I met with an entrepreneur last week who's built a remarkable career despite facing multiple challenges that many leaders would have struggled to bounce back from. 

From financial crises to serious health issues, he’s faced adversity time and time again and come through.  

Yet when we were talking about our shared respect for the Special Forces operatives we know, he confessed that he wished he possessed more resilience.  

Someone who by any measure has demonstrated extraordinary resilience over decades, wishing for more of it.

And so an idea for this week’s reflection on leadership and growth formed…

The Rigid Myth

Most people think resilience means being unbreakable.

The boxer on the ropes soaking up punishment. The leader who never cracks under pressure. The performative toughness that says you can handle anything thrown at you.

But this form of resilience can be rigid. And eventually even the strongest rigid things will break.

The Rubber Band Reality

I strongly believe that the best form of resilience works like a rubber band.

The realities of leadership mean there are always going to be times where you stretch yourself – put in the crazy hours, take on an emotional load, expose yourself to extreme stress.

The art is in knowing how far to stretch yourself. When to push hard. When to back off. How to recover smartly so you don't snap.

The skill isn't in how much tension you can hold. It's in understanding those cycles of stretch and release.

Trust me, I know. I used to badge myself on resilience. I was that guy who prided himself on going harder, faster, longer.

But that approach took me to the brink of burnout – that wasn't smart resilience. It took my coach (yes, I practice what I preach!) to make me understand it could be damaging. That just acting like a rugby prop forward smashing my head into the scrum every day would take its toll.

Real resilience is a tool to help you progress. Not a badge of honor for how much punishment you can absorb.

Evidence from neuroscience backs this up.

What Resilience Actually Looks Like In Your Brain

Research from the Friedman Brain Institute shows that resilient brains don’t look radically different from non-resilient ones – it’s not about having a ‘tougher’ brain, it’s about how your brain adapts under stress. Resilience is an active process: resilient brains show additional neural changes that help them cope, not just fewer negative changes.

One of the most important patterns researchers like Richard Davidson, founder of the Center for Healthy Minds, have highlighted is stronger connectivity between the prefrontal cortex (your executive control centre) and the amygdala (your threat and emotion detector). 

This pathway is one of the key routes through which faster emotional recovery after setbacks is mediated, because it supports more effective top‑down regulation of threat responses.

Resilient people don’t ‘feel’ less. Their brains are better wired so the ‘leader’ part of the brain can calm the ‘alarm’ part and bring them back to centre faster.

Think of it as the neural equivalent of rubber‑band flexibility: the stronger and better‑trained the connection, the further you can stretch under pressure and the more reliably you snap back into shape.

How You Build It

Chess prodigy turned martial arts champion Josh Waitzkin spent years figuring out how to translate this into actual performance.

In his seminal text The Art of Learning, he breaks adaptive resilience into three steps:

1. Build Your Soft Zone

Waitzkin describes the soft zone as being “resilient, like a flexible blade of grass that can move with and survive hurricane-force winds."

This is the rubber band at work – understanding that you can stretch without breaking because you've built in flexibility. You don't control the external world, but you adapt to handle whatever comes.

2. Turn Stress Into Fuel

"Then we turn our weaknesses into strengths until there is no denial of our natural eruptions and nerves sharpen our game, fear alerts us, anger funnels into focus."

This is eustress – the type of stress that enhances performance rather than diminishing it. Eustress gives you energy and the ability to get hyper-focused, so in my rubber band analogy, this tension in your band becomes a useful force, not destructive pressure.

3. Emotions As Data

"Next we discover what emotional states trigger our greatest performances. Learn to create ripples in our consciousness, little jolts to spur us along, so we are constantly inspired, whether or not external conditions are inspiring."

Notice what Waitzkin's not describing? Toughing it out. Powering through. The prop forward approach. He's describing intelligent adaptation. The rubber band that knows when to stretch and when to release.

The Self-Compassion Component

Leaders can resist self-compassion and view it as a weakness, because they think self-criticism drives performance.

However, the research shows the opposite. Dr. Kristin Neff's studies show that self-compassionate individuals demonstrate greater resilience when facing health challenges, trauma, and extreme stress.

Think about the rubber band again and it starts to make sense – self-criticism is like pulling the band tighter and tighter with no release. Eventually it snaps.

By contrast, self-compassion is understanding when you've stretched enough and giving yourself permission to recover.

Resilience Is A Trainable Skill

Regular readers will know how strongly I believe in the concept of progressive overload as applied to physical and mental development.

The notion dates back to the story of Milo of Croton in ancient Greece. He carried a newborn calf on his shoulders every day. As the calf grew into a bull, his strength increased to match the load.

Your brain works the same way. It adapts when you progressively increase cognitive load, just like muscles adapt to progressive physical load. Stress resilience isn't fixed – it's a skill you can deliberately build.

Josh Waitzkin understands this. That’s why he advocates for the “relentless pursuit of adversity” – deliberately putting yourself in situations that challenge you beyond your current capability.

That's how you strengthen the rubber band. Not by avoiding stretch, but by practicing controlled cycles of stretch and release.

The sweet spot isn't staying comfortable. It's deliberately finding challenges that stretch you just past your current edge – uncomfortable enough to trigger adaptation, realistic enough that you don't snap.

The Real Lesson

Resilience isn't about how much pressure you can take. Go that way and eventually you’ll find your breaking point. 

It's about understanding the cycles. When to stretch. When to release. How to build the capability and flexibility that lets you do both.

As a leader, it’s inevitable you are going to face stressful situations that you can’t fully control. It’s how you respond that matters most.

Don’t be the player priding himself on punishment. Be the band built to snap back. 

🔥  LIVE BETTER, LEAD BETTER  

The best content I researched this week:

1. This video on the neuroscience of transformation ties in perfectly with the concept of adaptive resilience. Dr Maya Shankar talks with podcast host and ultra-endurance athlete Rich Roll on how change isn’t just something to survive, it’s a powerful opportunity to learn and grow.

2. 30 seconds on the importance of focusing on fewer things at once from Finding Mastery’s Dr Michael Gervais. 

3. The most important tools for a healthier, longer life on just 1 slide.

4. And finally, a well-timed reminder given it’s the end of January about the power of habits. In this 4-minute read, Dr Peter Attia shares how to use James Clear’s Atomic Habits to reach your health goals.