Ordinary magic, extraordinary performance: Psychological resilience and thriving in high achievers.

By Mustafa Sarkar, D. Fletcher. 2014

153 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Although resilience has been referred to as “ordinary magic” (Masten, 2001, p. 227) that is more common than once thought, the majority of research in this area has sampled individuals who have been required to react to potentially traumatic events outside of their control. The findings of this work, however, are not easily applicable to those who actively seek to engage with challenging situations that present opportunities for them to raise their performance level. The purpose of this study was, therefore, to identify and explore resilient qualities that enable high achievers to thrive and perform at extraordinary levels. Thirteen high achievers (9 male and 4 female) from 11 professions were interviewed in the United Kingdom, and interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to identify resilient qualities that enabled the participants to thrive in pressured environments. Results revealed 6 superordinate themes that characterized resilience and thriving: positive and proactive personality, experience and learning, sense of control, flexibility and adaptability, balance and perspective, and perceived social support. The data highlights the multifaceted nature of resilience comprising a constellation of personal qualities that enable high achievers to excel in demanding contexts. The themes are discussed in relation to previous research findings and in terms of their implications for practicing psychologists. It is anticipated that these themes will provide practitioners with an insight into the distinct features of resilience and thriving in high achievers and help individuals to attain success and well-being in their careers.

Subfields: Applied Psychology, Clinical Psychology, General Health Professions

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c9248365e754f88879cc8d736da95c0e1b17de6f

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In Applied Psychology

In Clinical Psychology

In General Health Professions

Citations in the corpus

Human Thriving: A Conceptual Debate and Literature Review (2017, background): “A further line of future research inquiry is the study of the lasting, and potentially cumulative, effect(s) of thriving on an individual (cf. Benson & Scales, 2009; Sarkar & Fletcher, 2014).”
Stressing the relevance of resilience: a systematic review of resilience across the domains of sport and work (2017, background): “…adversities and developmental backgrounds (Brown et al., 2015; Fletcher & Sarkar, 2012; Galli & Vealey, 2008; Mills, Butt, Maynard, & Harwood, 2012; Sarkar & Fletcher, 2014b; Sarkar et al., 2015), and six studies focused on current medium-term career endeavours and adversities (Galli & Reel, 2012;…”
Employee resilience and leadership styles: The moderating role of proactive personality and optimism. (2016, background): “…l ink be tween proact ive personality and resilience has merited far less attention and, not surprisingly given the dominant trait-based perspective of individual resilience, this personality trait has been viewed as comprising a higher-order resilience construct (Sarkar & Fletcher, 2014).”
Psychological resilience in sport performers: a review of stressors and protective factors (2014, background): “As suggested in this observation, it will also be interesting to explore the extent to which significant adversities are instrumental in the resilience–high achievement relationship (cf. Sarkar & Fletcher, 2014).”