Keller’s words remind us that resilience is not formed in comfort, but in complexity. And perhaps there has never been a time when this has felt more relevant than now.
As extraordinarily high levels of uncertainty in the world today, brought about by the rise of AI, geopolitical instability, and economic disruption, take their toll, people are having to deal with many new unknowns in both their working or professional world and in their personal lives. This has a knock-on effect on how all systems, including companies and NGOs, function, and requires perseverance and enduring resilience from us all.
Understanding resilience
Many commonplace interpretations of resilience classify the trait as an enabler for adaptive capacity – the ability to change or to “bounce back” following a stressful situation.
In times of uncertainty, when so much is unpredictable, the best starting point to develop your lifelong resilience is with your own self-awareness.
Self-awareness and self-reflection encourage insight. These tools remain available to us even during periods of change – in fact, they often become most valuable precisely when circumstances are shifting. By knowing yourself, you can become your own anchor in stormy seas.
The neuroscience of uncertainty
The brain is a predictive machine, creating and storing a model of the world in its memory. Wired for survival, any anticipation of uncertainty or a threat activates an emergency response and places the nervous system on high alert. This puts your system under physiological pressure and emotional stress.
According to an article in the American Physiological Society, our brains are programmed to seek predictability, control, and clarity. When the world feels threatening and unstable, our ancient survival instincts kick in, triggering the limbic system and the amygdala, the brain’s threat detector. “This then sends us into fight, flight, or freeze mode, and suppresses our prefrontal cortex – the part of the brain responsible for executive functions such as planning, decision-making, critical thinking, and emotional regulation.”
Paradoxically, this means that the more uncertain or threatened we feel, the less we are able to respond in a considered manner, inhibiting our decision-making capabilities exactly at the moment when we need them most.
How we misunderstand resilience – what it is and isn’t
The term resilience encapsulates the individual and environmental qualities that enable a person to thrive in the face of challenges or adversity. Being considered resilient means having the skills and resources to cope with high levels of disruptive change in one’s personal, social, or professional environment.
Resilience can also be considered a mechanism for coping with stress and, as a result, be an important means for overcoming anxiety, depression, and stress.
In fact, individuals with the highest levels of resilience have the ability to adapt to pressure and even thrive as a result of it. They are also able, over time, to transform a disaster into a growth experience and overcome setbacks – not because adversity automatically produces growth, but because they consciously extract learning and meaning from their experiences.
However, it is a misnomer that resilience is an “inside job” – something you are born with, or not. Resilience is a learned, adaptive response to stress, shaped by both internal capacities and external conditions, and it is possible to enhance your sense of resilience.
We often confuse grit and hardiness with resilience. While resilience provides an adaptable approach to overcoming challenges and the ability to get back up after setbacks, grit – as researched extensively by Prof. Angela Duckworth – offers the perseverance to keep going with tasks that we perceive as meaningful and contributing to our long-term goals.
It can sometimes be helpful to persevere. However, when a situation is detrimental to one’s mental or physical well-being, it is often our ability to let go – and our flexibility in our response repertoire – that is actually indicative of resilience.
Dr. Norman Garmezy, a clinical psychologist widely regarded as a pioneer in resilience research, particularly among children in high-risk environments, found that an individual’s support system was one of the most accurate predictors of resilience when children were facing undue pressure. His work underscored a powerful truth: resilience does not develop in isolation, but within relationships and supportive systems.
Following extensive research, Garmezy reached the conclusion that resilience is the capacity for recovery and is linked to a low number of risks and a higher number of protective factors – found at the individual level (dispositional attributes), the familial level (family cohesion and warmth), and externally.
A resilient mindset
A resilient mindset, closely aligned with what psychologist Carol Dweck describes as a “growth mindset”, plays a critical role in how we approach uncertainty. The manner in which you frame stress or unpredictability significantly influences your response. Research suggests that when we automatically categorise uncertainty as negative or threatening, we are more likely to adopt a fixed mindset – narrowing our thinking and limiting our ability to respond creatively.
What is often required in moments of uncertainty, however, is a growth mindset: the capacity to view challenge, failure, and ambiguity as opportunities to learn, adapt, and evolve.
