Walk with SMB: Beyond Bouncing Back
Episode Summary: Resilience is a word we hear everywhere—in leadership, wellbeing, parenting, sports, and everyday life. We celebrate people who push through challenges and admire those who seem to bounce back. But what if that's only part of the story?
In this solo walking reflection, Susan explores a question that emerged while preparing a workshop on mental reset and resilience: What story are we telling ourselves about resilience? Looking through the lens of nature, she begins to wonder whether resilience is less about enduring hardship and more about the conditions that help living systems adapt and thrive.
Sometimes a better question changes everything.
SHOW NOTES
Resilience has become one of the most common words in conversations about leadership, wellbeing, and modern life. We encourage people to be resilient. We admire those who persevere. We often describe resilience as the ability to bounce back after adversity.
But what if resilience is more than endurance?
In this Walk with SMB episode, Susan shares the questions that emerged while developing a workshop on mental reset and resilience. Drawing on her background in environmental science, organizational wellbeing, and her ongoing exploration of nature as teacher, she reflects on what living systems reveal about responding to challenge.
Together, you'll explore how mental resets create space to notice the stories we tell ourselves, why responding is different from reacting, and how resilience may emerge from the conditions that surround and support us. Susan also introduces six conditions she's currently exploring—environment, relationships, rhythms, recovery, meaning, and mind—not as a finished model, but as a working hypothesis that continues to evolve.
Rather than offering a prescription, this episode is an invitation to slow down, become curious, and explore two questions:
What story are we telling ourselves about resilience?
And perhaps even more importantly...
What conditions help us thrive?
Key Themes
Rethinking the story of resilience
Mental resets and the stories we tell ourselves
Nature as a teacher of adaptation
Responding versus reacting
Living systems and resilience
Conditions that support thriving
Curiosity as a path to new understanding
Key Takeaways
Resilience may be more than simply "bouncing back."
Mental resets create space to notice the stories shaping our experience.
Nature shows us that challenge is expected, not exceptional.
Living systems respond, adapt, recover, and continue changing.
The conditions around us influence our ability to thrive.
Better questions often lead to deeper understanding.
"Maybe the better question isn't, 'How can I be more resilient?'
Maybe it's, 'What conditions help people thrive?'"
Reflection Prompt
What story are you telling yourself about resilience? And what conditions in your life are helping you adapt and thrive?
Prefer to read? The full transcript is below.
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Susan:
Welcome to ROOTED: A Podcast About Nature & Wellbeing. I'm Susan Morgan Bailey.
I've spent years noticing patterns—in nature, leadership, wellbeing, organizations, and my own life. These are the questions I'm exploring.
Walk with me.
Today I'm talking about resilience. I've been thinking a lot about the word lately. I'm preparing a presentation for a corporate audience on mental reset and resilience. That was the topic. And the more I've worked on it, the more I've found myself questioning how I've defined resilience.
I've also noticed that resilience has become one of those words we use all the time—in leadership, wellbeing, parenting, sports, and organizations. We celebrate resilience. We encourage people to be more resilient.
And all of this noticing got me wondering:
What story are we telling ourselves about resilience?
When I hear people describe resilience, I often hear words like pushing through, staying strong, bouncing back, persevering, and grit. "Bouncing back" is one I've used myself, especially when I talk about palm trees after a hurricane and how incredibly resilient they are.
There's nothing wrong with any of these ideas. As a human, I've demonstrated those behaviors, and I would say they're important parts of resilience—or perhaps they're what resilience looks like from the outside.
But, of course, this is a podcast about nature and wellbeing, so I can't help but look at resilience through the lens of nature.
And when I do, I notice something different.
Nature rarely, if ever, avoids challenge.
Every living system encounters change. It's part of the norm. Sometimes those changes are dramatic—storms, fires, floods, droughts, competition. Other times they're simply the everyday changes that are part of life.
The extreme challenges require extraordinary adaptation. But challenge itself isn't unusual.
It's expected.
What fascinates me isn't that nature experiences stress. It's how living systems respond.
For the purpose of this episode—and because I've spent a lot of time talking about how humans are nature, that we're not separate from it—I want us to look at resilience through the lens of the rest of nature.
How do living systems respond to stress and challenge?
They adapt.
They reorganize.
They recover.
And they continue changing.
That observation has led me to ask myself:
Is resilience really about "bouncing back"?
Or is it about something else?
As I say that, another thought occurs to me.
Can we really go back?
We're never exactly the same after a stressful or life-changing experience.
Maybe resilience isn't about bouncing back at all.
Maybe it's about moving forward—changed, but still growing.
Susan:For years, I've talked about recovery as an essential part of resilience, and I still believe that's true.
One of the most helpful tools I've found for navigating challenge is what I call a mental reset.
When we're caught up in a story, we can't always see what's actually in front of us. That's why I come back to one question again and again:
What story am I telling myself right now?
