Building Resilience: Three Ways to Navigate Challenges

How do you know when it is time to persevere or let it go? If we look at sports, many athletes leave at the top of their game and choose to return.

Serena Williams, 40, announced her retirement after the US Open. She has toyed with leaving the sport before. Last year, tennis player Ashleigh Barty ranked No. 1 in the world and retired at 26.  “I don’t have the physical drive, the emotional want, and everything it takes to challenge yourself at the very top of the level anymore. I am spent,” she said. 

Walking away from your career in your prime isn’t a new phenomenon. In 2008, the World No. 1 ranked female tennis player Justine Henin retired, wanting a “release from the game” and time to focus on developing a tennis school before a comeback in 2010. Great stories often contain that moment when the hero walks away from a challenge only to come back later, but in reality, sometimes it’s best to stop and move on.

Let’s be clear here. Walking away from anything important requires a large amount of deliberation and negotiation, adding to your ability to be resilient. Having low resilience is often seen as a spontaneous moment when someone quits. High resilience is deliberately planned and strengthens mental toughness. 

If you’ve ever played a sport and stopped, you’ve probably experienced what we call a walk-away point where you’ve got to a moment of challenge and deliberately stopped. Some individuals have no walk-away point as they continue to learn and progress based on their age, health, and priorities. Many lose interest, and rather than a deliberate walkaway point, they hit a challenge point, struggle to maintain motivation, and spontaneously stop or quit. This is the quitting point. Understanding the differences between these three key moments is essential as it impacts motivation and thus, future effort. 

• Walk-away points are deliberate. You progress to a point and then deliberately debate continuing, weighing up the benefits and drawbacks of carrying on. This is then followed by replacing the old challenge with a new activity. Serena Williams calls this a “transition” from tennis to her next goal: to develop a venture capital company, Serena Ventures. At this point, there are conversations with others and a clear exit strategy.

• A challenge point is where the individual perceives they will struggle the most when working towards a goal. They are often aware of this point and will judge progress leading up to it, as well as during, and it will determine motivation moving forward. For Serena, every game in the US Open offered a challenge point.

• The quitting point is where motivation sharply decreases, and you spontaneously stop. There are minimal conversations with others, and there is no real exit strategy other than to quit or stop immediately.

The three resilience points are very different, and being aware of their difference is important because the quitting point is what we all want to avoid. This is done by setting clear objectives and a walk-away point based on how you will rise to the challenge (point) you will inevitably face. 

Navigating Challenges

1. Communication

To improve resilience, start by having open and honest conversations with those who will give you open and honest feedback. Support during challenge points will alleviate some stress when making difficult decisions. 

2. Be deliberate

Have an exit plan or “pause” (time to reflect) where you are. Try not to stop or quit. Most people who consider quitting are fatigued, emotionally drained, and need time away to refocus their attention and build motivation before pressing play again and working to overcome their challenge point. 

3. Keep working

Quitting isn’t bad as long as you move on to the next challenge. Hard work should be replaced with, you’ve guessed it: hard work. 

As a final thought, enjoy what you do. There will always be times when you don’t have fun or when performances feel as if they are plateauing. During these times when character is built and through hard work and setting clear challenge-based goals, you can use these three points to make continual progress.