This isn't a framework I read about. It's one I've had to live.
I spent my twenties in jobs where there was no manual to fall back on. I ran a Commando engineer section on deployment. I worked response policing in some of the toughest parts of London. Then I built three businesses from scratch, with no team behind me and nobody to hand the hard bits to.
None of it prepared me for what came at home. My brother George died of cancer at 21. I ran the South Downs 100-mile ultra in his memory and raised over £4,000 for The George Hatfield Theatrical Arts Foundation, the charity we set up in his name. I'm still a trustee there now. Then, in November 2024, my three-year-old son died. SUDC, they call it. Sudden Unexplained Death in Childhood. There's no tidy lesson in that, and I'm not going to pretend there is.
That's where both practices come from. Not a course I did on a weekend. A way of staying decisive and functional when there's no playbook, tested harder than most people will ever have to test it.
“Resilience isn't something you either have or don't. It's something you train, the same way you'd train anything else that has to take real weight.”