October 15, 2025 • 14 mins
In this Most Played cut from Episode 64, Mickelle sits down with TEDx speaker and Resilience Mentor, Nina Aziz Justin, to unpack the Resilience Equation: time × beginner’s mindset, raised to the power of incremental action. Through her journey as a founder and mother to a child with a rare neurological condition, Nina shows how to build “inner scaffolding” and a custom life that can flex with change.
They challenge hustle-as-suffering culture, re-centering micro-joys, adaptability, and mindset as the real engines of sustainable success, whether you’re parenting, launching a startup, or starting over in a new country.
In this episode:
The Resilience Equation (time × beginner’s mindset)^(incremental action)
Inner scaffolding: sustaining a life you want, even in uncertainty
Why micro-joys matter more than chasing “big win” highs
Resilience without glorifying suffering
Custom life design: pivoting, flexibility, and timing
Mindset as leverage for meaningful outcomes (including TEDx)
Listen to the full conversation in Episode 64. Connect with House of Peregrine and event details via our site. Find Nina’s book “The Home Within” in the show notes, plus both TEDx talks: Can Blockchain be used to decode the Future of Economics? (Mickelle Weber) and The Resilience Equation (Nina Aziz Justin). Reach us: houseofperegrine.com | Full episode link in show notes
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Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hey everyone, it's Michael Weber, host of the House of
Peregrine podcast. Today we are re sharing an
episode that we released before the summer with the brilliant,
beautiful and talented Nina. As he's Justin.
She has recently released this book which I will be leading the
discussion with in Amsterdam next week.
I would love for you to check itout.
It's called the home within. We are really releasing her
episode because it was beautiful.
(00:21):
She's a fellow TEDx speaker. She is a resilience mentor and
someone who I really think you will enjoy her insights.
Check out the original episode. We'll link it below.
And this week's clip is really helpful if you are in the midst
of anything that you need to have perspective on.
I hope you enjoy. And I meet someone who's also
been through that and it seems like it's just been not as much
(00:43):
of A Crucible for you. It makes me just so happy to
see. Well, you know, now telling the
story and we're on this podcast and, you know, we are all Ted
speakers. It sounds so polished and nice,
but the process, the little steps through this journey has
not always been smooth. Yeah, yes, no, it's not when
(01:05):
you're in it, there's no, you have no idea why you're in it,
but but then when you step back.So let's talk about your.
So I've never had a fellow Ted TEDx speaker on the podcast.
We've both, yeah, we've both hadthat experience, which is
another, I don't know about you,but it was a life changing,
affirming, destroying experiencethat then built back into
(01:26):
something else. And so tell me.
I want to hear about yours. We can include your talk in the
show notes, but tell me what it was.
What in my Ted talk, I spoke about resilience, which is my
brand, of course, I call myself the Resilience mentor.
And it's actually not a brand that I came up on my own or came
up with on my own. It was developed by a branding
(01:48):
agency based on my life story and so on.
And it was to differentiate myself from other business
coaches or mentors or whatever consultants.
So I'm really specialized and, and my thing is about resilience
building for sustainability. So my talk was actually called
the resilience equation. And so I spoke about resilience
and the parallel between rating a special needs child and being
(02:12):
a startup founder or having had the startup life, you know, And
there are several parallels and it's a mathematical equation
which I hope could be applied byanyone facing any kind of
struggle in their lives. Basically, it's time.
Give yourself time multiplied bybeginners mindset or in my
equation, I call it startup mindset.
(02:33):
You know, you are starting out, you don't know many things.
You have to start from a place of no assumption and willingness
to discover and allow yourself to go through that journey.
And then, you know, close bracket because it's a
mathematical equation to the power of incremental action.
So it's like taking little steps, incremental steps, doing
small things. You know, it's basically the
(02:54):
principle of habit learning. You learn, you rewire your brain
when you do it repetitively and in small steps.
So there are stories that are woven into this equation.
