From Resilience to Thriving
Tasha Eurich in her book, Shatterproof: How to Thrive in a World of Constant Chaos (And why resilience alone isn’t enough) (Little, Brown Spark, 2025), writes that many people right now are “stressed-out strivers: goal-oriented people seeking success and fulfillment, who feel exhausted by chronic, compounding challenges across multiple areas of life (work, career, romantic relationships, family, friends, health, community, and the world).” In this wonderful resource, Eurich argues two things: “First, because resilience is a limited resource, it alone may no longer be a complete coping strategy in this increasingly chaotic world. And second, the best response to constant chaos is not merely to survive it, but to harness it in order to become the best version of ourselves.”
She then says that there are three things needed to thrive. As she writes, “The first three-to-thrive need is confidence: the belief that we’re effective in our actions, capable of achieving out goals, and able to grow and learn new things. The second three-to-thrive need is choice, means feeling free to function without pressure or threat, acting with agency and integrity, staying true to ourselves. The final need is connection, the sense that we belong, get along with others, and experience mutual closeness and support…. Fundamentally, confidence keep us growing, choice keeps us authentic, and connection keeps us together.”
From my experience, trusting relationships are critical to building healthy connections and a healthy level of community. With these two in place, i.e. connection and community, we can create time and space to pause, de-accelerate, catch our breathe, and gain perspective. We can then move from chronic rushing around, perpetual exhaustion, and continual reactions. Instead, we recover the capacity to move from “emotional and/or cognitive intensity,” referencing Brené Brown’s earlier writing, to emotional and cognitive clarity. This helps us be resilient, and then to thrive in the midst of complexity.
An On-going Commitment To Learning
Second, in order to de-accelerate and begin to feel less overwhelmed, we need to make an ongoing and long term commitment to in-depth learning and studying. This perspective often surprises people. Most think the solution is time management and understanding the difference between strategic challenges and operational problems. While these may be very important, I approach the need to slow down in the midst of dynamic complexity from a different angle.
Over the last 6+ months, I have been asked numerous times about how I get started, and ended up becoming a consultant, executive coach and trainer in leadership, strategic planning, and organizational change. The people, who are asking me this good question, are individuals who are considering becoming themselves one of these things, or are currently doing it and want to become better at it. Often, these individuals will point out that I got my BA in history with a minor in education, taught high school history for five years, and later got my MA in instructional design and technology. In no way, does this pathway typically lead to being a consultant, executive coach, and trainer in leadership, strategic planning, and organizational change. And, for the most part, I agree with them, though I do point out that the world of training and development, and the world of teaching are nearly one and the same thing.
What surprises most people is that as I walked the aforementioned pathway, I was always interested in such topics as leadership, teamwork, managing people, and/or communications. Then, as I was invited to do consulting, coaching and training, I choose to do three things at the same time. First, I read everything that I could get my hands on related to specific topics, e.g. teamwork. Being a former history major in college, where we were often assigned 1-2 books per week per class to read, I was a good, and fast reader, who knew how to take notes and where to find key information within those notes. I have a folder in my computer of notes from 100+ different books. They are my library of insight, for lack of a better term. And I am still reading books today because I am still interested in these subjects.
Next, every time I met a leader who I believed was a good leader, I would ask them what they were reading. Over the course of 90 days, it always stunned me that the best leaders were all reading the same books. So, if two or more leaders in this category, were reading a specific book, I went out and read it too. Then, I studied that book to distill out the key information in order to be able to communicate it to others or reference it in my coaching work. In short, I followed the old Boy Scout motto, be prepared, and I was always learning and preparing myself for what was happening now, and what might be happening in the future.
Third, I had the courage and where-for-all to listen to my elders and mentors. I understand that not everything in life can be learned from a book. Sometimes, you just have to go to the source, and listen to the full story in order to gain a deeper appreciation and understanding of a specific subject. Overall, it was the combination of these three things, i.e. learning and studying, listening and reading, and finally going to the source of those who have walked this pathway before me, that generated capacity in me to pause, regain perspective, and more thoughtfully respond to the world around me.
Envisioning the Future
During times of complexity, the world can seen like a hot mess with multiple troughs and Grand Canyons of chaos happening all around us. But Brené Brown in her book, Strong Ground: The Lessons Of Daring Leadership, The Tenacity Of Paradox, and The Wisdom Of The Human Spirit (Random House, 2025), offers an important perspective: “The future can’t be predicted, but it can be envisioned and brought lovingly into being.” And when we choose to do this work together, especially at the individual and group levels, we can, with discipline and on-going focus, lovingly bring this vision into being.
The first step is to slow down during times of complexity. We do this by understanding the difference between feeling stressed and feeling overwhelmed. Then, we must build trust and move from a focus on resilience to one on thriving. This, along with an ongoing commitment to learning, will all make a difference.
As these collective actions take place, we then will fully grasp the wisdom shared by executive coach, Aiko Bethea. As she writes: “There is no growth or transformation without expansiveness.” And now, given all that is happening, we need to envision an expansive and inclusive future where all can feel safe, respected and have a sense of belonging. Then, we can gain perspective, and respond from a place of clarity and connection. This is the beginning to a new and better future for all.
© Geery Howe 2026
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