A while ago I was coaching a leader who was under significant pressure from above – competing demands, shifting goalposts, and the constant feeling that no matter how much he delivered, the bar kept moving. He was managing a team and a division, navigating expectations from executive leadership, and trying to hold it all together without letting the cracks show. He’d come to our sessions tired but determined, always wanting to focus on what he could do better rather than sitting in what was hard. During our third coaching session he said: “I just feel like I should be handling this better. I think I need to be more resilient.”

But in reality, he was being resilient.

He kept showing up and performing his role even when he didn’t feel like it. He kept holding team meetings so his people felt connected and communicated with. And he kept a lid on his own frustration so it didn’t become his team’s problem.

He’d also let the emotional stuff come out – he’d shared with me how frustrated and depleted he was feeling. And despite all of it, he kept making decisions with incomplete information and moving forward.

But he didn’t think it was enough.

Most of us think we need to be more resilient when in actual fact we are already being far more resilient than we realise.

Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert, one of the world’s leading researchers on how we cope with adversity, found that most of us consistently underestimate our own ability to get through hard things – we simply forget that we have it in us.

Here are a few reasons why we forget:

• We’re measuring against the wrong standard. Resilience gets portrayed as stoic, unshakeable, and relentless. So, when we feel wobbly or uncertain (which is just being human), we assume we’re falling short of what resilience is supposed to look like.
• We confuse struggling with failing. If it’s hard, we think we’re not coping. But struggling is part of coping. The two aren’t opposites.
• We only see other people’s highlight reel. Everyone else appears to be handling things. So, the gap between how others look and how we feel becomes evidence that we’re less resilient than we should be.
• We’re in it, not above it. When you’re inside the experience you can’t see your own patterns. You can’t see that you’ve already adapted three times, already reached out, already kept going.

The Cost

Not seeing our resilience comes at a cost.

• You underestimate yourself going into the next hard thing. Without the evidence of what you’ve already navigated, every new challenge feels like the first one, and over time, that quietly erodes your confidence.
• You tell yourself a story that compounds the difficulty. The hard thing is hard enough without adding “and I’m not sure I can handle this” on top of it.
• You put more pressure on yourself than the situation already demands. Believing you’re not resilient enough means you push harder, tolerate more, and ask for less, which is a fast track to burnout, and your team members feel every bit of it.

The antidote isn’t more resilience – it’s being able to see the resilience you already have. And one of the quickest, most effective ways to do that is to ask someone who’s been watching you navigate it, to tell you where you’ve already been demonstrating resilience.

It might take some courage to ask, but the payoffs are worth it.

For you: You’ll get an outside perspective at the moment you’re most likely to be telling yourself a distorted story. Having someone reflect back what they actually see can interrupt that narrative. And a specific, honest observation from someone you trust lands very differently than generic reassurance like “you’ll be fine.”

For the relationship: Asking takes trust. And trust, when it’s honoured, deepens the relationship. The person you ask often feels genuinely useful, not just sympathetically present, but needed in a specific way. That kind of connection is what transforms a good relationship into a great one.

For your self-awareness long term: Over time, having others (friends, family, peers) name your resilience in real moments, builds a much more accurate picture of what you’re actually capable of. And that becomes a resource you can draw on next time things get hard.

So this week I’m wondering… where might you already be demonstrating resilience that you simply can’t see from where you’re standing? And who might you ask?

I trust this has got you thinking and has been helpful in some way, shape or form.

Until next week, be well and lead well.

Kylie