Why resilience is More Than Just a Buzzword

As a goal-setting coach, and someone who works closely with individuals and teams navigating life, leadership, and performance, I often rely on my mantra of ‘Courage, Action, and Resilience’ time and again

These aren’t just words, they’re the foundation of which I live, my core values I lean on when I need guidance, helping me push through challenges and move towards the life I want to keep living.

Core values aren’t just a collection of things we would like to be, they must be lived, all of the time, when you’re with people, but more importantly, when you’re alone.

On Saturday, that mantra took me to the Paris-Roubaix Challenge, a brutal yet beautiful ride over the cobbled tracks or Pavè of northern France, held hours before the women’s race and a day before the men’s edition.

Named ‘Le Enfer dù Nord’ or ‘Hell of the North’ even the pro riders say it’s more of a war of attrition than a race.

The cobblestones, the terrain, the effort, it tests every part of you.

Six and a half hours of dust, blisters, cramp and pain and suffering and I love every minute of it.

Why?

(You may ask)

The simple answer, it improves my resilience.

It’s not just about toughing it out, although that is a large part of it.

It’s about learning what I’m capable of when I intentionally expose myself to challenges and difficult situations.

It’s in these moments that I activate all three of my core values:

Courage – to step out of my comfort zone

Action – to do something intentional with purpose.

Resilience – to overcome setbacks and challenges along the way

By doing so, I build capacity to bounce back, to recover, and to thrive in the face of adversity.

The professional athletes I work with know this feeling well, known as ‘periods of distress’ where the body and mind wants to stop, but the mind has to dig deep and override these urges.

It’s in these moments we build something far more powerful than muscle, we build resilience or ‘grit’.

We all face barriers, or as Andrew Huberman, a neuroscientist and researcher from Stanford University, calls them, “walls”, and when we do, we need mental or physical resistance that seems immovable… until we break through them.

Overload of work, deadlines, dieting, balancing financial pressures all challenge us and hold us close to the red line of burnout.

Huberman also speaks about intentionally exposing ourselves to managed stressors, controlled discomforts that train the mind and body to handle stress.

Whether it’s a cold shower, a brutal HIIT session, or a long, lonely run, these practices are more than just physical workouts. They’re training grounds for resilience.

But why do we need to do this?

Why voluntarily take ourselves into discomfort?

Because resilience is learned skill, not a character trait.

Just like a muscle in the gym, the more we lift the stronger it gets, resilience too grows the more we work on it.

There’s a quote I love by Lori Colnane that says,

“Everything you wanted to know about yourself, you can learn it in 42.2km.”

That’s the marathon distance, and it couldn’t be more true.

In those 42.2 kilometres, you meet your doubts, your fatigue, your limits—and if you keep going, you also meet your strength, your determination, and your truth.

30 km is run with your legs

10km with your heart

2km with your soul

200m in tears

There are many parallels from sport to life.

Resilience is what allows us to get back up.

It’s what drives leaders to keep leading, parents to keep showing up, athletes to keep training, and individuals to keep believing. It’s not just something we need when life gets tough, it’s something we build every single day, brick by brick, breath by breath.

So, whether it’s the Roubaix Challenge, your next team presentation, or a cold Monday morning run, lean into discomfort.

Purposely step into the ‘period of distress’

Train your resilience. Live your values.

he more you step into challenge, the more you discover who you really are, and more importantly, what you are capable of.

It’s always more than you think