Resilience Beyond Grit

Why endurance alone is not resilience—and why systems matter more than toughness

Grit Is Overrated—and Misunderstood

Grit, toughness, and endurance are often treated as synonyms for resilience. In many high-performance cultures, they are praised as virtues—proof of character, commitment, and strength.

They aren’t the same thing.

Grit is a narrow strategy. It is useful in short bursts—during a crisis, a push, or a moment that demands everything you have. But when grit becomes the default response to prolonged stress, it stops being adaptive.

Over-reliance on grit masks system failures, delays recovery, and quietly accelerates long-term breakdown.

Grit can get you through today. It won’t necessarily get you through the year—or the career.

Why the Grit Narrative Persists

The grit narrative persists because it is simple, culturally admired, and easy to praise. It fits neatly into stories of heroism and individual responsibility.

It also shifts the burden entirely onto the individual.

Institutions like grit because it’s cheap. It requires no structural change, no rethinking of structure, load, tempo, or expectations. When people struggle, the system doesn’t have to look at itself; it can simply ask individuals to try harder.

The hidden cost is predictable: When people break, the system labels it a personal failure rather than a structural one.

Resilience Is Not a Trait—It’s a Capacity

Traits are static. You either “have them” or you don’t, such as grit.

Resilience is different. It is dynamic and context-dependent. It is the capacity of a system to absorb stress, adapt, and continue functioning.

Individuals contribute to resilience, but they do not carry it alone. In fact, it’s impossible to be resilient alone (see Relationships below). This distinction matters. When resilience is treated as a static trait, people are blamed for struggling. When it’s understood as a capacity, attention shifts to how stress is distributed, how recovery is supported, and how adaptation is enabled.

Resilience lives in the system first—and only then in the individual.

The Physiological Foundation We Like to Ignore

Stress is biological before it is psychological.

Sleep, nutrition, movement, active restoration, and load management are not “nice to have.” They are foundational. Asking people to be resilient while ignoring physiology is like demanding performance from a machine without maintenance.

In the Teams, we learned quickly that exhaustion degrades judgment faster than fear ever did. Fatigue narrowed perception, impaired decision-making, increased risk-taking, and eroded trust. No amount of motivation could compensate for a nervous system pushed beyond its limits.

Resilience that ignores biology is performative, not real.

Psychology: Meaning Beats Motivation

Motivation is volatile. It rises and falls with energy, mood, and circumstance.

Meaning is both stabilizing and energizing.

People endure hardship more effectively when they understand why it matters—when effort and even suffering connect to purpose, identity, and contribution beyond the self. This isn’t positive thinking. It’s sensemaking under stress. Purpose aligns us—it’s our compass. But meaning provides the steady energy that lets us follow the compass over the long haul, absorbing shocks and adapting to changing landscapes.

Resilience is sustained not by hype, but by coherence: This matters. I belong. What I’m doing fits who I am.

When meaning erodes, motivation eventually fades.

Relationships: The Force Multiplier

Resilience is social.

Isolation magnifies stress. Connection (social capital) buffers it. It’s perhaps the single most important resilience strategy going. We know this because people experience isolation in the brain the same way they experience physical torture. Resilience, even when experienced in the body, is necessarily born in the collective.

From a complexity perspective, dense, trusted networks distribute the load. Stress is shared, interpreted, and metabolized collectively. Weak ties fail under pressure, while strong relationships hold.

This is why elite teams invest so heavily in trust—not as a feel-good value, but as a functional necessity. In a SEAL Team, trust is survival.

Meaning, Morality, and Moral Injury

Moral injury is not a failure of resilience. It is a failure of meaning.

When actions violate values, identity, or shared purpose, no amount of grit restores equilibrium. The system loses coherence, and people lose their footing.

Resilience in these moments requires moral clarity—and an aspect of grit—space to process, and collective acknowledgment. It requires the system to grapple honestly with what happened—not to push people to “power through” what cannot be ignored.

Resilience Emerges from Structure

Resilience is not added retroactively. It emerges from how systems are built.

Roles must allow for recovery—for active restoration. Rules must normalize asking for help. Relationships must support psychological meaningfulness, safety, and availability. I matter. I’m safe. I have what it takes. Response mechanisms—feedback loops—must adjust the load before collapse, not after.

Resilience is built into systems—or it isn’t built at all.

When structure ignores human limits, individual toughness—grti—becomes the last line of defense. And last lines fail.

When ‘Resilience’ Becomes Maladaptive

Constant endurance without recovery leads to burnout, cynicism, and disengagement. It can also lead to risk-seeking or withdrawal. Systems can become anti-resilient by rewarding overextension and mistaking survival for health. What looks like strength in the short term often creates fragility over time.

If the system only praises those who endure the most, it will eventually consume its best people.

Individual Practices Still Matter—But They’re Not Enough

Individual practices matter. Connection, self-care, and caring for others contribute to this. But they work best within supportive systems. Alone, they become tools, not resilience, per se. They help people survive systems that refuse to change rather than enabling systems that sustain their people.

What Leaders Get Wrong About Resilience

Leaders often treat resilience as a personal responsibility. They address it after failure rather than before. They confuse endurance with health. Instead, they should manage load, not just output. Protect recovery. Normalize vulnerability. Reinforce meaning. Leadership shapes resilience less through speeches and more through structure, tempo, and what gets rewarded, including taking time off to recalibrate.

Without active restoration, the system cycles between effort and fatigue—and never catches up. With active restoration, people can renew their efforts. Without it, the system drifts toward failure.

The Shift That Matters

Grit asks: How much can you endure? Resilience asks: How do we continue—together—without breaking? Resilience is not about how hard individuals are. It’s about how well systems care for the people they depend on.

And systems that get this right don’t just survive stress—they adapt and thrive in it.

Working With Leaders in Complex Environments

I work with senior leaders, teams, and institutions operating in conditions of uncertainty, risk, and consequence. If this essay resonates, you can learn more about my work or contact me directly.