And that's really based on my startup life and my journey
raising my second daughter, who is a special needs child with a
(03:14):
red neurological condition. Because there no one could have
helped us because when she was diagnosed, she was one in 21 in
the world. But in the Netherlands, they
were just like, yeah, sorry. I mean, you can tell us how she
will develop. You can come back and feed your
information into this system. But no one could help us.
(03:35):
And when we were trying to placeher at school, they didn't even
know where to put her. Like which school do you want to
put her into? So that was a very difficult
journey and it remains that way.But I have to adopt A new
mindset. So what I have had to do was to
build the inner scaffolding, so to speak, to sustain a life that
(04:02):
I thought we should all still have.
That is like, I'm not giving up my job because as I mentioned, I
don't have this role model. And you know, and that's also
how the Resilience Mentor, the business that I have today, was
born. I only came about after Isabel's
diagnostic and not before that. Before that, I was running my
own startups. And you know, I think that's,
(04:23):
that's what I meant by allowing myself to evolve because, you
know, that's, that's the journey.
I mean, and I don't think this is you need a special needs
child to learn from that or you need anything catastrophic to
happen to you. I think it's, it's in a small
way and in a big way what we should allow ourselves to do
every day to build this inner scaffolding by giving us a time
(04:44):
learn with the view of like, I don't know, everything.
I can still learn new things andI can do small things and build
on that. And so that's the whole talk
basically. Anything well, and it, it, it
occurs to me as you're speaking and what I hear reflected is
that you don't have an area of your life where you're not
applying that because when you're going to a new country,
(05:05):
you have this equation works andyou've done this many times
starting in a new country when you have a startup, this is
essential. And when you have a, you have a
special needs child or even justbeing a parent in general, this
is a very sustainable way of going through being a parent
because you are doing everythingfor the first time.
(05:26):
But having a special, like your story is so specific and having
no Rd. you have no path. You are making the path.
And that is that's incredible that that's playing out over and
over in your story. There is no path.
You're making the path. I think for many people, this is
(05:47):
this situation. It's just that we believe, let's
say when I was raising my first daughter with before Isabel,
Kaye, Tamila, I thought, no, I could do that easily because
she's she's a neurotypical. But every child is unique,
right? And you are different.
Also. You have to combine your work,
your, your dreams, your relationship with your husband
(06:09):
or you move to another country. There's always a new mix in the
equation. Yeah.
And I think one thing that most people forget is to give
themselves the time, the luxury of time, because we are often
fed with this idea that if you were smart, you could figure it
all out. I mean, no figuring out.
(06:33):
Sometimes you know it's on the job.
Yeah. And it occurs to me that this is
actually what you're bringing this home, actually helping
businesses become businesses, having the capital they need,
being profitable is actually giving them more time.
That's what you're actually partof.
What that is, is giving them more time.
(06:55):
And that feeds into this equation that has is pivotal to
your success and that you're sharing with others, which I
think is just so beautiful and so beautifully woven.
And it comes from a place of deep knowing, which I think is.
Yeah, I think it makes you standout.
Yeah, well, thank you for sayingthat.
I appreciate that. But to be very honest, all I
(07:16):
know is that we can all have microjoys.
I don't go for big joys now. I mean, that would be a bonus,
you know. But because I know we can all
have microjoys, I focus on that.I mean, and I don't have this
idea of hassle free life anymore.
It's not possible for me. It's not available to me.
(07:37):
I hope for for other people, they can have that.
But I, I also believe I wouldn't, I wouldn't have grown.
And when I look at my life journey, I think when I have,
you know, switched somewhere, when, you know, it's called self
development at scale. It's like a think that was when
(07:58):
Isabel was diagnosed. And that was really hard.
And I had to embrace that. And it is yet again, another
journey. Yeah.
It got better with time for sure.
And would you describe these micro joys as part of living
with resilience and vitality? Like is there, is there a point
when vitality goes into the equation?
