Your resilience can be trained

Resilience. There are lots of definitions. In a sporting context we hear resilient people described as tough, gnarly, gritty, when we admire some strengths in their behaviours and characters.?Conversely people who lack resilience are described as soft, brittle, weak. While there are many words to describe what resilience is, it’s helpful to take a position for the purposes of this blog article. To me resilience is

?The ability to perform physical or mental skills, to maximum potential, whilst under pressure and or experiencing stress.

You will notice that there are physical and mental (psychological) elements of resilience in that definition. Those elements are not typically an equal weighting. As the level of pressure and stress increases, the mental aspect of mindset becomes of greater importance to resilience than the physical prowess of the individual or team. See figure 1 below.

It is also of note that resilience is contextual and not always transferable between situations for the same individual e.g. An International Test cricketer may be able to stand on a pitch with 30,000 people watching them confident in their skill set and be ready to perform. But if you put that same person on the first tee of a golf competition with 30 people watching, they may lack self belief, feel an increased level of pressure and become less resilient. The reason for this is resilience is supported by situational competence and confidence. The great news is, as resilience has physical and mental elements it can be trained, with sufficient guidance and nurturing.

Let's look at a couple of examples of extreme physical performance that took extraordinary levels of resilience.?

The Extreme Athlete and the Explorers

Last week, Jasmin Paris became the first woman to complete the infamous Barkley Marathons in Tennessee. The course is 5 circuits of a 20+ mile route. Jasmin completed the course in 59 hours, 58 minutes and 21 seconds. One minute and 39 seconds within the cutoff time. She stared “At the end every fibre of my body was screaming to stop,” “I just gave it everything to get there and then collapsed, gasping for air.” She is only the 20th person (out of over 1000) to ever fully complete the race. Paris survived hallucinations, exhaustion and no sleep during the 60 hour competition.

In 1993 Sir Ranulph Fiennes and Dr. Mike Stroud survived extreme weather conditions as part of their 1350 mile trek across the Antarctic. Towing all their supplies in adapted sledges, unsupported in temperatures as low as -120c. They needed to save weight to complete the trek, therefore they were both on minimal rations, in the most extreme conditions. They eventually finished their expedition after 88 days, more dead than alive. But they achieved their goal and broke the world record. Fiennes described how their raw feet lost all their toenails and how each morning he and Stroud needed to break open their mouths, sealed by scabs, with a Swiss Army Knife in order to feed themselves. Their bodies had clearly reached their limits but their minds hadn’t and consequently they could carry on to their goal.

How did they manage it?

Both Paris, Fiennes and Stroud took the time to train and build up their resilience before their extraordinary achievements. They earned the opportunity to perform and prepared to succeed with careful targeted planning.?

Jasmin Paris achieved her goal having prepared in the three previous years. In 2021 and 2022 she completed three circuits of the Barkley Marathon, in 2023 she completed four circuits before her attempt at the full event in 2024. ?

This was not Fiennes’ first expedition having already proven his resilience many times with Stroud and others. He had proven to himself that he could complete these and similar challenges. Despite this he still trained intensively on Exmoor, pulling tyres across the hilly terrain for hours in all weathers. He built up his strength and tested his body as close to the limit as he could, attempting to simulate the stress and adversity he would experience in Antarctica. He knew that he would experience hardship and therefore was prepared for the pressure and stress that would bring.

Even a modern day Superwoman and Superman follow the athletic training principles of progressive overload and mental rehearsal. They were physically and mentally ready for the challenge ahead.

What does this mean for me?

Sport and expeditions have taught us many lessons that can be applied away from the sports fields, athletics tracks and Polar landscape. I have attempted to summarise ten of those below.

10 Steps to train and improve resilience

1. Focus on the right goals for you - Internal motivation always beats external motivation in the long run. If you really want to achieve something and you are 100% committed you will go further than if an external motivator is driving you. For example, how many times has a company offered a staff member more money to stay when they have been offered a promotion into a new role elsewhere, only for them to leave a few months later. In that instance, the external motivator of money doesn’t overcome the individual's desire to evolve and grow.??
2. Reflect on past failures or feelings of discomfort?- If you have experienced a lack of resilience in the past, write down what you experienced at the time, what triggered that feeling, how that felt, what you tried to overcome that situation. This will help you to assess what you could have done in retrospect to improve that situation and support you in planning your future resilience training.?
3. Train for resilience?- This means conscious planning, thought and preparation. Create a training plan that targets specific skills while experiencing the pressure/ stress situations you have come up against in the past, as closely as possible. Ramp up the pressure incrementally by setting micro goals for your training and progress. Record the progress against targets and make the challenges incrementally harder.?
4. Always?work to a level of intensity that feels uncomfortable - Strain will help you learn how to navigate discomfort. If you do fail, assess why and learn from that situation. Be happy that you have a learning opportunity and analyse what you could have done differently.?
5. Create an environment where failure is understood and accepted - If we agree that failure helps us learn, we must have an environment where failure is understood and accepted. In the business world test environments can be created (e.g Test Trading accounts), dummy audiences can be used or video of presentations or speeches, rehearsals can be held.??
6. Be honest about the discomfort you are experiencing?and will experience when performing?- Discomfort is the tax you feel today, for the achievement you will earn tomorrow. Whether you are training a sport skill, forcing yourself to network, making a video for LinkedIn or speaking publicly. Know it will be uncomfortable and celebrate the feeling after. You did great work that day!
7. Own the voices in your head. Athletes, business people, everyone, have doubts or negative thoughts. At some point everyone has a loss of confidence and lack of self belief. If you have done the training you will be able to argue with the internal negative thoughts and tackle them with evidence of your training. Negative talk only wins if you can’t honestly fight back.?
8. Train to respond and not react. If your training is realistic you won’t be surprised how you feel or the situations that arise. As you practise, plan for the unexpected and decide how you will respond (conscious thought and control) to a situation rather than react (automatic reaction e.g. fight or flight).?
9. Be pragmatic?- The Army says “Any plan only survives the first engagement with the enemy”, or as Mike Tyson said “Everyone has a plan until they are punched in the face”. Being able to accept that things may not go to plan and then adapt and respond (rather than react) will reduce stress and the pressure of the situation. This in turn will increase resilience and give you the best chance of performing under pressure.?
10. Find a high performance coach?- There is a lot to do to build resilience over time and the best performers don’t go on that journey of self awareness and development alone. Whether it’s a sports coach, performance coach or business coach they are there to support your development pathway and help take you to the next level and higher.???

Summary

The most important element of resilience to develop is mindset. There is no art to developing resilience, it is a skill set that can be developed and nurtured with coaching, self awareness and targeted hard work. This article outlines some strategies and tactics that can be followed to promote resilience. I’d suggest working with a coach to help on that journey, especially if there are issues with resilience that are impacting your daily life.?

The unabridged version of this article is available on my website , to discuss how Executive and High Performance Coaching could help you please contact me at [email protected]