Building Your Resilience Plan – with Dr. Marie-Hélène Pelletier

Episode 220

Released 2025-10-30

Building Your Resilience Plan with Dr. Marie-Hélène Pelletier

Guest: Dr. Marie-Hélène Pelletier, Workplace Mental Health Expert, Psychologist, and Speaker

If you're a busy, I suspect you've already spotted yourself in this scenario: demands are increasing, deadlines are looming, and your natural response is to lean in harder, work longer hours, and push through with the same tools that have got you here.

In this conversation, I sit down with Dr. Marie-Hélène Pelletier to unpack why this instinct—whilst understandable—is precisely what leads high-performing professionals straight to burnout. And more importantly, we explore what you might do instead.

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The Dangerous Pattern Every Executive Should Recognise

Here's an uncomfortable truth that Marie-Hélène lays out with refreshing clarity: successful professionals are fabulous at what they do, and that's precisely why they're at risk. You've built your career on handling demanding hours, exceeding expectations, and pushing through challenges. But here's what's happening behind the scenes that you might not realise.

When demands increase, we systematically make two critical errors in judgement. First, we underestimate the size and depth of those demands. That project you think will take half an hour? Three hours later, you're still at it. We minimise the scope, underestimate the likelihood that other demands will pile on simultaneously, and fundamentally misjudge what's ahead.

Second, and this is where it gets really interesting, we overestimate our supply. We overestimate how much energy we have, how much time is available, and how much capacity we're working with. Put these two biases together—underestimating demand while overestimating supply—and of course you're going to put your head down and just power through. In your mind, you can handle it. But the math doesn't work out that way in reality.

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