180. Creating Emotional Resilience as a Coach

Emotional resilience is often misunderstood, mischaracterized, and sadly, overlooked far too often. Understanding emotional resilience (and how to cultivate it in ourselves and others) is a vital skill for coaches. Not only does this help us guide our clients through overcoming challenges, but our ability to be resilient plays a huge role in running our own businesses, managing the inevitable ups and downs that come, and even our very abilities to coach our clients well. 

In this episode, my conversation with Melanie Fay highlights just how important resilience is, including the implications for you personally and professionally.  It’s so important in fact, that it is a core element of the Master Coach Training program. During the course of the year-long program, Master Coaches-in-training develop skills, capacity, and the habits of practices that cultivate emotional resilience long term. It’s one of my absolute favorite outcomes of the program. 

In truth, resilience allows us to show up consistently and steadily for our clients. What most people don’t talk about is how much the nervous system impacts our resilience (and that of our clients too). Knowing this, and truly understanding it, means solutions for you as a coach. There are many tools to help bring the nervous system into balance. 

And while resilience is often associated with “toughness” or “bouncing back,” it goes far beyond that. Resilience is deeply tied to self-connection. When we can connect to ourselves enough to be with the circumstances in our lives, developing resilience becomes easier for us and for our clients.

Defining resilience and its role in coaching

Cultivating emotional resilience–in ourselves and in our clients–is so impactful. In order to fully understand its importance, first let’s clarify what resilience truly means. In the podcast episode, we talk about two key interpretations:

1. The capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.
2. The ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape; elasticity.

These are both valid perspectives on resilience that speak to two very different places within ourselves. There is no single path to resilience—the most important aspect is helping clients find their own way to cultivate and expand upon it.

The first definition, “The capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties,” heavily relates to the nervous system. When we work with our nervous system–our embodied response to outside stimuli–we can stay more level and present. That is a crucial form of resilience. 

Create space for your clients to be who they are

The second definition of resilience, “the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape,” highlights another essential aspect of coaching. When we create space for our clients to process pain, emotions, and challenges, we give them the ability to get back into alignment with their true selves.

Resilience is not about clinging to difficult emotions or denying them; it is about allowing thoughts and feelings to surface without identifying too closely with them. The more distance they have from the circumstances in their lives, the better able we–as highly skilled coaches–are able to create a space of observation and acceptance where the client can see what they need. This allows them to experience the greater clarity and wisdom that will help them bounce back.

Self-connection is the foundation of resilience

Self-connection is a core principle of Master Coach Training. By the