(08:20):
Because I think at least in my life and in startups and in
parenting, resilience is sometimes translated into
everything's hard all the time. And when you say you're
injecting these micro allowing or planning or expecting these
moments of micro joy, that leadsme to wonder about resilience
and making sure that we watch, we put that in the equation.
(08:41):
Yeah, yeah. Do you really believe that we
should expect things to be hard all the time in a startup?
That that what I've seen and canbe a trap is that this is if
we're not having a hard time, ifwe're not strapped for money, if
we're not going after, we're notgrowing.
(09:02):
And this is sometimes fueled by investors too.
If you're not pushing as hard asyou can, you're not going to
meet your potential, you're not going to be able to compete.
Vitality is not in the equation.It's not on the balance sheet,
right? And sometimes not even a large
enough paycheck for founders is on the balance sheet for some
investors. And of course, that's changing.
(09:23):
And so I think it has potentially been part of part of
startup culture that being resilient means that you're
striving all the time. You suffer.
I refuse to accept that because I believe in the power of my
mind. You know, I have proven cases
(09:43):
for the power of my mind now because, you know, I said I
wanted to do this and I had the chance every time, including,
you know, speaking at Ted. When I saw you on that stage,
like a few weeks after your talk, I had a coffee with you,
remember, I did like, it must bequite nice to speak at Ted.
I really want to to have that opportunity one day and the year
(10:03):
after that I spoke at 10. So for this, I think your
mindset is so important. Your mindset is part of that
even scaffolding for resilience that you need to build.
Expecting suffering is is dangerous.
I think you can expect the journey be as you envisage
(10:24):
because that's. Who never is.
Right, by expecting suffering, that's a big awful thought.
I would expect joy, OK, just to change the mindset like there is
some, there is a little or thereare plenty of micro moments of
(10:46):
joy. You expect first year, second
year to be trying, but you do not expect suffering.
Yeah. And I love, I love to hear you
say that so much because I've been saying it for 20 years.
This is like this is the fox stick mind that I cannot
encourage that because that is not a growth mindset.
(11:09):
Yes, but it's also suffering forfor high financial payoff is a
uniquely, potentially uniquely American belief.
Really. But how often does this happen?
How often does this big financial payoff happen to
people who expect suffering? Yes, I total and I think there's
something in the zeitgeist. We don't need to go like I can
(11:31):
go into the collective mindset of a lot of things, but we won't
go there today. But I do think that there is a
very important part of building something that is completely
custom, completely based on yourlife.
That includes moving countries, having the relationship you
want, having the business you want, having the life you want
(11:53):
is never going to be just smooth.
And so this resilience that you're Speaking of, isn't it an
incredibly potent, if not essential part of being
successful, whatever that looks like for you.
So having a custom life, I always call it having a custom
life instead of following the path that others have laid out
for you. And that's in business, in
partnership, in life and where you live.
(12:15):
I think it's, it's such a beautiful thing to know.
You're going to have to cultivate if it's not in there
innately. Custom life, I like that.
And I think custom life comes from the recognition of the fact
that life needs you to embrace change and to be flexible and to
(12:36):
adapt, right? So you can customize it.
But the essence of the word customized means you need to
adapt it to something. Adaptation can mean discomfort,
friction or whatever, but you it's, it's also time that will
ease everything, right? In my opinion.
But I do strongly suggest if someone expects to suffer so
(12:59):
much to get a high paycheck to get out of that lane.
No, no, just get out of that lane because the paycheck will
come because you have had to pivot several times and that is
customization. That's a debt, that's
flexibility and you will pivot so many times to get to that
paycheck. Not you will suffer, I don't
(13:22):
know, resilient sufferings. I mean, I, I mean, I don't know.
I mean, personally I will not recommend that.
No, I wouldn't either. But we do see, I mean, at least
in my circles, in the news, thatmost people who have done had a
lot of success have suffered in their personal life as a result.
