My father is a retired physician who’s disciplined, brilliant, and honest to a fault. He’s also the man who read my book in a single day and told me the world needed it. But a line of his I carry everywhere is older than that. He said it to me when I was a girl: “Never dim your light for anyone.” I hear it every time I’m tempted to shrink so a room feels more comfortable. And this summer, it’s been on my mind more than usual because I think we misunderstand where resilience comes from.
Resilience Isn’t a Solo Sport
We talk about resilience like it’s grit we manufacture alone. I think we have it backward. Resilience is built among people, in the moments we choose to notice out loud. The most reliable way to strengthen ourselves is to shine a light on someone else.
A few summers ago in a crowded airport, I caught myself turning the familiar warning “See something, say something” into something joyful. What if we stayed that alert for the good?
Researchers who study positive emotion have found that one person’s warmth genuinely spreads through the people around them, shaping the whole mood of a room. When we catch someone being or doing something wonderful — a contagious laugh, a quiet kindness, the bold color of their shirt — we need to say it out loud. Joy, it turns out, is contagious. When others beam, I beam.
Two Things You Can Do This Week
Be present where it counts. There’s real power in slowing down before you sprint toward the finish line. People who mentally switch off from work during their off-hours report better well-being and lower anxiety a year later. Sitting on the porch on a quiet evening, purposefully having an unhurried afternoon, and taking that trip you keep almost canceling aren’t the opposite of performance. They fund it.
Practice the joyful “See something, say something” by picking out one genuine, specific observation of someone’s good, then watch what it does to the room. Happiness researcher Shawn Achor has shown that small, deliberate acts of positivity ripple outward and lift the performance of everyone they touch. You don’t need a program. You just need a sentence.
Why This Is the Whole Game
At the heart of the your Sphere of Resilience® is that relationships, recovery, and meaning aren’t soft extras; they’re load-bearing. One small habit feeds all three at once. Strengthen a connection, create a moment of meaning, and give yourself the lift recovery requires. When I work with leadership teams on Joy Powered Performance™, this is where we start, because you cannot pour resilience into a team from an empty source.
The Reserves We Build in Each Other
My father laid the foundation for the reserves in me with a single sentence, repeated until I believed it. When I once asked him what resilience meant, he didn’t say toughness. He said adaptability, the ability to adapt whether life is static or dynamic. He would know. Years ago, when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, our family leaned in and grew closer through it, and caring for him became one of the great honors of my life. Resilience, the real kind, was never something he carried alone.
None of us do.
We get to do that for the people around us, all summer long, one noticed light at a time. Imagine a world where everyone did this. I would want to lead in that world. I would want to live in it.
