I Call BS on Resilience

Warning: this is a rant.

Fuck resilience, grit - whatever you want to call it. Seriously, I’m over it. I’m fed up with being stretched, pushed, and tested like it’s some rite of passage I should be grateful for. People love to talk about resilience like it’s the ultimate badge of honor - how adversity makes you stronger, how challenges are “lessons,” and how we’re supposed to bounce back into success from all the newfound strength we’ve accumulated. I’ve even preached about it in my coaching and articles. Well, I don’t care for it anymore. Unless I’m in a physio session, I don’t want to be stretched. I don’t want to be “bouncing back.” I’m tired.

Struggle = Strength = Myth

This year has been a yo-yo, and not the fun kind. Every single decision I’ve made - decisions based on reasonable assumptions, careful planning, logic, and data - has unraveled. Nothing has gone to plan. People have let me down. Plans have fallen apart. I’ve lost money. And every time, I’ve tried to dig for the “lesson,” to find meaning in the mess, to tell people, Oh, I guess I’m just building resilience. But honestly? Resilience can fuck right off.

How much do we need to go through to “grow”? How many times do we have to be pushed to the brink before the universe decides we’ve had enough? At what point does the glorification of struggle turn into outright cruelty?

I’ve officially removed the word from my vocabulary. I don’t even believe in this relentless “build your strength through suffering” narrative anymore. I think we already have all the tools we need to handle life’s crises, even if we’re not constantly being stretched to snapping point. If we were living good, peaceful lives - free from endless challenges - we’d still find ways to deal with hardship when it showed up. The idea that we have to endure years of grinding adversity just to be prepared for a bad day? It’s a myth.

Is It Me or the Universe?

I definitely think the universe is shitting on this period of my life. I’ve had a good run and maybe this is karmic balance doing its things to level the playing field. But if I’m being honest with myself, there’s something else niggling me. Has some of the pain I’ve gone through not  just been bad luck or cosmic chaos? Has it been me - not implementing lessons I should have learned? Maybe that’s where the real accountability lies - not in building resilience by taking the punches, but in whether I’ve really applied the lessons life has already taught me.

Yesterday, in between tears of self-pity, this question filtered down from my subconscious: Have I been ignoring my gut? Sure, every decision I made felt sound - based on good data, risk-aversion, carefully thought through etc. But was there a moment, even a flicker, when my instincts whispered don’t do this or this doesn’t feel right and I ignored it?

Take the builders who robbed me of seven thousand pounds last week. Was there something in my body, some quiet warning, telling me not to hand over the money? Did I push that instinct aside because it didn’t fit the logical narrative? And if I did, what else have I ignored along the way?

Are We Repeating Painful Patterns?

And it’s not just about instincts. It’s about lessons. Have I been here before? Yes. Did I promise myself I’d never trust someone so blindly again? Yes. But did I do it anyway? Yes. And that’s not the universe screwing with me - that’s me, failing to apply what I already know.

Maybe that’s the real issue: we conflate resilience with intelligence. We think surviving the struggle is the point, when really, it’s about understanding why we’re struggling in the first place. It’s about asking the hard questions:

• Are you repeating patterns that you already know lead to pain?

• Are you trusting people you shouldn’t, because it’s easier than setting boundaries?

• Are you ignoring your instincts because logic says otherwise?

• Are you refusing to lower expectations of people who’ve already let you down?

We shouldn’t be striving to build resilience, testing ourselves to see how much suffering we can endure and bounce back from. We shouldn’t flippantly tell ourselves our suffering is a stepping stone to success. We should do everything in our power to avoid unnecessary struggle. Why? Cortisol is real. How? By not compounding it with making choices that ignore data from lessons we’ve already learned.

Cortisol is Real

On a real, let’s talk about cortisol.

• Accelerated aging. Chronic stress can shorten telomeres - the protective caps on our DNA. No thanks.

• The impacts of the enduring stress we put ourselves through literally disrupts the neurotransmitter balance in our brains. The result? Feelings of anxiety, irritability, and hopelessness. Over time, this can spiral into clinical depression and an inability to experience joy.

• Need to use your brain? Chronic cortisol exposure shrinks the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for memory and learning, making it harder to focus, retain information, and make decisions. No one wants cognitive decline.

• Then there's something called emotional dysregulation, when suffering rewires the brain's fear and emotional regulation centers, making us hypervigilant and prone to overreacting, further perpetuating cycles of stress. Welcome to my world.

I still don’t have the answers. I’m still tired of the struggle. And I’m definitely not about to give you a five-step plan for navigating it. But I will say this: Fuck resilience.

If you’re in the middle of the chaos, maybe the best thing you can do is stop and ask yourself: Am I really listening to the lessons? Or am I just bracing for the next hit?