Oh, you've been personal life, not just also.
Life. Yeah, also.
(13:42):
Personal life, yes, you need a very strong partner in life for
this kind of life. Yep, thanks for joining us this
week everyone. I would love for you to share
this episode with anyone who could use it.
If you would please take the time to give us a rating or a
review, we would really appreciate it And follow along
at houseofperegrine.com for everything we're up to this
(14:03):
month. Thank you so much for joining.
We'll see you next time. OK, that's it for today.
I hope you've enjoyed our show. For the latest insights on
living internationally, join us at houseofperegrine.com to find
out how you can connect with ourcommunity.
Hey everyone, it's Michael Weber, host of the House of
Peregrine podcast. Today we are re sharing an
episode that we released before the summer with the brilliant,
beautiful and talented Nina. As he's Justin.
She has recently released this book which I will be leading the
discussion with in Amsterdam next week.
I would love for you to check itout.
It's called the home within. We are really releasing her
episode because it was beautiful.
(00:21):
She's a fellow TEDx speaker. She is a resilience mentor and
someone who I really think you will enjoy her insights.
Check out the original episode. We'll link it below.
And this week's clip is really helpful if you are in the midst
of anything that you need to have perspective on.
I hope you enjoy. And I meet someone who's also
been through that and it seems like it's just been not as much
(00:43):
of A Crucible for you. It makes me just so happy to
see. Well, you know, now telling the
story and we're on this podcast and, you know, we are all Ted
speakers. It sounds so polished and nice,
but the process, the little steps through this journey has
not always been smooth. Yeah, yes, no, it's not when
(01:05):
you're in it, there's no, you have no idea why you're in it,
but but then when you step back.So let's talk about your.
So I've never had a fellow Ted TEDx speaker on the podcast.
We've both, yeah, we've both hadthat experience, which is
another, I don't know about you,but it was a life changing,
affirming, destroying experiencethat then built back into
(01:26):
something else. And so tell me.
I want to hear about yours. We can include your talk in the
show notes, but tell me what it was.
What in my Ted talk, I spoke about resilience, which is my
brand, of course, I call myself the Resilience mentor.
And it's actually not a brand that I came up on my own or came
up with on my own. It was developed by a branding
(01:48):
agency based on my life story and so on.
And it was to differentiate myself from other business
coaches or mentors or whatever consultants.
So I'm really specialized and, and my thing is about resilience
building for sustainability. So my talk was actually called
the resilience equation. And so I spoke about resilience
and the parallel between rating a special needs child and being
(02:12):
a startup founder or having had the startup life, you know, And
there are several parallels and it's a mathematical equation
which I hope could be applied byanyone facing any kind of
struggle in their lives. Basically, it's time.
Give yourself time multiplied bybeginners mindset or in my
equation, I call it startup mindset.
(02:33):
You know, you are starting out, you don't know many things.
You have to start from a place of no assumption and willingness
to discover and allow yourself to go through that journey.
And then, you know, close bracket because it's a
mathematical equation to the power of incremental action.
So it's like taking little steps, incremental steps, doing
small things. You know, it's basically the
(02:54):
principle of habit learning. You learn, you rewire your brain
when you do it repetitively and in small steps.
So there are stories that are woven into this equation.
And that's really based on my startup life and my journey
raising my second daughter, who is a special needs child with a
(03:14):
red neurological condition. Because there no one could have
helped us because when she was diagnosed, she was one in 21 in
the world. But in the Netherlands, they
were just like, yeah, sorry. I mean, you can tell us how she
will develop. You can come back and feed your
information into this system. But no one could help us.
(03:35):
And when we were trying to placeher at school, they didn't even
know where to put her. Like which school do you want to
put her into? So that was a very difficult
journey and it remains that way.But I have to adopt A new
mindset. So what I have had to do was to
build the inner scaffolding, so to speak, to sustain a life that
(04:02):
I thought we should all still have.
