Resilience ROULETTE

Q: How do you build resilience?

A: You face challenges that are unexpected, inconvenient and tough to overcome.

If you can regularly overcome challenges and consistently get out of your comfort zone, then you’ll build resilience.

We’re consistently trying prove to ourselves that we can do hard things, overcome the negative talk and silence the self doubt. That’s partly why so many people actively seek out controllable discomfort. Things such as lifting weights and running have traditionally been used to build mental resilience, and the recent explosion of cold water exposure has taken this to a new level.

We can all use these tools to push ourselves out of our comfort zone. However there are a couple of issues when it comes to building resilience.

1. Our comfort zone is forever expanding. At one point, we may have found a 5km run extremely challenging and well out of our comfort zone, but over time we find that it becomes far easier and somewhat predictable/ enjoyable. Resilience building requires a level challenge.

2. These ‘tools’ are very predictable and often scheduled into our days and weeks. That’s not to say they aren’t valuable, but in the real workd we don’t get a tap on the shoulder telling us that we’re going to get some bad news in a weeks time and we should prepare… it just happens.

A lot of what is challenging about the hard times is that they happen when we least expect them. They are unpredictable.

So, we created Resilience Roulette. A lottery of hard things designed to build resilience over time. There is no way for us to plan ahead as we have no idea what’s coming, and we wouldn’t get comfortable in repeating the same thing over and over.

The rules are simple.

1. Spin the wheel every morning at 7am

2. The challenge it lands on must be completed by midnight that day

3. No re-spins

This is not a workout program. It’s is a resilience tool, and it’s far from the finished product. We’ll continue to shape and evolve it as we go, but we’re loving the process so far, and we think there’s value in sharing this with others in the future.

We are 9 days in currently and have felt the full range of the roulette wheel. From burpees, to press ups, runs and wild swims. It’s not the challenge that’s important, but just that we overcome it, everyday. One thing is for sure. We feel like we have achieved something that day, however big or small it may be. A small positive step. So ask yourself a similar question.

How are you challenging yourself?

How are you getting out of your comfort zone?