Posted by As my followers know, I think that resilience is a vital thing to have in your toolbox. Most people know they should be working on it, but how many of us actually do anything about it?
It’s not because they don’t care. It’s because it can feel like one more thing to add to an already full plate. But building resilience doesn’t have to be a project. Done right, it becomes part of the infrastructure of your day, something that happens almost without thinking.
Being resilient isn’t just about gritting your teeth through hard times – it’s about building a foundation that naturally supports you when life gets challenging.
This week I’m sharing my top tips for becoming more resilient, without having to think about it.
Stack your environment for success
If you set it up right, your surroundings can do a lot of the heavy lifting for resilience-building. A water bottle on your desk so hydration happens automatically, for example, or an alternative workspace already set up to go when you need time away from your desk to concentrate.
The key is removing friction from the helpful behaviour and actions. When your environment supports you, resilience becomes less about willpower and needing to consciously think about it, and becomes more about flowing with what’s already set up.
Build a “good enough” toolkit
Create a menu of 5-minute self-care activities you can turn to when you’re struggling: a short walk, jumping jacks, or just getting outside for some fresh air. Having pre-decided options eliminates the mental load of figuring out what you need in the moment. When you’re stressed, you can just pick something from your list without having to think too hard about it.
The key is making it yours. What resets one person won’t reset another, so experiment to find your own go-tos. There’s no right answer, just what actually works for you.
Once you’ve got your list, keep it somewhere you’ll actually see it when you need it most: not buried in a notes app, but somewhere visible.
Build recovery into your day
If you want to perform at your best, the answer isn’t always to push harder: sometimes it’s to recover smarter. Instead of waiting until you’re running on empty to take a break, build short recovery moments into your day deliberately.
That might mean getting away from your screen for five minutes between meetings, or having a hard stop on work at a certain time rather than letting it bleed into your evening. Small and consistent beats occasional and heroic every time.
These micro-moments stop stress from building up and keep your resilience tank from running empty. They’re so small they don’t feel like an indulgence, they just feel like natural pauses.
Use your phone for more than doomscrolling
You’re probably already attached to your phone, so you might as well make it work for you. Instead of using it to zone out and dissociate, a couple of small tweaks can make it actively build your resilience instead.
Keep a note of your wins and achievements somewhere easy to find for when you’re lacking confidence. Save screenshots of positive feedback or good results rather than letting them disappear into your inbox. Put together a playlist that gets you fired up for when you need a boost of energy before something important.
You’re going to pick your phone up anyway. It might as well be doing something useful when you do.
Create your resilience playbook
Most of us wait till we’re already stressed to figure out how to handle it. A better approach is to think about your most common stressors before they hit, and decide in advance how you’re going to respond.
Start by identifying the situations that regularly knock you off course. Is it a difficult client? Running late? An overwhelming workload? If you know your triggers, you can build a default response for each one before you’re in the middle of it and you’re not necessarily thinking straight.
When you’re running late, your default might be sending a quick message and taking two minutes to compose yourself rather than rushing in chaotically. If work gets overwhelming, it might be a quick brain dump of everything on your mind to get it out of your head and onto paper. When a difficult conversation is looming, it might be a five minute walk beforehand to get your head straight.
You’re essentially writing a playbook for your most common challenges. This way, when the moment comes, you’re not figuring it out under pressure, you’re just following the plan.
Make sleep and movement non-negotiable
Sleep is probably the most underestimated factor in resilience. Poor sleep affects your ability to make good decisions, regulate your emotions, and handle stress. Chronic poor sleep doesn’t just make you tired, it compromises your long-term health and completely undermines your capacity to cope with whatever life throws at you.
You don’t need a perfect routine to see the benefit: focus on minimum viable habits instead. You could commit to being in bed by a certain time, even if you don’t fall asleep immediately, for example. On top of that, try and move your body for at least 10 minutes a day, whether that’s a walk, a stretch, or a run around the block.
Low-bar commitments are easier to maintain during difficult periods, and they provide the foundation that makes everything else in this list actually work.
The power of automatic resilience
The great thing about these habits is that they’ll work even when you don’t feel like working on them. That’s the whole point: you’re not relying on motivation or willpower, you’re building resilience into the structure of your day so it happens whether you’re in the mood or not.
When challenges hit (and they will), it means you won’t be starting from scratch, you can draw on reserves you’ve been quietly building all along. That’s the difference between resilience as a project and resilience as a way of operating. The goal isn’t to become more resilient when life gets hard. It’s to already be resilient when it does.
Resilience is a key theme for me on the podcast, so if you’d like to hear a deeper dive on the topic, have a look through the library here, and if you have any questions or comments, why not join my Skool community? An important part of building your resilience is having a strong network of like-minded people around you, and that’s exactly what you’ll find in the community.