The letter I had been waiting for dropped through the letterbox. I had been an “A” student right through school, and my sights were now firmly set on Oxford University. The interviews had been hard to read, but seemed to go ok. I opened the letter. “Thank you for applying to Oxford. After careful consideration it has not been possible to offer you a place”.

I didn’t take it very well. Maybe we are less resilient when we are younger. My (somewhat sulky) response was to decide university wasn’t for me, and I headed off to do voluntary work (“something that mattered!”) instead.

A key part of resilience is described by Bruce Cryer and his colleagues at HeartMath as “releasing the emotional grip” that stress has on us. In their 2003 Harvard Business Review article they describe how to do this, essentially by using techniques to accept the current situation and to develop a new perspective centred on what actions you can take to change the situation.

It took me a long time to do this. After my rejection, I actually did well in my A-Levels, but the following year refused to apply to Oxford again on principle (the principle of, “if they don’t want me, I don’t want them”). I was hanging on to the pain of rejection instead of thinking positively about the future.

Changing our own mindset that things need to and can be different is at the heart of resilience. I think this is the hardest part. In the end, I was sat down by an individual who had become something of a mentor to me. He laid out some different options of what my future might look like. One involved going to Oxford. It did look like the most attractive path… Something seemed to click inside me. It might have taken 18 months(!), but finally I could accept it was me who hadn’t been ready for Oxford (and not vice versa) and I decided to swallow my pride and reapply.

While tenacity and perseverance are key parts of resilience, it is adaptability, and the ability to change mindset, that are more important. Blockbuster Video, Borders Books, Kodak (and many others) kept going for as long as they could when things were tough, but they did not adapt to the new world and the changed environment around them, and ultimately were not able to survive.

I recently had a conversation with Dr Mike Holmes, the newly elected vice chair of the RCGP, about resilience and the importance of it for GPs right now. In echoes of the HBR article, he identified three elements to GP resilience: pragmatic optimism; making do with what you have while making things better; and allowing yourself to think differently.

There are opportunities and new ways of working that can help general practice. Mike Holmes outlined some of these in our conversation. The hard bit for many GPs, as for anyone in a difficult situation, is letting go of the unfairness of what is happening and shifting into the “pragmatic optimism” that Mike describes.

Some GPs and practices have not yet been able to make this shift in mindset. Some will never make it. My life was probably changed forever (with a lot of help!) by shifting my focus from unhappiness with my rejection, to taking action to remedy it. I was accepted into Oxford at the second time of asking. Changing the direction of our lives starts with ourselves, with us releasing the emotional grip our current circumstances have on us, and changing our focus from causes and blame to our response and what we can do about it. This is being resilient.