In our building blocks of success series, we tackle the various foundational blocks we believe are essential for success. Resilience is near the top of the list, because pursuing greatness almost always means you will face losses, mistakes and tough times along your journey. The ability to bounce back is so critical and we hope the stories below will inspire you to dig deep and discover more of your own resiliency.

Jamira Simmons

My resilience stems from a diverse array of sources. Firstly, I find strength in my past experiences, overcoming challenges and setbacks that have equipped me with the resilience to face new obstacles head-on. Secondly, the support and encouragement of my loved ones play a pivotal role, providing a solid foundation of encouragement and belief in my abilities.  Read more>>

Kristi Blankenship

Its difficult to say because I’ve been pretty privileged in my life, but currently life has been throwing tough things my way and I really find empathy to be a thing that helps me. I connect and vent with friends, other moms, other people in the wedding industry and in our commiserating I find a way to push through and keep going. Read more>>

Jill Scheid & Nichole Salzman

We get our resilience from life experience. Taking chances such as launching a business creates learning experiences and during the process, you get knocked down, and you learn. Nichole is also a mother of a child that had a rough start in life and a rare condition called FPIES which is Food Protein-Induced Enterocolitis Syndrome. Read more>>

Heather Alley

Great question, ultimately I think my resilience comes from many challenges and many mistakes. The more challenges you face and mistakes you make the better you get at dealing with them and the less of a big deal they become.  Read more>>

Gabriel Gonzalez

A big part comes from being an immigrant. I’m a Venezuelan who left his country looking for a better future. Many times alone. Many times simply not knowing what the future held. However, it was the dream for being able to accomplish big things what kept the hunger alive. That, combined with people who took bets on me. Read more>>

Serena Wills

I get my resilience from a couple of different places in my life. One is from watching my mother who raised me with the help of my grandparents. She was my rock and although a single mother, she adopted my two sisters who had health conditions.  Read more>>

Weichao Zhao

As a Lighting Console Programmer (lighting Designer), my resilience is forged in the fast-paced, problem-rich environment of live events and theatrical productions. It stems from confronting and solving unexpected technical challenges, continuously learning and adapting to new technologies and software, collaborating closely with diverse creative teams, and a deep-seated passion for the transformative power of lighting in storytelling.  Read more>>

Jennifer Kelly

My resilience comes from my passion for sharing my emotions through my writing and sculpture. I share my joy and pain in what I see as beauty so that others can feel resilient to their own challenges. In 2020 I was diagnosed with late-stage Lyme disease.  Read more>>

Mehrnaz Mohammadi

My resilience is deeply rooted in my relentless desire for freedom of expression, a quality that has been my guidance in my life’s journey. Born and raised under the dictatorship of the Islamic Republic of Iran, I quickly learned the importance of standing up for my fundamental rights and fighting for freedom of speech, choice of what to wear, and freedom of thought.  Read more>>

Kieara Johnson

My resilience and entrepreneurial spirit are deeply rooted in my family’s story, particularly in the examples set by my parents. Watching my mother single-handedly raise two children, further her education, and manage a household, all with an unwavering spirit and joy for life, taught me the essence of resilience.  Read more>>

Chelsea Ohlemiller

Resilience is about overcoming. It’s about going through the harshest of times and finding a way through them, finding a way to heal, while still holding the pain and the purpose behind it, because there is always purpose behind it.  Read more>>

Kay Cote

Resilience is a mindset for me which combines adaptability, the ability to not take things personal and to have grace. At a young age I built up my resilience, as I dealt with being chronically bullied for most of my youth. Read more>>

Marta Brassil

I think my resilience comes from my grandmother; she was a strong woman who survived war as a young girl. She had very strong work ethics, was a veracious reader and never lost her curiosity and thirst for life. Read more>>

Christopher Kemper

In 1988, I started looking at colleges. I grew up in a blue collar household. My step dad was a fireman and my mom was a secretary. We didn’t have a ton of money, but I was always told that I needed to go to college to make something of myself. Read more>>

Maricarmen Vélez

Over the course of my career as a cellist, I’ve had a number of rejections, failed auditions, bad masterclasses, times where I’ve felt I might quit, etc. Yet, I always come back to the same question: “Why am I doing this?”.  Read more>>

Yan Lin

Resilience is the ability to cope with adversity. My resilience comes from my unwillingness to admit defeat. Not giving up is part of my personal characteristics, it is in my blood, and when I encounter difficulties, this trait makes me choose to face difficulties instead of giving up and leaving.  Read more>>

Angel Quesada

It was the difficult health challenges with a heart condition, nerve damage, and chronic head pain that taught me how to keep going and have faith and hope that even at my lowest I can have hope and trust in God that he is with me and has good plans for my life! Read more>>

