Building Resilience Through Practice, Habits, and Daily Discipline
In our previous post of the Resilient Warrior Leader series, we explored the idea that perseverance isn’t just a feeling—it’s a practice. Today, let's dig deeper into three essential elements: practice, habits, and discipline.
The Power of Practice and Habit
Mason Currey’s Daily Rituals reveals a powerful commonality among 161 of history’s most creative minds: the commitment to daily, structured practice. Artists, scientists, and inventors built their brilliance not through bursts of inspiration, but through daily rituals and deliberate, persistent effort.
Practice alone isn’t enough; making practice a habit is where real transformation happens.
Charles Duhigg’s book Habits: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Work shows us that much of our behavior isn’t governed by conscious thought but by the basal ganglia, the part of the brain responsible for habitual decision-making. Once behaviors become habits, they operate almost automatically, conserving our cognitive energy for more complex tasks.
Every day, countless decisions—brushing our teeth, driving to work, grabbing that afternoon snack—are triggered and executed from this "automatic pilot" system. The brain, always seeking to conserve energy, hardwires these patterns to ease mental pressure. Building resilience, grit, and leadership excellence, then, isn’t about pushing harder once—it’s about creating new, intentional habit loops.
True grit—the ability to persevere through adversity—and real resilience depends on small, repeated acts. Over time, these acts build into powerful capabilities.
Neuroscientists call this "experience-dependent neuroplasticity": our brains physically rewire themselves based on the experiences we consistently repeat. With enough focus and repetition, practices like resilience, empathy, vulnerability, and perseverance become not traits we "try" to have—they become who we are.
Don't Cut the Corners
I once had a coach who would stand at the corner of a cone during our sprint drills, reminding—or yelling at—us: “Don’t cut the corners!” He’d also be stationed at the end of a 100-yard dash shouting, “Finish through!”
Through these practices, he wasn’t just building physical endurance—he was wiring our minds and bodies for resilience. If we cut corners or coasted to the finish line in practice, how could we expect our minds, bodies, and spirits to perform fully under real pressure in the game?
Have you ever thought about "not cutting the corners" or "finishing through" not just because you're supposed to, but as a mental exercise in resilience? Many leaders get to the five- or ten-yard line only to coast to the finish. What if, instead, we built daily practices and habits that trained us to push through—to do the big and small things well, every time?
Sometimes when we’ve done a task for so long our attention to detail and quality can start to languish. Rethink your time on these tasks by practicing following through and taxing your mind to make sure it's of the highest quality every time. I think one thing that has made me stand out as a leader in many circles is my doggedness to continually show up, on time, prepared and ready to go. It doesn’t matter if I’ve hosted hundreds of networking events, festivals or training events, every time needs to be like the first time.
Resilience and grit are muscles. And if we think we’re going to simply step up and lead our organizations through dynamic change and unprecedented political and economic times without working that muscle—we’re mistaken.
Small Habits Build Big Strength
I'm reminded of Admiral William H. McRaven’s famous commencement speech and subsequent book, Make Your Bed. The concept is simple but profound: if you start each morning by making your bed—a small act of discipline—you set the tone for tackling larger challenges throughout the day.
Here are a few small, daily habits to help build your follow-through and resilience muscle:
Make your bed every morning.
Take a different route to work occasionally to disrupt autopilot thinking.
Put away your tools and materials after finishing a project.
Drink a glass of water first thing every morning.
Clean up your inbox at the end of each workday.
Spend 30 minutes planning your week: map out work tasks, household responsibilities, exercise times, dinners, and schedule something fun.
Reflection Questions:
What daily rituals do you currently have that build your resilience?
Where are you "cutting corners" in your habits or practices, and how might you finish stronger?
What new, small practices can you introduce to build a deeper well of resilience?
