Building Resilience!
Taking off from my previous blog on Backups and Resilience, I was humbled by number of Indian and Global readers from many countries and liked some of the comments received. One reader had liked my framing ' Resilience is both an attitude and a skill " . and concurred with me. Yet another Reader quoted Nelson Mandela "Do not judge me by my success, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again." Yet another reader commented that "we humans are capable of going through redundancy,recover and thus demonstrate resilience".
Ordinary incidents, or activities or events
turning risky!
(2)
Personal accidents: Every one of us, (especially
elderly people) are more susceptible to an unexpected fall in the house,
bathroom or on the Roads, suffer injuries and would need to be hospitalised for treatment /
surgical procedures.
(3)
Fire accidents: Major fire/s destroys shops, godowns or shops or
factories.
(4)
Natural catastrophes / disasters: – like
Floods, Earthquake, Cyclones, and similar catastrophic perils (“Acts of God”)
damaging and wiping out houses and property, agricultural land, public property, etc.,
(5) Health issues: Health conditions, affecting Heart, or Eye or Fracture of Limbs, Critical illness like Cancer, etc.,show up unexpectedly. These health issues require hospitalisation and surgical procedure draining the savings or funds of the individual or family.
(6)
Epidemic or Pandemic – Dengue, Malaria, or
some virus infection like COVID 19 outbreak. How many of us anticipated
COVID-19 outbreak and its pandemic effects all over the world?
Routine life is getting more and more
complex. These unforeseen incidents / disasters / situations (a.k.a Perils) happen, they impact our normal life,
deplete our physical energy, and drain our financial resources or savings. Probability of such unfortunate events
happening in our lives and causing damage is increasing. Many a times the main income earner may unfortunately
die leaving behind the family members in distress and financial difficulties. Individuals
may lose their assets, may become incapacitated due to injuries, or spend their
savings on treating their health issues. Business enterprises – small, medium,
or large – lose their business assets and income earning capacities. They may
even be required to pay hefty compensation to victims of accidents.
How can one control this situation? How to get prepared to face such risky situations? How can one handle the adverse effect caused by these unexpected accidents / events/ incidents? How can one overcome the risk of financial loss?
Building Financial Resilience
Insurance policies on Life and Assets are the commonly used risk
transfer mechanism to recoup the financial loss caused by unfortunate events /
accidents. The fundamental principle of insurance is Indemnity – which means
that the person who has insured his life or his assets would get indemnified for
the financial loss he may suffer due to unforeseen and sudden incidents /
accidents. Insurance compensation
(Indemnification) is always worked out in such a way that the policyholder is
put back in the same position he was in before the incident causing the loss or
damage occurred.
“Karlo Insurance; Karlo Rewind” -Purchasing adequate insurance protection for Life, Health and Assets is one way of building financial resilience!
By Insurance enterprises not taking adequate “Efforts”
to explain this principle of indemnification ; and Policyholders, by not appreciating or understanding this principle, develop mistrust, lack of confidence, lose “Belief” in this proven financial
resilience mechanism.
"Shraddha and Saburi” – Belief and Effort in the “new Normal”!
Belief ( Read with Synonyms: - Confidence – Trust
– Credence - Faith – Conviction –
Principle – Idea) is required to get up from the unforeseen and unfortunate
events that befall us in everyday life. Effort ( Read with Synonyms: Work – Energy –
Sweat – Determination – Industry – Labour – Attempt – Endeavour – Exertion –
Strength) is required to re-build our lives every time we face a crisis. “Shraddha (Attitude) and Saburi (Skill) ” is crucial to rejuvenate our lifestyles in the New Normal post Covid 19.
A timely topic indeed for our current situation.
ReplyDeleteEveryone is having their resilience tested in ways that are as unique as we each are.
Seems to me, another way, perhaps, to say what you have written is that resilience has two aspects - preparedness and recovery.
Speaking about preparedness, I want to point out that as certain basic assumptions are altered, the ramifications depend on how basic the assumption is and many common resilience measures that we may have put together can also be simultaneously eliminated.
This reveals a severe shortcoming in our normal way of preparing for adversity and planning for resilience.
As a simple instance (one can imagine more complex ones that are affecting every one on a daily basis), when we recently had huge wild fires in our area, the threat of evacuations was imminent. Normally, our back up would be to stay with friends at a distance or leave the area and check into a hotel. But these options are now removed in the backdrop of the pandemic.
Imagine similarly that you have a person taking care of an elder one at home, living close by to a decent hospital. One would think that most eventualities are covered. If the caretaker falls ill, a nurse or family member would cover. If the elder falls ill, the hospital is nearby, etc. In the current situation, all backup options are ruled out. In fact the hospital nearby is no longer considered safe to go to and one is reduced, living in the midst of sophisticated civilization, to the fate of people in medieval times, helpless when a simple malady strikes the elder.
Point being that we normally think of adversities in isolation. Often in real life they come in clusters. Perhaps because the things we rely on as backup are often themselves systemically connected to the first point of failure,and are also stretched or fail simultaneously, sometimes to devastating effect. I wonder if this is what prompted the old belief "Bad news comes in threes"
So, what helps to restore our resilience in such times when our backup plans fail?
Community, Network and Resourcefulness come to mind. Perhaps you can expand on these when you revisit this topic.
A few minor observations on the text - Shraddha is perhaps best translated to faith or having belief and Saburi is patience, perhaps stemming from such faith or belief.
Keep the articles coming!