That is like, I'm not giving up my job because as I mentioned, I
don't have this role model. And you know, and that's also
how the Resilience Mentor, the business that I have today, was
born. I only came about after Isabel's
diagnostic and not before that. Before that, I was running my
own startups. And you know, I think that's,
(04:23):
that's what I meant by allowing myself to evolve because, you
know, that's, that's the journey.
I mean, and I don't think this is you need a special needs
child to learn from that or you need anything catastrophic to
happen to you. I think it's, it's in a small
way and in a big way what we should allow ourselves to do
every day to build this inner scaffolding by giving us a time
(04:44):
learn with the view of like, I don't know, everything.
I can still learn new things andI can do small things and build
on that. And so that's the whole talk
basically. Anything well, and it, it, it
occurs to me as you're speaking and what I hear reflected is
that you don't have an area of your life where you're not
applying that because when you're going to a new country,
(05:05):
you have this equation works andyou've done this many times
starting in a new country when you have a startup, this is
essential. And when you have a, you have a
special needs child or even justbeing a parent in general, this
is a very sustainable way of going through being a parent
because you are doing everythingfor the first time.
(05:26):
But having a special, like your story is so specific and having
no Rd. you have no path. You are making the path.
And that is that's incredible that that's playing out over and
over in your story. There is no path.
You're making the path. I think for many people, this is
(05:47):
this situation. It's just that we believe, let's
say when I was raising my first daughter with before Isabel,
Kaye, Tamila, I thought, no, I could do that easily because
she's she's a neurotypical. But every child is unique,
right? And you are different.
Also. You have to combine your work,
your, your dreams, your relationship with your husband
(06:09):
or you move to another country. There's always a new mix in the
equation. Yeah.
And I think one thing that most people forget is to give
themselves the time, the luxury of time, because we are often
fed with this idea that if you were smart, you could figure it
all out. I mean, no figuring out.
(06:33):
Sometimes you know it's on the job.
Yeah. And it occurs to me that this is
actually what you're bringing this home, actually helping
businesses become businesses, having the capital they need,
being profitable is actually giving them more time.
That's what you're actually partof.
What that is, is giving them more time.
(06:55):
And that feeds into this equation that has is pivotal to
your success and that you're sharing with others, which I
think is just so beautiful and so beautifully woven.
And it comes from a place of deep knowing, which I think is.
Yeah, I think it makes you standout.
Yeah, well, thank you for sayingthat.
I appreciate that. But to be very honest, all I
(07:16):
know is that we can all have microjoys.
I don't go for big joys now. I mean, that would be a bonus,
you know. But because I know we can all
have microjoys, I focus on that.I mean, and I don't have this
idea of hassle free life anymore.
It's not possible for me. It's not available to me.
(07:37):
I hope for for other people, they can have that.
But I, I also believe I wouldn't, I wouldn't have grown.
And when I look at my life journey, I think when I have,
you know, switched somewhere, when, you know, it's called self
development at scale. It's like a think that was when
(07:58):
Isabel was diagnosed. And that was really hard.
And I had to embrace that. And it is yet again, another
journey. Yeah.
It got better with time for sure.
And would you describe these micro joys as part of living
with resilience and vitality? Like is there, is there a point
when vitality goes into the equation?
(08:20):
Because I think at least in my life and in startups and in
parenting, resilience is sometimes translated into
everything's hard all the time. And when you say you're
injecting these micro allowing or planning or expecting these
moments of micro joy, that leadsme to wonder about resilience
and making sure that we watch, we put that in the equation.
(08:41):
Yeah, yeah. Do you really believe that we
should expect things to be hard all the time in a startup?
That that what I've seen and canbe a trap is that this is if
we're not having a hard time, ifwe're not strapped for money, if
we're not going after, we're notgrowing.
(09:02):
And this is sometimes fueled by investors too.