Jordan Bankston

What a great question! A few years ago, I was let go of my job. I was devastated. I couldn’t believe it and immediately questioned how to make ends meet. I called my mother, who reminded me that “I was resilient.” Read more>>

Helen Perez

I get my resilience from a series of challenging experiences that have shaped me into the strong and determined individual I am today. At a young age, I endured a traumatic accident that resulted in 2nd and 3rd degree burns, setting the stage for a journey of resilience.  Read more>>

Aaron Westbrook

My resiliency stems from being born with a limb difference – my right arm stops shortly after my elbow. My parents did not know before I was born that I would live my life with one hand. At one of my first doctor appointments, a doctor expressed that navigating our two-handed world would be challenging.  Read more>>

Jess Dallman

My resilience is woven with interspecies connections, from the lessons from the Earth, to profound experiences with horses, to the dialogue that emerges from exploring reciprocity with the land I tend, to human relationships that surround me near and far. Read more>>

Luiza Girardello

It’s interesting you ask that, my latest release is a song quite literally called Resilience. In it I explore my background coming from a very conservative country with a nepotistic power structure, the upbringing that made me a perfectionist and made me have a really hard time taking any risks, and the physical and mental health complications from going through chemotherapy and confronting mortality when I was a young adult and diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Read more>>

Jonathan Alpeyrie

My resilience can be found deep into my past. Indeed, my mother, a very strong willed woman who has made her own way her entire life through much adversity, a woman who has raised me to be strong while not feel sorry for myself when things got tough.  Read more>>

Khalil Jamal

Part of being resilient is setting appropriate expectations, this allows emotions and expectations to remain in check. The mentality I have when something with the podcast doesn’t go well, such as an interview falling through or a podcast underperforming, is just keep going and keep pushing. Read more>>

Usha Shukla

My resilience comes primarily from my parents, especially my mother. My parents migrated from a small village in India to a big city to give themselves and their future family a better life. Though I was brought up in New Delhi, we stayed connected to our rural roots by regularly visiting our extended family. Read more>>

Durant Searcy

Honestly, sometimes I wonder where my resilience comes from after I’ve gone through the rain. When I am having low moments, I always think to myself that I don’t know how I am going to make it out of it. One thing I do know is that I face my issues head on.  Read more>>

Shannon Allbright

I love what I do… I get to teach sewing to little kids. Read more>>

Rodriquress “Reese” Broadnax

I’m resilient because of the life I’ve lived. Because of the secret and sometimes public struggles I endured. Because of my faith in God and in the power of grace and live that is in the Earth. And because I have had and still have “she-ros” and heroes who I admire for their resilience and ability to keep standing, walking, praying, trusting and living, another day in spite of whatever they are going through.  Read more>>

Lharissa (LJ) Jacobs

Resilience is such an interesting topic! As the biracial adult child of immigrants to the US, I know firsthand of war trauma and the scars that it leaves on its survivors. Both of my parents saw so much, having survived World War II and losing family members to the war with its violence and terror.  Read more>>

Kelli Binnings

My life hasn’t been free of hardship, no one’s is free of that, but that’s what makes it so beautiful in my opinion. It’s the hardship that helps you see the positive. Every failure, loss, and change in direction has been an opportunity to face the music and rebuild, refocus, and reframe my life with new information from those challenging experiences.  Read more>>

Morgan Griffin

I contribute a lot of my resilience to my family and childhood. I didn’t grow up with a lot, and yet I felt that I had everything in the world. My parents were wizards in making everything out of nothing. My sister had an incredible imagination and the worlds we created and games we played were endless. Read more>>

Yana Malik

I don’t know that I would have ever considered myself to be resilient. Maybe it’s because I felt that the challenges I faced early in my life either went away on their own or never affected me too much in the first place. Read more>>

Tommy Cook

My resilience comes from my mother. She didn’t have the easiest time raising my sister and me, but as a single mother, she always prioritized her children. I remember having several breakdowns in my youth for different struggles I was going through, whether it was school, hobbies, or even relationships.  Read more>>

Soohyun Kim

my religious belief and other’s story. Read more>>

Julie Fuhrman

This is an easy one – MY MOM! Read more>>

NeeNee Lovee

I get my resilence from my mother and all of the mothers that have come before me. Read more>>

Aisha Griffin

My resilience as a domestic violence survivor is deeply rooted in the core of the woman I am now. A symphony 0f emotions, each note telling a tale of survival. Each thread represents a moment of struggle, of facing shadows, and finding the courage to emerge into the light. Read more>>

Rajesh Palta

The year was 2009. The final curtain fell on the global typewriter industry, leaving hundreds of thousands jobless, including countless salesmen, repairers, and traders like myself. It felt like the ground had vanished beneath my feet. In Delhi alone, over 250 typewriter businesses shut down virtually overnight. Read more>>