Resilience Quotes: 34 Lines From People Who Lived Them

The best resilience quotes come from people who earned them. These 34 come from guests on The JRNY, each said in conversation with host Paul Cohalan about something they lived through: a fighter after three straight losses, a teenager who left home at 13, a cafe owner whose first restaurant failed, a man rebuilding after five years in jail. They are grouped by theme, and each one comes with the story behind it.

Every line is verbatim from the episode transcript, lightly trimmed where a sentence starts mid thought. None of them is a slogan, and none of them was written for a poster. If one lands, the episode it came from is linked so you can hear the whole story.

Resilience is the ability to adapt to hard times and recover from them. It does not mean you never struggle, and it is rarely done alone. For a fuller definition and the research behind it, see what adversity actually is and how to build resilience at work.

Resilience quotes about fear, and doing it anyway

Lewis Offenburg left school at 14 and runs an electrical business. He and his business partner spent two years building the first version of Trade Guru, an app for electricians, and then could not release it. They changed direction instead. On episode 22 he explained how he deals with a problem that looks too big:

You know, fear is basically like a mile wide and an inch deep. You know what I mean? So you just got to take that one, two steps and then once you start feeling, oh, it's not that bad and you just keep finding out that it's never that bad.

Laura Wilkins landed in Perth from England at 20 with a one way ticket and nowhere to stay. She still cares what people think, she says, but she set herself a rule early on. From episode 26:

I think I made a conscious decision when I was younger that I didn't want to ever not do something because of fear.

A moment later she put it more simply:

I've got to have a reason other than fear to not do it.

Years later, working Monday to Friday in an office after a breakup, she felt a pang every time she saw someone chasing music. She wrote about it, worked out that it was what she wanted, and joined an original band in her late twenties. Her reason for going:

If you don't do things that are important to you or that you want to do, you're the one that has to live with them later.

Nadia Nesevski started Cookie Loaded in her family's kitchen and, at 19, signed a seven year lease on her first shop in Mount Hawthorn without knowing much about leases. She says she was naive, but she never once thought it would fail. On episode 24:

If you don't back yourself, who's going to?

Quotes about getting knocked down and getting back up

Vee Venture describes a "million rejections" on her way to building a seven figure business. Paul compared it to knocking on doors and hearing no nine times before a yes. Vee, on episode 19:

You need that. You need it to be told no. You need to be knocked down, you need to be humbled and you have to keep going.

Professional boxer Jackson England lost his first three amateur fights. Asked on episode 16 whether he dwelt on them, he said holding on to that kind of thing stops you moving forward:

Until you let go of it. You need to be able to let go of it.

Simone Sichel has spent decades in hospitality and now runs the Cup & Co cafes in Perth. Before any of that, he opened a small restaurant on Formentera, near Ibiza. Asked on episode 18 how it went, he did not dress it up:

Didn't go well. Probably my mistakes. I was too focused on party and not focus on work.

Paul's reply was "I love how honest and accountable you are." Owning the failure is the first half of getting past it. Laura Wilkins has a question for the second half:

If you fail, you might have failed at the thing, but if you've still learned something, pivot, try again from it. Then is it a failure?

Filmmaker Michael Guerrini sent his first short film, Full Circle, to about 50 festivals. Six or seven accepted it. He went in ready for that, he told Paul on episode 25:

I knew I was expecting rejection. I didn't know who from, I didn't know what the frequency was.

I treated it more as like a rite of passage to do for my first one.

And sometimes getting back up is literal. Laura was soloing on a wet, wobbly bar table when she slipped and fell backwards. She sat in a corner feeling dizzy, bent the keys of her saxophone back into place with her house key, and hoped nobody had noticed:

So I got back up on the table and started playing again. And then the crowd cheered and I was like, oh, they did notice.

Quotes about hardship and starting again

Vee Venture is one of six children. Asked where she grew up, she started here:

So I moved out of home when I was 13. And I learned at a very young age, if you want anything in life, the only person that's going to get you there is yourself.

At 17, Lewis Offenburg fractured two vertebrae making a tackle in a preseason game for Claremont. His goal had been the AFL. He spent four and a half months in a brace and was told not to go back to football. What stayed with him was not the injury:

I guess it was a bit of an identity shift as well, because obviously your whole identity gets caught up in the things that you do. And that was probably a big lesson for me, is not to be so caught up in what you do.

Lewis also has ADHD and dyslexia, and was out of school at 14. He has no time for using either as an excuse:

It's like, yeah, it's a label but it's not an excuse.

Joel Pond was jailed at 20 and released after five years, in September 2020. He finished his boilermaker apprenticeship, went FIFO, saved his wages and started On Lock Apparel. He is clear that he is not encouraging anyone to go to jail. But when people asked whether quitting a steady job to start a brand scared him, he pointed out that he had already been through the worst case. On episode 27:

I got nothing but good memories from the worst place I've been, bro.

Michael Guerrini had spent a few years doing photo and video work and acting in local commercials when the COVID lockdowns hit in 2020. He was 22 or 23. He calls it a wake up call:

It just gave me that sort of motivation to like kick into gear and stop waiting around for some of that external factor and just to do it myself.

He had missed the ATAR for a university media course and was embarrassed to go to TAFE instead. He sees it differently now:

But looking back on it now with my experience, I'm actually like, thank God I went to TAFE as opposed to uni.

