April 9, 2026

Resilience Doesn't Mean What You Think

By popular demand, we’re happy to share the recording of our first session for Seeds of Flourishing, Bhaskar Goswami’s “The Way of Human Flourishing”, now freely available here for everyone to benefit from.

Mike James Ross and Steve Rio’s talks will be available soon. A heartfelt thank you goes to all our speakers for their generosity.

We take this opportunity to remind you that your support through donations is vital. We couldn’t do this without you. In a time marked by growing mental health pressures, uncertainty about the future of work, and increasing polarization, the Seeds of Flourishing series supports our community with research-informed tools to move beyond coping toward flourishing. All contributions are tax-deductible, and donors will receive an official tax receipt from Concordia University.

We’re about to reach the middle point of Seeds of Flourishing. It’s time to reflect on a buzzword we’ve heard a lot in this field: resilience.

Resilience doesn't mean what most people think.

The Latin root, resilire, means to recoil. To snap back. To return to where you started.

Resilience is often portrayed as the skill we all should learn and constantly practice.

When we tell people to be resilient in deteriorating conditions, however, we risk asking them to endure the conditions without changing them.

Next Week: Challenging the Actual in the Name of the Possible 

Jessica Riddell, our next speaker in the Seeds of Flourishing series, has spent her career naming this clearly: the problem isn't that individuals lack grit. The problem is that we built institutions optimized for something other than human flourishing, and then blamed the humans for struggling.

Instead of presenting another resilience framework, Dr. Riddell brings up a different question entirely: 

What would it take to redesign the conditions?

She calls this building hope circuits: Actual pathways, in communities and institutions, that can be deliberately designed, rewired, and strengthened. 

In Dr. Riddell’s framework, hope is a verb. Rather a feeling you have on good days, hope is something you build in decisions, in language, in how you design the rooms where people gather.

Join us on April 16. Free. Online. 45 minutes.

If you are registered already, we can’t wait to see you there!

With warmth,

The Centre for Human Flourishing Team