How Should I Go About Building Resilience and What is it Anyway?

Resilience. It’s one of those buzzwords we all think we understand.
Bounce-back-ability. Grit. Mental toughness. The power of positive thinking.

But here’s something to consider: building resilience is not just a psychological trait.

Popular definitions often overlook this critical fact—our body and brain need to support this process physiologically.
Throughout history, people have endured adversity through mindset and meaning-making alone. That’s impressive—but in many cases, that’s survival, not true resilience.

If we’re serious about building real, sustainable, stress-resilient performance, we need to look beyond mindset and consider the whole system: brain, body, and beyond.

Resilience Is Multi-Systemic

Resilience is your ability to handle stress, adapt to change, and recover effectively. It’s what helps you face a tough day, a big challenge, or a personal storm—and come out not just wiser, but with your nervous system back in parasympathetic balance.

That kind of recovery doesn’t happen in isolation or through reframing alone.
It’s not just about willpower or positive thinking. Resilience is a full-body process, unfolding in your brain, nervous system, and even at the cellular level.
Your physiology is the foundation for how you respond to and recover from stress.

The Mind-Body Disconnect I See Every Day

In my psychological work, I’ve seen this disconnect play out time and again.
Clients come in who are mentally strong. They’ve read the books, done the coaching, practised the reframing. On paper, they “know” how to be resilient.

But their bodies tell a different story.

When I dig below the surface of intellectual grit, I find people who are exhausted—constantly pushing themselves to override their physiological capacity. Over and over again.

Despite all the right thoughts, their nervous systems remain stuck in overdrive: hypervigilant, anxious, tense, fatigued. There’s a misalignment between how they believe they are coping and how their system is actually performing.

This is where many approaches fall short: they focus on cognitive strategies without addressing what’s happening in the body.
True resilience means bridging that gap—so your nervous system and your mindset are working in sync, not in conflict.

This is exactly where an integrated approach makes all the difference.

Resilience Requires Performance and Recovery

This is also why we need to stop thinking about wellbeing as just “rest” and start viewing it as an active process of recovery—just like in the world of sports.

Most of us are performing under pressure daily—mentally, emotionally, physically—without giving equal attention to how we recover.

That recovery process needs to focus not just on mindset, but on nervous system regulation, brain performance, and physical fitness, because all of these systems influence one another.

When someone begins to retrain their stress response physiologically—not just think differently, but feel differently in their body—the results go deeper and last longer.
Their recovery speeds up. Their clarity sharpens. They don’t just act resilient—they become resilient, from the inside out. And that’s a trainable outcome.

Redefining Resilience

So let’s redefine resilience more accurately:

Resilience is the ability to respond to and recover from life’s stressors—psychologically and physiologically.

It’s an integrated process that involves:

• Your nervous system: Can your body shift from fight-or-flight into calm regulation?
• Your brain performance: Are your cognitive functions—focus, memory, decision-making—sharp under pressure?
• Your cardiovascular, respiratory, and muscular fitness: Is your body equipped to physically handle stress and bounce back from exertion or strain?
• Your mindset and self-belief: Do you see yourself as someone who can adapt, overcome, and keep going?

It’s not one of these. It’s all of them.

Why This Matters More Than Ever

For high-achieving professionals, entrepreneurs, and parents alike, the demands are relentless. Work, family, performance, ageing—all of it pulls on the same system: your stress response.

If that system is overloaded or under-supported, cracks appear.
Not just mentally, but physically—fatigue, brain fog, disrupted sleep, low motivation, tension, burnout.

This is where we change the script.

Resilience isn’t about pushing through.
It’s about building a body and brain that can adapt, respond, and recover more effectively. That’s what gives you staying power.

Train Resilience Like a System

Resilience isn’t a mindset you “get.” It’s a system you train—just like strength, endurance, or skill.

Here’s what that can look like:

• Train your nervous system through a smart physical training plan and targeted recovery tools: breathwork, quality sleep, nature exposure, cold and heat exposure, red light, neurofeedback, and oxygen therapies.
  I advocate using technology to support this process—because in a busy world, it can take some of the hard work out of the equation.
• Support your mitochondria and recovery capacity with IHHT (intermittent hypoxic-hyperoxic training), well thought out physical training, and smart, science-based nutrition.

Because the truth is: resilience is built, not born.
And it’s not just built in your head—it’s built in your whole system.

• Build cardiovascular, respiratory, and muscular strength—not to look good, but to last longer under pressure.
• Sharpen your mental edge with psychological coaching that isn’t about blind positivity, but real-world tools to shift perspective, deepen identity, and reset when things go sideways.

Final Thought: It’s All Connected

You don’t need to choose between mental resilience and physical endurance. You need both.
Because when life hits hard, it’s not just your mindset that gets tested—it’s your entire system, and every part of your system is connected.

And the good news? That system can be trained.