Resilience is a term which has entered the current conscious in a big way over the last decade. In the field of medicine, there is increasing recognition that doctoring is hard work, and that it takes a toll on the practitioner in ways that we have not imagined before. Left unchecked, the syndrome of burnout takes over, where the individual experiences symptoms of emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation (experiencing events as unreal), or being unable to have a sense of personal achievement from the good work that they do. However, burnout is often insidious, and until a significant event occurs, such as a preventable mistake or a serious health scare, it largely goes undetected. Long-term sequelae include impairment of professional function and development of psychiatric disorders. In data from local research, burnout is present in more than half the doctors surveyed, ranging from junior doctors to consultants.1 Significantly, there were low rates of personal accomplishment. Among the most vulnerable were junior doctors who have spent less than two years working in the local system, or who were socially unsupported. However, while there has been much interest in burnout and its impact on the medical profession, with resilience touted as a means of overcoming burnout, definitions of resilience are still poorly understood. Defining resilience One simple way of appreciating resilience is to see it as a person's ability to bounce back from adversity. But that would be akin to describing a bicycle ride to someone who has not ridden one before. To truly capture the essence of resilience, one must understand three concepts: Adversity is a part of normal experience as we go through life. How we cope with adversity determines our resilience. The repeated cycle of overcoming adversity and being able to withstand greater adversity endows us with increasing resilience. We often work towards reducing stress in our lives, because we have been told that stress is