Resiliency in Creativity Challenges can either be something that makes one more resilient or challenging times can bring one down to the literal and proverbial bottom. There is a saying that what does not kill one, makes one stronger.

Challenging Times

The work of Bruce Elkin examines how one might thrive in challenging times and states that the key to thriving in these times is "to build personal resilience and develop your capacity to create what matters -- with whatever life gives you to work with." (2011) This is akin to the saying of "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade." (Author Unknown) Resilience is needed in times of "financial crisis…climate change, and global warming, weird weather, peak oil fears, resource wars, mortgage meltdown, housing markets collapse, job losses, bailouts, insecurity…" (Elkin, 2011)

When the focus of the individual is one such matters, people tend to worry and this leads to the individual being "depressed, and dispirited." (Elkin, 2011) In addition, those who worry are those who lack in "energy and foresight." (Elkin, 2011) Some people just quit trying and according to Elkin "This leads to a negative spiral down into hopelessness, and eventually, despair, it is a nasty, vicious circle."...

Defining Resilience and Creativity
The work of Bain (2010) states that resilience is "the capacity of a system to tolerate disturbance without collapsing, to withstand shocks, to rebuild itself when necessary and to improve itself when possible." Bain (2010) describes creativity by stating the following:

(1) Creativity is putting together disparate ideas in new and useful combinations;

(2) Creativity is an assumptions-breaking process;

(3) Creativity is the generation of ideas and concepts that have not existed before. (Bain, 2010)

Personal resilience is stated in the work of Bain (2010) to be "finding ways to foster and inspire resilient behavior" including;

(1) individual creativity;

(2) organization design thinking; and (3) resilient systems. (Bain, 2010)

Peterson (2011) write that when one…