Individual resilience is popular topic whereby researchers attempt to identify
characteristics of individuals who react positively to stress. However, such research uses
a reactionary approach, attempting to characterize successful individuals after they
experience adversity and does not explain why some individuals proactively seek out
challenging circumstances. Pursuing challenge is a new construct that explains why
individuals proactively increase stress as a strategic mechanism for developmental
purposes. I developed and validated a measurement tool for pursuing challenge in
multiple studies. Additionally, I explored relationships between pursuing challenge and
similar constructs (e.g., grit, proactive personality, and self-efficacy), as well as the extent
to which pursing challenge accounted for unique variance in performance outcomes using
correlational and regression analyses. Pursuing challenge demonstrated consistent
relationships with resilience, need for achievement, proactive personality, self-efficacy,
and grit, and accounted for unique variance in performance outcomes. Results indicated
three implications for research on resilience and performance include: 1) the need for a
proactive perspective to examine individual resilience and performance in stressful
situations, 2) pursuing challenge captures unique characteristics of resilience and
performance, and 3) individuals who pursue challenge demonstrated consistent
personality traits that crossed boundary conditions of the Big Five personality domains.