"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results," Albert Einstein once said.

Over the course of my ordeal as a first-year teacher, I have discovered the two greatest skills that can get us to not only survive, but exceed through any situation. These two are resilience and adaptiveness.

Resilience is the ability to not give up no matter how bad things get. It is the ability to come back and try again no matter the challenges, and I used to have a misconception that resilience meant not falling and failing in the first place, and not allowing ourselves to get down and depressed no matter the circumstances.

That goal, I realized, was impossible. There are simply things that happen in our personal lives, from breakups to family dysfunction, and our work lives, from dealing with disrespectful clients and unrealistic expectations from bosses that will lead us to feel like we are failures and make us depressed. Those realities are natural, and I feel them every day as a first-year teacher in inner-city Baltimore. Every day, I feel so dejected from challenges in the classroom that I don't know if I can make it the next day. But then I do, and I show up and resolve to build upon what I failed upon the day before in terms of instruction and relationship. It's not always pretty. I don't always do everything better, but I do one thing better, one day at a time.

"Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, 'I will try again tomorrow'," said Mary Anne Radmacher.

I have found that resiliency is a key to a lot of things in life. Giving up, for a lot of us, is simply not an option. Some things are so dysfunctional that we know we need to give up on them. I have had friends share their experiences with divorce and lost friendships. Their partners and friends grew apart and they had to admit that things weren't working after multiple fights and fallouts. These things don't happen overnight, but happen gradually until no option is left. But last resorts are last resorts. We have to take off from work in times of bereavement, and we have emergency situations to help out the people we love. Resiliency means that we show up, even when we don't want to, even when we don't feel like it.

For me, my relationship has been going very smoothly. My girlfriend and I have a mutual love and respect for each other, despite any rough patches we may have. We won't always agree on everything, but we come to a consensus to build on our past mistakes and communicate better in regards to plans and feelings.

You have to be emotionally strong to be resilient, and to tap at the core of resiliency, it's important to remember all the times we've been resilient. No one has magic for how they're going to handle their present circumstances, whether that's problems at work, with friends, with financial stability, or with marriage. If they did, life would be easy and predictable, but life is not easy and not predictable.

But we can look back and look at the ways we've been resilient in the past. Think about the moments you didn't think you would get through, when you didn't think you would survive until the next day, and you still did, and grew and became all the better for it. I have had plenty of those moments, a lot of them in the past year. For me, I was resilient when I talked with a brother struggling with mental illness. I was resilient when I had to run marathons when I felt like giving up every single step. I was resilient dealing with a dysfunctional family, and above all, I'm resilient every single day with the challenges I'm presented with at work and in my relationships.

Resilience isn't something we're just born with. It's something that is cultivated through experience and time. It is a muscle that gets worked out and only gets stronger. Like a muscle, it can be torn or injured, with shock and sudden traumas that reduce its ability to work. It needs rest and sufficient recovery. Resilience may be the greatest skill we have to keep going on and keep going forward, and if you don't think you're resilient, take a look back at the toughest moments in your life. Those are moments you got through, survived, learned something from, and grew tougher as a result of. All those things are nothing to reduce.

But resiliency in itself isn't enough. We also have to be adaptive to our circumstances and environments. Life doesn't have a single formula, especially when we move and work in drastically different environments and terrains. What works for teaching middle school kids is very different from teaching high school kids, in my experience. Everyone is in a different place. Everyone has different needs.

And likewise, you have different needs when you go to different places and different environments. I have seen kids who are loud, gung-ho, and disruptive become shy and respectful when they go into public on field trips. The beginning quote from Einstein in this article reminds us that when something isn't working, it's time to make adjustments and try something new. That doesn't mean that we always need a drastic overhaul of our situations, but we can't keep doing the same things over and over again and expect different results.

Switch up your pattern if you want different results. That doesn't mean your new thing is going to work, but at least it's new. At least you're trying something different and daring greatly for that thing to work. That doesn't mean it's going to be a miracle and game-changer, but it means that we have to stay on our toes and try new things or else grow stagnant.

So resiliency and adaptiveness are the greatest skills we can have to cope and manage any situation, no matter how difficult. For each of us, we train and cultivate these skills differently. But it's important to realize we've been building them all along, so let's recognize our progress on a daily basis, and endeavor to continue, no matter what.