That question has changed how I experience difficult moments—not because it removes the challenge, but because it creates a little space.
And sometimes, that space is enough to see a new possibility.
As I began looking at resilience through the lens of nature, another question emerged.
Maybe the question isn't:
How can I be more resilient?
Maybe the better question is:
What conditions help people thrive... and be resilient?
That feels like a different question altogether.
Instead of focusing on becoming more resilient, it shifts my attention toward noticing what supports resilience.
What enables it.
Because resilience isn't all on the individual.
I'm still exploring this. I don't think I have a finished framework. But reflecting on nature—and thinking specifically about resilience in the more-than-human world—I keep coming back to the idea that certain conditions matter.
A living being's ability to thrive and adapt is influenced by its environment.
Does it have the right soil?
The right climate?
The right conditions to grow?
We can't plant anything, anywhere, and expect it to flourish. Environment matters.
Relationships matter too.
In the more-than-human world, animals, plants, fungi, water, and countless other living systems exist in relationship with one another. Those interactions are essential to life itself.
Another condition that stands out to me is rhythm.
Nature moves in rhythms.
The seasons.
Day and night.
Our circadian rhythms that influence when we sleep and when we're awake.
When living systems are constantly forced outside those rhythms, they struggle to thrive.
And building on rhythm is recovery.
Creating space, time, and energy for recovery isn't separate from resilience—it's part of it.
Nature reminds us of this everywhere.
The seasons create periods of growth and periods of rest.
Bears hibernate.
A cheetah wasn't designed to sprint all day.
Living systems exert energy.
Then they recover.
Susan:Another condition that comes up for me is meaning.
By that, I mean purpose.
Every being, every living thing, every element in nature has a purpose. It has a reason for being. It plays a role in the larger system.
And then the last condition that comes up for me is mind.
You might be thinking, How could nature have a mind?
Well, lots of animals have brains, and we could go much deeper into that conversation. But for now, I'd simply invite you to reflect on it with me.
As I sat with this idea, I began wondering:
What conditions of the mind would nature have that enable it to be so incredibly resilient?
If nature had a mindset, what would it be?
The words that came to me were:
Flexible.
Adaptable.
Flow.
Connection.
It's actually been fun to imagine the "mind of nature" and to wonder what way of seeing the world enables living systems to be so resilient.
I don't see these six ideas as a checklist.
I see them as lenses.
Ways of looking at resilience.
Questions that invite reflection.
I can ask myself:
What's my environment like right now?
Are the conditions around me supporting my wellbeing?
I know that when I spend too much time indoors during the winter, without fresh air or sunlight, it affects my ability to thrive.
I can ask:
What relationships help me feel grounded and connected?
Or:
Am I living in rhythms that are sustainable?
I think about this often when I work with organizations.
For example, people whose jobs require them to work outside of natural daytime hours. We know there are professions where that's necessary. But we also know those rhythms can be difficult to sustain over long periods of time.
Recovery is another question I continue to come back to.
Am I intentionally creating time and space to recover?
Even if it's just five minutes to pause, take a few deep breaths, and reset before moving into whatever comes next.
And then there are the questions of meaning and mind.
What stories am I telling myself?
How am I approaching the everyday moments of my life?
Are those stories and perspectives creating conditions that help me thrive?
Susan:One thing I find interesting is that we often admire people who thrive despite difficult conditions.
And we should.
It's remarkable.
The world is full of people who have overcome unbelievable odds.
At the same time, we're living through a period of extraordinary change.
The artificial environment is changing at an incredible pace.
The built environment continues to evolve.
The natural environment is changing too.
We're all learning how to navigate shifting conditions.
When I look at nature, I notice that living systems don't simply react to change. They respond.
They prepare.
They adapt.
And I think that's something we can learn from.
Responding requires presence.
It requires awareness.
It requires pausing long enough to notice what's happening.
When we pause to reflect, notice, and become curious, we begin to see the conditions that are shaping our ability to thrive.
I'm not sure I've landed on a final definition of resilience—or even a finished framework.
In many ways, I think I'm expanding my understanding of it.
And honestly, that's one of my favorite things to do.
What I do know is this:
Mental resets help us notice.
They help us become present.
They help us slow down, even if it's only for a moment.
Asking ourselves, What story am I telling myself right now? creates space to notice whether that story is empowering or diminishing... inviting or limiting... energizing or exhausting.
That noticing helps us adapt.
We can adapt our mindset.
We can adapt our environment.
We can strengthen our relationships.
We can create healthier rhythms.
We can make space for recovery.
So perhaps the mental reset leads to noticing.
Noticing leads to adaptation.
And adaptation helps create the conditions for resilience.
I wonder if paying attention to the conditions around us is one of the most practical ways to cultivate resilience.
So I'll leave you with the same two questions I'm still carrying.
What story are you telling yourself about resilience?
And perhaps an even more useful one...
What conditions help you thrive?
Thanks for spending time with me today.
Buen Camino.
