Written by Danielle Lord, PhD. A leadership development researcher and Founder and Principal of Archetype Learning Solutions, specializing in evidence-based tools that help organizations rebuild healthier, more sustainable cultures. With over 30 years of experience, Danielle has held senior roles including Chief Learning Officer for the State of Washington and leadership development lead for the Port of Seattle and Providence Health & Services, and now designs recovery-focused leadership experiences for high-pressure, high-burnout environments.
We’ve weaponized resilience and abundance. Humans can only carry so much, yet despite how many times we get figuratively knocked down, we’re told to be more resilient. When did it become the mantra of strength?
“You are so resilient.”
It can be a beautiful thing to hear. Someone has witnessed a difficult part of your life and wants to acknowledge what it took to keep going.
Imagine, however, hearing it when what you really need is help. You have carried the work, absorbed the disruption, rearranged your plans, and found a way through again. Someone admires your strength, but nothing is taken off your shoulders. Worse yet, you are lauded once again with empty words and no one asking, “Are you OK?”
In that moment, the compliment can feel less like recognition and more like a new assignment: you have handled it before, so you can handle it again.
That is the version of resilience I want us to rethink.
Not the capacity to recover, but the expectation that being capable means being endlessly available for difficulty, or weaponized abundance.
You Can Value Your Strength Without Volunteering for More Harm
I am removing “resilience” from my website because I want to be clearer about what I am asking people to build.
I do not want to suggest that the goal is to become harder to hurt while everything around us remains unchanged.
The psychological concept is more nuanced than that. The American Psychological Association describes resilience as adaptation to difficult experiences and identifies social resources, alongside other factors, as part of what supports it.
My objection is to a narrower story.
In that story, a person is knocked down, gets back up, and becomes an inspiration. What happened, what it cost, and who might help prevent it from happening again become secondary details.
I think those details are part of the picture.
You can be proud of having survived something without being grateful that it happened. You can recognize strength in yourself without making endurance your identity. You can also be tired, angry, uncertain, or in need of support without treating those experiences as evidence against your strength.
When “The Strong One” Becomes a Job
If you recognize yourself as the person who keeps everything moving, consider what that role asks of you.
Are you choosing the responsibility, or has your history of managing it made your continued availability seem automatic?
Perhaps you are the leader who covers every gap. Perhaps you own a business and have become the backup plan for every process. Perhaps you are the colleague or family member who can always be counted on to adjust.
None of those descriptions is a diagnosis. They are invitations to ask whether a valued capacity has quietly become an obligation.
There is a difference between “I can do this” and “this should always be mine to do.”
There is another difference between choosing to help and knowing that saying no will bring consequences you cannot safely absorb.
That matters because “set a boundary” can become its own oversimplified prescription.
A boundary is not equally available to someone with financial security, organizational authority, or dependable support and someone without those protections.
The goal is not to judge yourself for staying, accommodating, or finding a temporary way through. It is to stop confusing what you must do today with what you deserve indefinitely.
Not Every Difficult Thing Is a Test You Need to Pass
Some challenges are worth choosing.
Building a business, learning a skill, receiving honest feedback, or pursuing an important goal may involve discomfort and uncertainty.
My small-house book publisher announced that they were going to fold up operations. I still have five books to publish, so I started a publishing company.
That is resilience.
Other difficulties deserve a different response.
Repeated disrespect is not automatically a lesson in confidence, and an impossible workload is not necessarily an invitation to improve your mindset.
For the team member who has taken years of passive abuse, no amount of resilience pep talk or desk yoga is going to help.
Before asking, “How do I become more resilient?” consider a more specific question:
“What kind of difficulty is this?”
- A learning challenge: Do I need practice, information, feedback, or more time?
- A temporary disruption: What practical support would help me get through it?
- A recurring demand: What agreement, workload, or expectation needs to change?
- A harmful situation: What protection, trusted advice, or safer options might I need?
These are prompts for judgment, not a formula.
More than one may apply, and you do not have to find the perfect label before asking for help.
Replace Admiration With Something Useful
If we want to support someone who is carrying a great deal, we can do more than praise their ability to carry it.
We can ask what would make the load lighter and be honest about what we can offer.
- “You always manage” could become, “Which part can I take responsibility for?”
- “I know you will bounce back” could become, “What would give you room to recover without rushing?”
- “You are strong enough for this” could become, “You should not have to do this alone.”
The same principle belongs in leadership.
WHO guidance includes both interventions that change working conditions and support that helps individuals manage stress, rather than treating personal coping as the entire response.
For me, the practical implication is straightforward: encouragement should not be the only resource we offer.
If we have the power to change an expectation, redistribute work, address misconduct, or protect someone’s time, we should consider using it.
A Different Measure of Success
Try completing these sentences privately, without turning them into another improvement assignment:
- What I have been carrying: “The demand I keep making room for is …”
- What it costs: “To keep managing it, I have been giving up …”
- What would help: “A meaningful change would be …”
- What is possible now: “One person, resource, or option I could explore is …”
Your next step does not have to be a confrontation, a resignation, or a dramatic reinvention.
It might be asking for a clearer priority, getting confidential advice, accepting practical help, or acknowledging that the current arrangement is not sustainable.
Nor must every recovered minute become productive.
You are allowed to want some of your time and attention back simply because they are part of your life.
I do not want to erase resilience from anyone’s story. If the word helps you name something important about yourself, you do not owe anyone a different word.
I do want us to stop using it as an expectation of unlimited endurance.
Success should leave room for support, choice, recovery, and a life that does not require you to prove your strength every day.
It’s OK to feel tired.
Your ability to get back up is not permission for anyone to keep knocking you down.
We can honor what it took to keep going while working toward a future that asks less surviving of you.
If Danielle’s perspective on resilience, leadership, and the systems that shape workplace wellbeing resonates with you, visit her expert profile to discover more of her work on leadership development, organizational change, team culture, and building healthier workplaces.
