Men often wear suffering as a badge of honour – but is that the same as resilience?
Pete Hunt and Dr Phil Hopley, Sports Phycologist to Lando Norris and the Mclaren F1 team explore the difference, unpacking stress, recovery, and what it really means to build resilience in modern life.
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Transcript
So what is the difference in terms of the suffering? People talk about suffering and as I said, it's sort of a badge of honor. I ask many men, how are you doing? Or if I go down, you know, I haven't seen a guy who doesn't know what I'm doing or hasn't seen me in a while. Many of them will go by, you know, I'm surviving, you know, the old ball and chains giving me shit. But, know, other than that, you know, I'm doing all right. And I look at that and I think.
And just like you said about Johnny, I find to say so sad. There's this trending word. I'd love you to explore a little bit is what is the difference between suffering and resilience?
DR PHIL HOPLEY:That's a great question and the difference is very, very clear. So suffering is a state of mind where there is some degree of impact on us mentally or physically that is really unpleasant. It's taking us beyond our limit. Resilience is our bounce back ability. It's the degree to which we can deal with suffering. So the two are related in some ways. And the great thing about suffering is that handled the right way and managed effectively builds resilience.
So the psychologists and psychiatrists working in this world, not just in sport, but in the business world and just helping people with their mental health. We look at three key components when we talk about resilience. The first is the degree to which under pressure, we can maintain our focus where it's going to be most effective. The second is even when we're suffering in the way we are to keep things in perspective. And the third thing is when that period of suffering is coming to an end or is over to really work effectively on recovering. Don't be living in the past.
making sure that your thoughts and your behaviors are enabling you to get over the experience that you've had. And we find in this very good evidence, if you look at the world of cognitive behavioral therapy, ACT and other related forms of therapy in coaching modalities, that the impact of those approaches, helping people to think and behave differently, can significantly dial up their resilience and therefore significantly reduce the degree to which suffering impacts them long-term. The reality of the modern era is that
DR PHIL HOPLEY:Human beings are very well adapted to dealing with short-term pressure and stress. We have a fantastic biological system, which has really not changed in thousands of years, but it's designed to keep us safe. And unfortunately in the modern era, the sorts of things we need to be kept safe from thousands of years ago, wild animals, dangers, etc., don't exist. So we've switched those threats, those dangers for things that are just everyday experiences, work related things, events in
our relationships, worries about our finances. And so because of that, we are exposed to chronic or continuous stress in a way that we wouldn't have been thousands of years ago.
PETE HUNT:So thank you for listening to the Monumental podcast. For more on our podcast and network, please go to monumental.global.