Developing Your Mental Resilience
SUMMARY
Do you feel like your mental capacity is draining away most of the time? Where you've got so much pressure going on working in such a high-performance arena that you just can't think straight and mentally, you are exhausted. I know how that feels. It’s something that had a major hold on me and cost me a lot of happiness and my health.
So, stick with me because this week I want to talk about how we can change that together so that you become stronger mentally when you need to be.
Hi, this is Grant Herbert, leadership and sustainable performance coach, and today I want to continue our conversation around resilience - going from being stressed all the time to feeling strong - by helping you develop your mental resilience.
Mental resilience is essential for sustaining your performance over time and maintaining your health and well-being. It’s a vitally important part of your leadership development—firstly, for yourself, and also for everyone else in your workplace.
So, let’s have a look at the two—and see what makes them different.
Mental toughness is about pushing through. It’s all about maintaining high performance under intense pressure. It’s needed when the pressure is intense, or there’s a lot of adversity.
Mental resilience, however, focuses more on adapting to adversity, maintaining emotional balance (as we talked about last week), and recovering from setbacks.
Mental toughness is needed for high-performance situations, but mental resilience ensures longevity. Mental resilience is what you want to maintain at all times.
The key distinction is that resilience emphasises bouncing back, while toughness focuses on sustaining performance in high-stress situations.
Let us look at 3 key differences between them.
1. Adapting vs. Enduring
2. Recovery vs. Pushing Through
3. Balance vs. Performance
So, what are you operating out of most of the time? Are you maintaining your balance by building mental resilience, or are you just being mentally tough?
That's it from me for another week. Join me again next week as we continue this conversation around resilience and look at social resilience. See you then.
TRANSCRIPT
Do you feel like your mental capacity is draining away most of the time? Where you've got so much pressure going on working in such a high-performance arena that you just can't think straight and mentally, you are exhausted. I know how that feels. It’s something that had a major hold on me and cost me a lot of happiness and my health.
So, stick with me because this week I want to talk about how we can change that together so that you become stronger mentally when you need to be.
Hi, this is Grant Herbert, leadership and sustainable performance coach, and today I want to continue our conversation around resilience - going from being stressed all the time to feeling strong - by helping you develop your mental resilience.
Over the last few weeks, we've been talking about resilience, what it is and what it isn't. It’s not about toughening up, hardening up, or eating concrete and pushing through all the time. It’s about asking for help, being vulnerable, and looking after yourself.
We discussed the 4 types of resilience: physical resilience, emotional resilience, mental resilience, and social resilience. We talked about physical and emotional resilience over the last couple of weeks, so today, I want to focus on your mental resilience.
Now, to have this conversation with you today, I want to make a distinction between two things. On one hand, we have mental toughness, and on the other, we have mental resilience. Sometimes people put them in the same box, but they are not the same. They are totally different, and I want to make sure that you understand what they are. Using the wrong strategies to develop one, when you need the other, won’t help you—it will harm you.
Mental resilience is essential for sustaining your performance over time and maintaining your health and well-being. It’s a vitally important part of your leadership development—firstly, for yourself, and also for everyone else in your workplace.
So, let’s have a look at the two—and see what makes them different.
Mental toughness is about pushing through. It’s all about maintaining high performance under intense pressure. It’s needed when the pressure is intense, or there’s a lot of adversity.
Mental resilience, however, focuses more on adapting to adversity, maintaining emotional balance (as we talked about last week), and recovering from setbacks.
Mental toughness is needed for high-performance situations, but mental resilience ensures longevity. Mental resilience is what you want to maintain at all times.
The key distinction is that resilience emphasises bouncing back, while toughness focuses on sustaining performance in high-stress situations.
Let us look at 3 key differences between them:
1. Adapting vs. Enduring
Mental resilience is about adapting to change and returning to a balanced state after you face the challenge. Mental toughness is about enduring pressure and persisting, even in difficulties, without losing focus or drive.
When you rely only on mental toughness over time, it exhausts you. It’s essential to use mental toughness sparingly—at specific times in your role—while maintaining balance and looking after yourself, so you can recover through adversity.
You need to make sure that you’ve got that balance between enduring and adapting.
Adapting means being able to navigate change in a healthy way.
2. Recovery vs. Pushing Through
Resilient individuals recover from setbacks, stress, or failure and regain balance. In contrast, mentally tough individuals are more likely to keep pushing through challenges, staying focused on their goals but often losing awareness of their mental well-being, balance and even their health.
This was a big one for me as I used to tell myself that I had to be a certain way—"People won’t like me or accept me unless I push through. I won’t belong, or they won’t think I’m good enough." But that’s an unhealthy side of being tough.
Resilience isn't about hardening up; it's about setting an environment where you can recover without burning out.
3. Balance vs. Performance
Mental resilience prioritises emotional and psychological balance during stress or adversity. Mental toughness focuses on sustaining high performance, especially in competitive or high-stakes environments.
When competition kicks in, it brings another element—"I need to be tougher than the next person, and it's all about my performance." But when you focus solely on performance, health problems can sneak in. If you keep being mentally tough and forget to maintain balance, over time, you'll fall off the perch, and you won't be able to perform at all.
How do I know this? That's exactly what happened to me. Over my 40-year career, I've had four physical and two mental breakdowns.
Some people might think, "This guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about," but it’s the opposite. My experience with burnout has taught me valuable lessons. I learned how to recover, and I make sure I never go back there again. Now I get to share that learning with awesome people like you.
Yes, it's okay to be mentally tough when needed. There are times when you do need to push through. However, mental resilience is an overarching state that you want to maintain. When you are more resilient, it helps you during those times when toughness is required. It also allows you to keep doing what you do, being who you need to be, for the people in your life, for a longer time.
It's not just about performance; it's about sustainability. Both mental resilience and mental toughness are valuable, but they serve different purposes depending on the situation. Resilience helps with recovery and adaptation, while toughness helps with persistence and performance.
So, what are you operating out of most of the time? Are you maintaining your balance by building mental resilience, or are you just being mentally tough?
That's it from me for another week. Join me again next week as we continue this conversation around resilience and look at social resilience. See you then.
