The surprising root of resilience

The guest this episode is Dr Damian Scarf, he teaches at the University of Otago in New Zealand. I saw him do a short and impactful TED talk: Dr Damian Scarf's TEDx Talk. (Post script: sadly Dr Scarf passed away in 2025)

Very much like Dr Jill Bolte Taylor who did that wonderful lecture about having a stroke, Damian uses his psychology to diagnose what went wrong with him when he was studying. He describes how he thought the way to get things done was to cut himself off. And as he cut himself off from more people he felt worse.

He says:

‘It’s our connections with those around us, the groups we belong to, that bolster our resilience. The number of groups we belong to not only bolsters our resilience, but is also protective against developing depression, can be curative of existing depression, and helps to prevent depression relapse. Even when you're old, groups are critical. The more groups we belong to, the slower our cognitive decline’.

So could our strength come from our connections?

I chatted to Steven Bartlett on his Diary of a CEO podcast - watch it here.

On with today’s episode. At the moment I’m in the middle of writing a book on the myth of resilience. What’s the myth of resilience, the myth is that resilience is an individual strength that some of us have and some of us don’t. As I’ve been immersed in the most wonderful research along the way there’s been some people who I’ve seen their work and thought firstly I’d like to chat to them and secondly they’d be a good podcast.

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