![\"Fire](\"https:\/\/www.lemonade.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/fire-damage-apartment.png\")
<\/p>\nIt\u2019s a smell he\u2019ll never forget.<\/p>\n
An hour earlier, Jesse Morris, a managing partner at a venture capital firm, was at a meeting in downtown Manhattan, only to see he had two missed calls from his superintendent. He figured he should pick up, since his super is never one to call.<\/p>\n
When he answered on the third try, the voice on the other line said it to him straight: \u201cYour apartment is on fire.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jesse caught a cab home, 20 blocks or so from his meeting. Firetrucks and barricades were surrounding his five-story, grayish apartment building, nestled above a vegan burger shop and Thai noodle joint on the corner of Lexington Avenue.<\/p>\n
He saw his neighborhood had gathered \u2018round, and spotted his alarmed barber and laundromat owner, worry plastered over their faces.<\/p>\n
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He was numb, but in a moment of odd clarity was ready to follow instructions.<\/p>\n
\u201cI went into problem solving mode, and remember the incredible FDNY firefighters who told me the fire is out, and to go up and collect all – if any – remaining valuables. They handed me a garbage bag, and asked if I had insurance. I did,\u201d said Morris.<\/p>\n
The smell of smoke accompanied him on the walk up to his apartment; his shoes made squeaky noises as he laid foot on his sopping wet floor.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt like I was in Armageddon. I scanned the apartment quickly to see if there was anything that could be salvaged,\u201d Morris recalls. He found his social security card and passport, and shoved some smoke-ridden clothes into his garbage bag.<\/p>\n
Standing down on the street, carrying everything he had left on his back and a garbage bag, Morris says that while he was hurting inside, he suddenly had a sense of gratitude. \u201cIt\u2019s an odd sight to see your home completely destroyed, but I remember thinking, thank god no one was injured.\u201d<\/p>\n
Morris\u2019 moment of clarity, coupled with his sense of gratitude, are what psychologists<\/a> call resilience: the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or significant sources of stress<\/a>. It\u2019s the \u2018bouncing back\u2019 to real life even though you are experiencing emotional distress.<\/p>\n Resilience is a driving mode these days, as wildfires rage across California and Australia. Victims of house fires<\/a> often have to be quick to be resilient, while coping with long-term effects on their lifestyle and wellbeing.<\/p>\n The scope of resilience is wide; it emerges in all shapes and forms following adversity, and is measured by the ability to recover and live a more resilient<\/span> life after overcoming a crisis.<\/p>\n While this includes life-threatening, traumatic, and often tragic situations such as refugees fleeing a regime or recovering from a freak accident, people can demonstrate resilience even if the adversity is considered to be on a relatively small scale.<\/p>\n Resilience has often been referred to as “ordinary magic;” while it seems like an extraordinary feat, it is more common than once thought – it\u2019s a human trait inhabited by all, but only used by some.<\/p>\n No matter how extreme the adversity, people will bounce back to their happiness baseline in what seems like a short time, Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert<\/a> found in numerous studies. In fact, it surprises us how fast the vast majority of people who experience any kind of tragedy or trauma get back to their day-to-day routine, since, as Gilbert says \u201cWe don’t recognize that we are as resilient a species as we turn out to be.\u201d<\/p>\n Gilbert dubs this our \u201cpsychological immune system.\u201d It\u2019s how people, mostly unknowingly, reset their brain and change their views of the world so they can feel better about their life, here and now.<\/p>\n But since these processes are largely unseen, humans don\u2019t realize they\u2019re capable of overcoming adversity – and to what extent.<\/p>\n Gilbert says that\u2019s a good thing. After all, can you really prepare yourself for tragedy? Only when it hits us to do we do \u201cthe very things that evolution would have us do.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"3](\"https:\/\/www.lemonade.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/grief-response-graph.png\")
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