How do I build resilience at work without burning out? A practical resilience plan based on supply, demands, values, and context

What are the early signs of burnout—and how can I prevent it with a strategic resilience plan (even in a high-pressure job)?

Optimize your mental health like you optimize performance. Learn Marie-Hélène Pelletier’s strategic resilience plan: spot early burnout signs, rebalance energy supply vs demands, reset thinking patterns, set realistic limits, and build sustainable habits at work and home.

Continue reading for the step-by-step resilience framework—so you can identify what’s draining you, choose 3–5 focus pillars, and start small actions today that protect performance and well-being under real-world pressure.

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You optimize your finances and productivity; why not do the same with your mental health? In this engaging guide, executive coach Marie-Hélène Pelletier offers a strategic approach to becoming more resilient by treating mental health as something you can actively manage and optimize — just like your career. She encourages you to assess your well-being through the lens of supply and demand, pinpointing areas where small changes can help prevent burnout. Pelletier’s blend of psychological insights and practical tools will help you adapt to and persevere through life’s challenges.

Take-Aways

• Resilience is not an inherent trait but a cultivated skill that requires strategic planning.
• Recognize early signs of declining resilience before burnout sets in.
• Cultivate a healthy mindset by regaining control over your thoughts and thinking patterns.
• Balance your optimism with realistic limits to avoid stress, exhaustion, and burnout.
• Clarify your goals and create a plan identifying what helps and hinders your progress.
• Start with small, manageable actions when designing your resilience plan, and communicate your new goals to others.
• Stay open to adjustments as you implement your resilience plan.
• When taking a medical leave, follow a structured routine focused on recovery.
• Build team resilience by cultivating a shared vision, encouraging collaboration, and building mental health awareness.

Summary

Resilience is not an inherent trait but a cultivated skill that requires strategic planning.

When author Marie-Hélène Pelletier stepped into a rushing river at the end of an exhausting, eight-day hike, she expected the experience to mirror the crossing she and her husband successfully executed at the outset of their adventure. Instead, the river’s fierce current swept her away. Thankfully, her husband was able to rescue her. Upon reflection, the author realized that her failure to acknowledge and adjust to changing external demands made the difference between her first, careful crossing and the less strategic approach that led to her near-fatal fall. Your mental resilience works similarly. Just as your muscles weaken under continuous use, your mental resilience erodes when life’s demands increase.

“Given enough demands, anyone can burn out.”

Many professionals believe they are resilient and, thus, can handle rising pressures without adjusting their approach. However, by refusing to acknowledge the added challenges’ effects and actively manage their mental well-being, they risk becoming burned out. Before they know it, they’re grappling with impaired decision-making and diminished performance.Resilience isn’t about endurance but cultivating smart, adaptive strategies to face changing demands.

To build and strengthen your resilience, follow a strategic approach guided by your unique personal and professional contexts. They are intertwined like the two strands of your DNA’s helix and held together by four key components that form the foundation of a sustainable resistance strategy:

1. Supply — The things that give you energy.
2. Demands — Your current and future responsibilities.
3. Values — The things you find most important.
4. Contexts — The internal and external factors that foster — and drain — your resilience.

Without deliberate planning, people often end up relying on a single coping mechanism during challenging times or assuming that external resources, such as employee assistance programs, will provide enough support. A strategic resilience plan tailored to your individual circumstances ensures your mental health remains a priority, not an afterthought. This approach goes beyond basic self-care; it requires that you restructure your daily actions to make them more sustainable — similar to how businesses adapt their strategies to market changes.

Recognize early signs of declining resilience before burnout sets in.

Many professionals have internalized the belief that they’re stress-immune and have trained themselves to ignore subtle changes in their mental well-being — such as increased fatigue, irritability, and declining focus — until burnout occurs. For instance, Jake, a finance professional, sought help to overcome his procrastination, only to learn that his underlying issue was much more severe: He was showing symptoms of burnout. The demands he faced — juggling full-time work, volunteer commitments, and family obligations — outpaced his energy supply. Rather than focusing on fixing his procrastination habit, Jake needed to prioritize balance. He could regain clarity and make better decisions by addressing his depleted energy.

“The day severe anxiety or burnout hits often feels sudden.”

