What I Learned About Resilience (the hard way)
Near death - pulmonary emboli a few years ago.
I’ve been thinking a lot about resilience as I prepare for an upcoming talk at Rollins College.
By resilience, I mean the capacity to absorb stress, recover, and make good decisions over time. We talk about resilience a lot today, and for good reasons. I’m also in a season of needing to dig deep. A season of life where I need a lot of resilience.
As much as I wish we lived in a world wherein we didn’t need it, the reality is that it’s essential for our daily lives and our health, because the pace and pressures of our lives aren’t slowing.
This is especially relevant for founders, senior leaders, and people carrying long-term responsibility—kids, caretaking parents and more, through sustained change.
We also want it—for our companies and careers, because the work—the mission, our legacy is long-term. Sustaining, and showing up over decades matters. We simply can’t afford to tap out.
As pressures continue to rise and mental health declines globally, our capacity to adapt— to absorb stress, and recover, appears to be weakening. Research on allostatic load, the cumulative physiological burden of chronic stress, shows that under prolonged stress, the very systems that support adaptation and recovery can become strained over time.
That pressure shows up in our start up ecosphere too on our teams, and does not spare founders or senior leaders with the money, and the resources. Entrepreneur shares that 71% of leaders reported rising stress levels, more than half expressed serious concerns about burnout, and 40% have considered stepping down to protect their well-being. I personally left tech at the peak of my leadership career for this reason, and have a lot of regret about it.
None of this minimizes systemic issues causing a lot of this —the economic instability, social division, the rise of autocracy, or the fact that many of us willingly choose high-pressure, high velocity, high expectation work.
The reality though, is that we still need to lead, and live well inside it, otherwise, what are we doing all this for? We’ve only got one life.
Resilience becomes most critical when personal and professional change, adversity, challenge, and growth converge at the same time.
Things like:
A promotion to partner in venture while planning a wedding and a move cross country.
An exec role/interview process coinciding with caretaking a parent with a serious medical condition, while trying to get pregnant.
A new leadership role at a new company, with a 1 year old, struggling marriage, and active burnout.
There have been seasons of my life when many tectonic shifts landed on me simultaneously, and I truly thought my life was over, and that I wouldn’t survive. A few of them:
A move to NYC, the sudden death of my brother during a period of intense B2C tech growth, a major promotion, burnout, and the end of a seven-year relationship.
A move to CA, and two kids under two, while leaving tech to start my own business, followed by a near-death medical crisis (while I was alone), burnout.
Divorce during COVID, losing my home, dog, and financial security while pivorting/running my business
Over decades, I was building resilience without realizing it—at least until a certain point, then I started cultivating with intention.
I learned (the hard way) that resilience isn’t about being “positive”, mentally tough, or endlessly pushing through. Those survival strategies do actually do work for a few years…until they don’t and we fall apart.
Resilience isn’t something you either have or don’t. It’s a skill…it’s a muscle that gets built over time. And, as humans and as leaders, our health, our lives, our relationships, and the quality of our decisions are not separate concerns. Quality isn’t optional. It shapes everything. Here’s how to build it:
Emotional awareness, regulation, & coping tools
Central to resilience is self-awareness and connection to your body. It’s knowing what you’re feeling and why—your emotions, thoughts, beliefs, triggers, limits, physical signals, and energy capacity. It’s being able to tell when something is off.
There were plenty of moments in my life when I completely lost my shit and had no idea why. Or when a leader screamed at me in a meeting and I absorbed it, internalized it, and kept going.
To know when you’re overloaded, dysregulated, or running on fumes, and to catch it before you bottom out? You need the basics in place first. But when you’ve been pushing for years, operating in a 9-9-6, there’s little time or space to notice what’s actually happening inside you. When that happens, everything suffers: judgment, reactivity, relationships, and leadership presence.
Build awareness first, then develop ways to regulate, manage, and respond more effectively. Core to coping? Rest. A life and identity outside of work. Connection to others, external support. Movement. Food. Nature. Meaning - cultivating a strong baseline on the well-being pillars.
Values & identity clarity
Why are you doing what you’re doing? Who is it for, and why does it matter? Is it driven by your own values, your parents’/cultural expectations, societal norms, or some unexamined mix of all of it? And have you paused to look When roles, a linear career progression, and external validation fall away, values are what remain.
Knowing who you are and what matters when things get hard is critical. It keeps you oriented over the long term. Values become a decision filter when there’s no obvious right answer. Always.
Burnout often shows up when we’re living out of alignment—working, leading, or relating in ways that don’t match what we actually care about, and who we are inside. When we’re operating incongruently, for others, or against ourselves, the cost compounds.
Self-Trust & flexibility
Resilient people don’t just survive — they adapt. They accept the iterative, messy nature of figuring things out. Confidence comes from trusting that whatever happens, you’ll adjust and find a way forward.
Trying new things, failing, learning, and recalibrating isn’t inefficiency — it’s how flexibility and elasticity are built. Yet many high-achieving leaders over-optimize for linear progress, perfection, and external perception, which quietly erodes adaptability.
Inside our work, we’re very experimental — with products, processes, strategies, and teams. But that same mindset disappears in our own careers and personal lives, where uncertainty feels risky and unsafe (that’s where flexibility matters most).
Resilience also requires agency. Believing you can work with incomplete information, use what’s available, and take action anyway changes how stress is experienced. Resourcefulness isn’t certainty — it’s trust in your ability to respond nor matter what.
Grit & sustained effort
Some seasons aren’t solvable quickly, and often they’re out of your control. Some take years. Some require a lot of consistency, pain, and endurance. What sticks with me is my divorce process which stretched over 2 years. I remember my attorney saying “Sarah, most people just quit at this point, and under far better circumstances. You are incredibly strong. You can do this.”. Resilience often looks like staying engaged with what matters, and with your long term vision, even when progress is slow, painful, or invisible—and this is where values, well-being practices, flexibility/self confidence practices, and support come in.
Relationships & support
Resilience does not come from going it alone.
We regulate through connection. Supportive relationships buffer stress, speed recovery, and make hard seasons survivable. Trying to do everything alone has costs. I think about relational support in 3 categories:
Peers/Intimate - friends, social circles, peer career groups, spouse/partners
Community - social communities, support groups/circles (people also going through similar challenges), sometimes strangers.
Mentorship/Advice - often paid, but doesn’t have to be. Therapists, coaches/consultants, people you respect and have looked up to professionally.
Resilience isn’t about self sacrificing yourself for the work. It’s about building the capacity to do meaningful work over the long term, without losing yourself in the process.