Quotes about patience and persistence

People see Cookie Loaded now. They did not see the two years Nadia Nesevski spent baking at home with a mixer that made 20 cookies a batch. Her message to anyone with a home business and only a handful of customers:

It's not an overnight success. People don't understand, but that's okay.

Paul once committed to a year of one episode a week, missed a week, and recorded two the week after to catch up. Nurse and property investor Hayli Hooper described the same habit on episode 23:

It's all having your bare minimum, your floor, and just being like, even on the worst days, I still wanna achieve this.

Joel Pond lasted 18 months FIFO before deciding he was not doing it forever. When he quit, people asked what he would do if the brand failed. His answer was that the worst case was going back to the job he already knew. His advice:

If you're out there wanting to start a business, hate your job or something, just give it a punt, bro.

He came out of jail with no business experience, says he is not tech savvy, and now runs most of the business himself with AI tools he taught himself. His explanation is short:

It's just effort and intention.

Quotes about mindset and self talk

Jackson England calls himself a recovering perfectionist. He has learned to be easier on himself after a loss:

Because no matter how much we want something to be perfect, we as a human being will never be.

Dan Bailey spent 11 years in the Army, retrained as an electrician and built Tradie HQ. Near the end of episode 21, Paul said his own lesson had been self compassion rather than being hard on himself. Dan described what he does after a bad call:

I just thought to myself, like, what advice would I give a good friend of mine if that was me sitting on the other side?

He also said the hard years only look hard from a distance. In the middle of them, things just get done:

It's only when you stop and reflect, you're like, oh, you know, that actually was pretty hard and I should sort of give myself a little bit of credit for doing it.

Hayli Hooper, dating at 40, gets told by friends that she is too picky. Her answer is about self worth more than dating:

I'm not too picky. Everything I want is everything I offer.

Quotes about perspective and gratitude

Leo Gonzalez was flown to the United States to design a sneaker line for Floyd Mayweather's team. He spent a year and seven months there on samples that never went into production, and saw his kids once in that time. When he came home to Perth, people struggled to believe it had not gone well, because online it had looked like success. On episode 20:

The Internet is funny because, you know, people see things and they get their mind twisted, like, thinking that everything is flower, you know, there's no mud nowhere in the world. There's no rain. But I'm like, no, man, there's thunderstorms.

Joel Pond remembers the gratitude of getting out of jail: a normal bed, driving a car. He also remembers how fast it faded. The skill, he says, is noticing when it does:

You already catch yourself being ungrateful after a week.

For Joel the brand is the vehicle, not the goal. He is passionate about where he is going, not about how he gets there:

If the vehicle has to change, the vehicle has to change.

Quotes about support and community

Leo Gonzalez was a barista at Starbucks in New York when he told his mother he wanted to design shoes. She let him teach himself Photoshop at her place until three or four in the morning:

I tell her I want to learn how to fly. She'll give me wings. My mom never doubted me.

Lewis Offenburg's report cards were average. His parents never minded:

For me, the only thing they cared about was the effort.

He took a second lesson from his dad's uncle:

So if you have the capacity to help, just do it and don't expect anything in return.

Nadia Nesevski's parents were both born in Macedonia. Her dad came to Australia at about 30 with nothing. She sees her own risk taking in that light:

Maybe that's why I'm not scared to take a risk.

At the end of her episode, Paul asked what she had got out of the day. Her answer is a good place to finish:

It's not about doing it by yourself. It's a community.

If you are going through a hard time and need someone to talk to: in Australia, Lifeline is 13 11 14 and Beyond Blue is 1300 22 4636, both 24 hours. In an emergency, call 000.

How to use a resilience quote

A quote will not fix a bad week. What it can do is give you words for something you already half know, at the moment you need them. A few ways people use them:

• Pick one, not ten. Write the line that fits your situation somewhere you will see it: a phone lock screen, the first page of a notebook, the top of a whiteboard.
• Know the story behind it. A line means more when you know what the person went through to say it. That is why each quote here links to its episode.
• Share it with someone it fits. A quote passed on to a mate or a team at the right moment can say what is hard to say yourself.
• Use it as a question. Laura's "Then is it a failure?" works best asked of yourself after something goes wrong.

Where to go from here

Each quote is a short extract from a long conversation. The full transcripts are on the episode pages, so you can read the context for yourself.

• Episode 26: From Backpacker to Perth Saxophonist, with Laura Wilkins, on fear, pivoting and a one way ticket.
• Episode 22: From a Fractured Spine to Trade Guru and NDIS Housing, with Lewis Offenburg, on identity after injury and taking the next step.
• Episode 19: Moving Out at 13 to a Seven Figure Business, with Vee Venture, on rejection and backing yourself.
• Episode 27: From Jail to a Seven Figure Clothing Brand, with Joel Pond, on gratitude and giving it a punt.
• Episode 24: From a Home Kitchen to Cookie Loaded, with Nadia Nesevski, on patience and community.
• Episode 16: Pro Boxing and the Pursuit of Greatness, with Jackson England, on losing early and letting go.
• Episode 21: 11 Years in the Army to Building Tradie HQ, with Dan Bailey, on self talk and giving yourself credit.
• What Is Adversity? Meaning, Examples and How People Get Through It, for the definition and the research.
• Mental Toughness: What It Is and How to Build It, on the 4Cs and where toughness goes wrong.
• How to Build Resilience at Work: Seven Habits From Real Jobs, on habits people tested on real jobs.