Resilience gets romanticized. People picture tall tree, unbowed by the wind. Or an unchanging rock, firm against the elements. But real resilience is not pretty or predictable.
In high school, I was injured playing lacrosse. Not the kind of injury you shake off, but one that rewired how my body worked. I had to relearn everything—walking, running, even standing still without tipping over. It forced me to rethink what resilience really means. And that’s why I don’t see resilience as being like an unbreakable tree.
I did intensive physical therapy and occupational therapy. Progress was slow and frustrating, a constant trial and error. But I did get most of it back.
The damage isn’t fully gone many years later. There’s still chronic pain, still occasional numbness. Today, compounding issues from that injury make daily life harder than it should be.
For a long time, I figured if I just worked harder, gritted my teeth, and refused to give in, I’d eventually return to ‘normal.’ I saw myself as resilient and thought that meant pushing through. But that’s not how it works.
It does take grit, but that’s not enough. Suffering through something is not the way to get better. You have to adapt. You have to change your approach. You have to focus on small improvements, because the big all-at-once fix doesn’t exist.It takes ruthless attention, focus, and discipline. Most importantly it takes knowing when to push and when to pivot.
One thing I’ve learned is that resilience isn’t about suffering. It’s about adjusting. It’s not about refusing to break—it’s about bending, changing, and finding new ways to grow.
The best metaphor for resilience isn’t a tree or a rock. It’s a weed.
Be a Weed
Think about weeds. They grow in cracks, sidewalks, places no one expects. They are impossible to get rid of and thrive in environments that should kill them.
Not because they’re tougher than everything else but because they’re adaptable.
A tree might stand tall for years, towering over its neighbors, but in a strong storm it can snap. A weed, though? It bends. It finds new soil. It spreads.
This is what true resilience looks like.
The Problem with Grit Alone
We glorify perseverance. Hustle culture tells us to grind harder. Leadership books praise those who never quit.
But treating resilience as mostly grit has consequences. It makes people think suffering is progress. It traps teams in sunk-cost fallacies: they push forward because they’ve already invested so much, even when a better path is available. It keeps people stuck instead of adjusting when conditions change. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right?
Being a weed means knowing when something that won’t kill you also won’t make you stronger.
Resilient Isn’t Just Surviving, it’s thriving in different environments
Teams that don’t take the easy route will get battered and beaten and get stronger because of it—they don’t lets themselves bounce back into the same habits. They learn, evolve, and use setbacks to get stronger.
A resilient team doesn’t just say, “We’ll power through.” They ask, “How do we need to change?”
It’s the difference between enduring stress and using stress as a signal. Work keeps slipping? That‘s not just bad luck, it’s a sign the your prioritization process could be improved. A product launch falls flat? That’s not failure, it’s new data points on what customers actually need.
The teams that last aren’t the ones that keep pushing the same way no matter what. They’re the ones that know when to pivot.
How to Build Resilience in Yourself and Your Team
1. Know When to Pivot vs. Persevere
Grit is valuable, but only if applied in the right places. Some challenges require persistence, but others are signals to shift. If the road ahead is blocked, pushing forward isn’t strength. It’s stubbornness.
Ask yourself: Am I / are we pushing through because it’s the right move or because we don’t want to admit we need to change?
2. Treat Stress as a Sign, Not a Threat
Stress isn’t something to avoid: it’s information you can use. If a team is constantly overwhelmed, it’s usually not just about workload. It’s likely because of misaligned priorities but it could be a few things. If something keeps breaking, that’s a signal to change something because your system (process) isn’t working.
Resilient teams and people listen to what stress is telling them.
3. Build in Flexibility, Not Just Strength
Rigid things break. Flexible things last.
A strong product team isn’t the one that commits to a roadmap and never wavers. Or the one that tried to plan ahead for every possible contingency. It’s the one that builds in optional paths and can adapt when reality changes.
Decisions should be reversible whenever possible. Instead of making one big commitment, create opportunity points to adjust along the way. Operating processes should encourage learning, not just execution.
If people are afraid to admit something isn’t working, they’ll keep forcing a bad path.
Stop Trying to Be Unbreakable—Be Adaptable
I’ve learned that resilience isn’t just about more than how much you can take. It’s knowing when to push forward and when to pivot. It’s bending instead of snapping. It’s finding new ways to grow when your environment changes.
Be a weed. I am
Because the people, teams, and companies (and products) that last aren’t the ones that endure the longest. They’re the ones that adapt the fastest.