.
  • However, I think she had serious setbacks at year-end in MindChamps.
• Case: after leaving Chartered, I had an easy ascent in LAMP and increased earning power quickly.
• Case: I switched from LAMP to unix admin without major difficulties I can recall.
• Case: I got into quant dev without a fight. I impressed my Barcap colleagues with my quant knowledge. I didn’t have a major struggle.
  • However, I had insurmountable setbacks with the quant complexities of Stirt
• Case: I picked up c# easily. The major setbacks were mostly in the boss criticism. Besides that, my c# learning had minor setbacks.
• Case: I picked up swing and passed some swing interviews, all without a lot of major setbacks
• Case: after GS, I became quite popular with Wall St recruiters.
  • My failed java interviews were minor setbacks, in contrast to serious setbacks in other job seekers’ experience. In this respect, my resilience was outstanding.
  • However, I had multiple serious setback with c++ interviews, before I started passing them

I had serious setbacks on many fronts, not the least on the corporate ladder i.e. the most visible yardstick of “success”, but ultimately income, cashflow, health and family (all livelihood components) are the truly important things. In terms of income, I had a relatively easy success to reach my middle-class level without serious setbacks.

— some of my setbacks that tested my resilience

• minor: job instabilities at GS, q3SG etc
• serious: tech churn. I coped well.
• serious: age discrimination. I coped very well.
• minor interview setbacks
• serious: BMI setbacks
• serious: yoga
• serious: academic parenting setbacks
• minor: spouse communications [even conflicts]
• minor: coding drill
• — other setbacks .. less about resilience