If you're not pushing as hard asyou can, you're not going to
meet your potential, you're not going to be able to compete.
Vitality is not in the equation.It's not on the balance sheet,
right? And sometimes not even a large
enough paycheck for founders is on the balance sheet for some
investors. And of course, that's changing.
(09:23):
And so I think it has potentially been part of part of
startup culture that being resilient means that you're
striving all the time. You suffer.
I refuse to accept that because I believe in the power of my
mind. You know, I have proven cases
(09:43):
for the power of my mind now because, you know, I said I
wanted to do this and I had the chance every time, including,
you know, speaking at Ted. When I saw you on that stage,
like a few weeks after your talk, I had a coffee with you,
remember, I did like, it must bequite nice to speak at Ted.
I really want to to have that opportunity one day and the year
(10:03):
after that I spoke at 10. So for this, I think your
mindset is so important. Your mindset is part of that
even scaffolding for resilience that you need to build.
Expecting suffering is is dangerous.
I think you can expect the journey be as you envisage
(10:24):
because that's. Who never is.
Right, by expecting suffering, that's a big awful thought.
I would expect joy, OK, just to change the mindset like there is
some, there is a little or thereare plenty of micro moments of
(10:46):
joy. You expect first year, second
year to be trying, but you do not expect suffering.
Yeah. And I love, I love to hear you
say that so much because I've been saying it for 20 years.
This is like this is the fox stick mind that I cannot
encourage that because that is not a growth mindset.
(11:09):
Yes, but it's also suffering forfor high financial payoff is a
uniquely, potentially uniquely American belief.
Really. But how often does this happen?
How often does this big financial payoff happen to
people who expect suffering? Yes, I total and I think there's
something in the zeitgeist. We don't need to go like I can
(11:31):
go into the collective mindset of a lot of things, but we won't
go there today. But I do think that there is a
very important part of building something that is completely
custom, completely based on yourlife.
That includes moving countries, having the relationship you
want, having the business you want, having the life you want
(11:53):
is never going to be just smooth.
And so this resilience that you're Speaking of, isn't it an
incredibly potent, if not essential part of being
successful, whatever that looks like for you.
So having a custom life, I always call it having a custom
life instead of following the path that others have laid out
for you. And that's in business, in
partnership, in life and where you live.
(12:15):
I think it's, it's such a beautiful thing to know.
You're going to have to cultivate if it's not in there
innately. Custom life, I like that.
And I think custom life comes from the recognition of the fact
that life needs you to embrace change and to be flexible and to
(12:36):
adapt, right? So you can customize it.
But the essence of the word customized means you need to
adapt it to something. Adaptation can mean discomfort,
friction or whatever, but you it's, it's also time that will
ease everything, right? In my opinion.
But I do strongly suggest if someone expects to suffer so
(12:59):
much to get a high paycheck to get out of that lane.
No, no, just get out of that lane because the paycheck will
come because you have had to pivot several times and that is
customization. That's a debt, that's
flexibility and you will pivot so many times to get to that
paycheck. Not you will suffer, I don't
(13:22):
know, resilient sufferings. I mean, I, I mean, I don't know.
I mean, personally I will not recommend that.
No, I wouldn't either. But we do see, I mean, at least
in my circles, in the news, thatmost people who have done had a
lot of success have suffered in their personal life as a result.
Oh, you've been personal life, not just also.
Life. Yeah, also.
(13:42):
Personal life, yes, you need a very strong partner in life for
this kind of life. Yep, thanks for joining us this
week everyone. I would love for you to share
this episode with anyone who could use it.
If you would please take the time to give us a rating or a
review, we would really appreciate it And follow along
at houseofperegrine.com for everything we're up to this
(14:03):
month. Thank you so much for joining.
We'll see you next time. OK, that's it for today.
I hope you've enjoyed our show. For the latest insights on
living internationally, join us at houseofperegrine.com to find
out how you can connect with ourcommunity.
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