What is Resiliency? Resiliency is the ability to spring back from and successfully adapt to adversity. An increasing body of research from the fields of psychology, psychiatry, and sociology is showing that most people–including young people–can bounce back from risks, stress, crises, and trauma and experience life success. Our favorite definition of resiliency, in fact, was given by a 15-year-old high school student who, after a semester of resiliency training, described resiliency as: "Bouncing back from problems and stuff with more power and more smarts." Researchers are concluding that each person has an innate capacity for resiliency, "a self-righting tendency" that operates best when people have resiliency-building conditions in their lives. These conditions are described in The Resiliency Quiz.