Uncertainty is inevitable in life.
If you believe uncertainty is a threat – a danger to be avoided at all costs – you will be fixated on control, and uncertainty will become your enemy.
If you consider uncertainty a hindrance, you may engage in negative coping mechanisms, reducing your decision-making capacity and potentially triggering a downward spiral.
However, if you see the possibilities contained within uncertainty and consider it an untapped opportunity, your mindset will be positioned to consider a change in circumstances as something to be harnessed and leveraged for growth.
Many of those who have a tendency to consider uncertainty as an opportunity have learnt this skill either through earlier life experiences or through actively working on developing their mindset.
Finding your anchor in the storm
A person’s capacity for resilience can vary throughout their lifespan depending on the environment, their behaviour, their mindset, their emotional intelligence, and the strength of their support structures.
Resilience in the face of uncertainty depends on the meaning you attribute to an event and is largely influenced by the support system you have around you. It is not merely a personal trait, but a dynamic interaction between the individual and their context.
Self-awareness is the starting point to develop and enhance resilience. The more you have something to anchor yourself in – a clear understanding of your values, strengths, limitations, and patterns of response – the more effectively you are able to navigate uncertainty and strengthen your resilience.
If you view resilience as a dance between you and your environment, rather than a test of personal toughness, you are more likely to navigate change with flexibility, drawing on both internal capacities and external resources while actively looking for opportunity within it.
Can resilience be coached?
Yes – and often very effectively.
The development of a resilient mindset can be influenced by coaching interventions, most notably in the areas of increased self-confidence, self-awareness, and emotional regulation.
One of the most powerful roles a coach plays is in expanding awareness – not only around what the client is saying, but also what is not being said. Skilled coaches listen for patterns, assumptions, blind spots, and biases that may be shaping how an individual interprets uncertainty.
- Coaches have a valuable role to play in stimulating deeper thinking through effective questioning, bringing unconscious narratives into conscious awareness and challenging unhelpful interpretations of events.
- Coaching creates a structured space for reflection, scenario planning, and strategic brainstorming – processes that can significantly reduce anxiety by transforming vague fear into considered possibility.
- Coaching can assist in creating a more considered work-life balance, better career planning and more intentional decision-making.
- Coaching can assist with the reframing of attitudes, enabling participants to redefine uncertainty not as threat, but as potential opportunity.
- A coach well-versed in resilience can also guide a “resilience audit” – helping clients identify where they have built capacity to navigate challenge, where protective factors exist in their environment, and where potential risks or vulnerabilities may require strengthening.
- The experience of coaching can enhance personal insight and result in sustained, practical improvements in self-awareness and agency.
Learned techniques for becoming more resilient
Resilience can be strengthened intentionally through daily habits and protective practices.
- Cultivate meaningful connections
Strong, supportive relationships act as protective buffers during times of stress and uncertainty. - Manage your technology consumption
Limit excessive screen time and “doom scrolling”. Continuous exposure to alarming news and social media can repeatedly trigger the brain’s threat response. Instead, consciously engage in activities that support nervous system regulation and brain health – such as movement, time in nature, reading, reflective journalling, or meaningful conversation. - Learn from your past experiences
Reflecting on previous challenges you have overcome builds psychological evidence of your own capability. Ask yourself: What did I learn? What strengths did I draw on? What support did I access? - Strengthen your thinking patterns
Your mindset shapes your resilience. Identify thought patterns that are helpful and challenge those that are harmful – including limiting beliefs, cognitive distortions, or unconscious biases that may amplify threat. Practices such as reframing, visualisation, and constructive self-talk can significantly influence emotional regulation and response. - Set adaptive, meaningful goals
Rather than rigid targets, focus on purposeful, values-aligned goals and break them into manageable actions. Progress, not perfection, builds confidence and psychological momentum.
Tanya Stevens is an internationally qualified integral business and executive coach and an International Coaching Federation (ICF) master coach. She has been coaching across various industries and professions since 2006. She is a GIBS professional associate and works across a variety of corporate programmes as a coach, facilitator, lecturer, and coach trainer. Her areas of speciality include change management, individual and team coaching, and resilience.
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