Stand proud. Inhale. Drop your shoulders, fold at the waist, bend your knees, and reach for the kettlebell. Roll your shoulders back, engage your back, hike the bell behind you, and stand tall. Exhale as it reaches shoulder height.

Then repeat.

There are days when that simple rhythm is enough to create a little space between us and everything happening inside our heads.

People often ask me how to become more resilient. It’s a great question, but I’m not sure resilience is something we can learn from a checklist. There aren’t three steps we can follow that suddenly make us resilient.

Resilience is usually built while we’re moving through something we never wanted to experience in the first place.

Like strength, it develops through repetition. We go through something difficult. We learn from it. We get knocked down. We stand back up. Eventually, life hands us another rep.

Over time, those experiences become evidence that we’re capable of handling more than we once believed.

When I look back over my own life, I can see the moments that built that muscle in me. I remember standing in front of a mirror in a gym, unable to lift a weight and convinced that something was wrong with me. At the time, I thought I was broken.

Looking back now, I see it differently. I was brave. I just didn’t know it yet. I was standing at the beginning of becoming someone different.

Only a few months later, I stood in front of my children and told them that our family as we knew it was going to change. It was one of the hardest conversations of my life. I had no way of knowing exactly what would come next. I only knew something had to change, and I had to take the next step.

Years later, I walked away from a business and community I had spent seven years building and boarded a plane to start over in a new city.

None of those experiences felt like opportunities while I was living them. They simply felt hard. Each one required me to move forward without knowing exactly how things would turn out.

Looking back, I can see that resilience wasn’t something I suddenly discovered I had. I was building it the entire time.

That’s the frustrating thing about resilience. We usually don’t know we’re building it while it’s happening. We’re simply trying to get through whatever is in front of us.

Over the years, I developed something I call my hard scale. When something difficult happens, I ask myself, “Is this as hard as that?”

It isn’t about dismissing what we’re currently going through. Hard is still hard. The question simply helps create perspective. Once we’ve survived something we genuinely thought might break us, we have a reference point. We know what it feels like to be overwhelmed. We know what uncertainty feels like. We know what it’s like to have absolutely no idea how something is going to work out.

But we also know we made it through.

I can’t tell you exactly how to build resilience. Life has a way of taking care of that part for us. What I can share are the things that have helped me navigate difficult seasons and continue moving through them.

1. Big-picture it

When we’re overwhelmed, our thinking can become incredibly narrow. One problem can suddenly feel like the whole world.

I call the opposite big-picturing it.

Instead of staying locked onto the one thing directly in front of us, we deliberately widen the lens. We move from a closed way of thinking toward a more open one and look at the full scope of what is happening.

That’s when we can start asking better questions.

Have I been through something difficult before? Did I survive it? What did I learn? Is this as hard as something I’ve already moved through? What resources do I have now that I didn’t have then? What else is true in my life besides the thing I’m worried about?

The circumstances may not have changed at all, but our perspective has.

That space matters.

It’s also where gratitude can become useful. Gratitude isn’t pretending something difficult isn’t difficult. It doesn’t erase disappointment, fear, grief or uncertainty. It simply reminds us that those things aren’t necessarily the entire picture.

Even in a terrible season, something else can still be true. Someone loves us. We have a place to walk. We had a conversation that made us laugh. We woke up this morning. There is something in front of us that is still good.

Gratitude broadens the picture.

And sometimes seeing the bigger picture is enough to remind us that one difficult moment is not our entire life.

2. Move your body

When our minds get loud, movement can give all of that energy somewhere to go.

For me, sometimes it’s a walk. Sometimes it’s picking up a kettlebell and swinging.

Movement changes energy.

It may not solve the problem waiting for us, but it can change the state we’re trying to solve that problem from. Instead of sitting inside the same thoughts, we put our attention somewhere physical.

Feel your feet.

Feel your hands around the kettlebell.

Pay attention to your breath.

Find the rhythm.

Sometimes I choose a kettlebell that simply feels good that day. Not the heaviest bell. Not the weight I think I should be lifting. Just a bell I can ground into.

Then I swing.

There doesn’t always have to be a timer or a rep goal. Sometimes the repetition itself is the purpose.

When our thoughts are everywhere, movement gives our attention somewhere specific to land. It reminds us that energy can change, and even when we cannot immediately change what is happening around us, we can change how we meet it.

Sometimes we simply need to move the energy before we can figure out what to do with it.

3. Bring it back to one step

This might sound contradictory after telling you to big-picture everything, but this is the part that matters most.

First, we widen the lens so we can see the situation for what it really is.

Then we bring it all the way back down.

Because looking at the entire road ahead can become just as overwhelming as staring at the problem.

Eventually, the question needs to become much smaller:

What is the next step?

Not: How do I fix the next six months?

Not: How do I solve everything that is wrong?

Not: How do I make sure this works out exactly the way I want it to?

Just: What can I do from where I am, right now?

Maybe the next step is getting out of bed. Maybe it’s eating something. Taking the walk. Making the phone call. Sending the email. Asking someone for help. Picking up the kettlebell. Going to sleep and trying again tomorrow.

That’s where I think resilience is actually built.

We often imagine resilience as one enormous act of courage. Most of the time, it’s much quieter than that. It’s hundreds of small decisions made while we still don’t know exactly how the story is going to end.

We don’t need to know how many reps it will take to get through a difficult season.

We just need to do the next one.

Big-picture it so you can find perspective. Move your body so you can move some of the energy. Then bring everything back to the one step you can take from where you are.

We may not be able to choose every hard thing that comes into our lives. But each time we move through one, we build evidence that we can do hard things.

Practice gratitude. Move your body. Build your mindset.

Move the energy. Build the muscle.

Rep it.