In 2005 the National Science Foundation brought together some unlikely collaborators—ecologists and psychologists among them—to talk about resilience. It turns out they had a lot in common.

For decades researchers in each field had been studying the ways in which external events and stresses could transform complex systems. Their conclusions were strikingly similar: Resilience is often the result of a period of stress and change.

Just as ecosystems can absorb serious shock and transform into different, but stable versions of themselves, so can people. Resilience, it seems, is hard-wired into us.