Summary Of Toughen Up By Alice Kelly

To Be Resilient.

What does it mean to be resilient? Often it is seen as Strength or tenacity of an individual. Is the concept in fact so simple and one dimensional? The Essay, “Toughen Up” by Alice Kelly asks what is resilience are born with it or is it learned? The answer after some investigation tends to be a little of both one can learn resilience through life experience and a person can also be born with this trait a reaction to a crisis or high stress situation.

The first paragraph talks about two women these two individuals who share similar backgrounds in education and experience. Both of these women lose their employment, with two entirely different outcomes. “A year later, one is unemployed, broke and angry, while the other has branched out in an entirely new direction.” (Kelly) So one is able to instinctively bounce back while the other is still unemployed. This shows a clear difference in reaction when presented with a crisis and leads the reader into a series of rhetorical questions.

Kelly then asks the reader a series of questions for them to analyze as they read “Do you embrace change.” Targeted at the reader to have them look at themselves critically.” "Everyone I see who is resilient never stops being a playfully curious child,” AI Siebert, Ph.D., director of The Resiliency Center in Portland, Ore. [Paragraph