While your company should offer mental health programs to support its employees, don’t rely solely on external resources. Take personal responsibility for your well-being and be proactive about recognizing early signs of declining mental health. Anxiety, for instance, often builds gradually, with minor, infrequent concerns snowballing into regular, intense worries — which could lead to panic attacks. Likewise, burnout becomes more problematic the longer you leave it unaddressed. Burnout is more than just being tired; it results from a combination of exhaustion, cynicism, and decreased performance. Early red flags include memory loss, increased sensitivities, reduced attention span, difficulty completing tasks, and excessive grief. Paying attention to your mental health strengthens your ability to handle daily challenges and prevent burnout before it takes hold.

Cultivate a healthy mindset by regaining control over your thoughts and thinking patterns.

Your thoughts significantly influence your resilience and overall well-being. Unhelpful thought patterns, particularly cognitive distortions like all-or-nothing thinking — “There’s nothing I can do” — can skew your perception of reality and contribute to unnecessary stress or self-doubt. Recognizing these cognitive biases and actively transforming them into evidence-based thinking enhances your emotional state and improves behaviors. For example, instead of assuming you’re going to fail at a task like, say, giving a public speech, treat your thoughts like a hypothesis and interrogate them. Ask yourself, for example, “Is it likely that I will forget my entire speech, or will I most likely remember most of it?” This strategy helps reframe your thinking, preventing negative thought spirals and fostering a mindset that encourages growth, confidence, and effective problem-solving.

“Manage your thinking as a way to bring forward an even better version of yourself.”

Good physical health helps support your cognitive well-being. Regular exercise, healthy nutrition, and sufficient sleep are essential — not optional — for maintaining cognitive function, emotional stability, and energy levels. Create a daily plan to incorporate these resilience-building habits, as life’s demands can easily interfere without a structured approach. Take a moment each day to reflect on small successes or lessons learned. This simple practice can reinforce positive behaviors and help establish a solid foundation for long-term wellness.

Balance your optimism with realistic limits to avoid stress, exhaustion, and burnout.

Many people overestimate their ability to manage demands and stressors. People who rely too heavily on an optimistic outlook and believe they can simply push through tough times often invite exhaustion and burnout. Don’t ditch optimism altogether. Instead, maintain a balanced approach by pairing it with a realistic assessment of your demands. Think like a project manager: When a new task comes in, avoid taking it on immediately. Step back, look at all your other demands, and decide what needs to shift to accommodate the new task. Regularly checking in on your sources of supply and demand helps you assess whether you are maintaining balance or setting yourself up for burnout.

“When it comes to your resilience, tipping too far toward optimism can become a liability.”

To avoid burnout, deliberately nurture your sources of supply, such as spending time with your kids or working on a project you enjoy. Be intentional about setting boundaries and carving out recovery time after energy-sapping activities. Remember, even positive experiences like exciting career advancements and social interactions still draw on your energy reserves. Not accounting for this fact will leave you wondering why you’re exhausted despite seemingly “having it all.”

Clarify your goals and create a plan identifying what helps and hinders your progress.

Generic advice on how to strengthen your resilience probably won’t help you much. What will make a difference is identifying your specific goals and creating a resilience plan that aligns with your unique values and circumstances. Define what matters most to you and translate those values into actionable steps. For instance, if creativity is a core value for you, prioritize regular time for activities like art or writing rather than forcing yourself into a gym routine that doesn’t excite you. Choose two or three values to prioritize immediately and temporarily set others aside.

“Resources are limited, just like in business. Which means you have to make choices.”

To decide what to focus on, consider your context, including external and internal factors. Draw a square and divide it into four sections. In each section, list your strengths, current obstacles, support systems, and external stressors. For example, you might have a natural drive for success (strengths) but struggle with saying no (obstacles), leading to constant overcommitment, or you might have a supportive family (support system) but work in a role that makes unplugging difficult. Mapping out these quadrants — what helps and what hinders you — provides information and clarity on where you need to make adjustments.

Start with small, manageable actions when designing your resilience plan, and communicate your new goals to others.

Designing a resilience plan starts with identifying three to five strategic pillars that align with your values and current situation. For example, Marcus, a start-up executive drowning in demands, identified boundaries, relationships and self-care as his main pillars. He then picked out specific actions to support them, such as declining certain demands, scheduling time with friends, and seeking professional support. Don’t aim for drastic changes. Instead, keep the actions small, manageable, and easy to start today, ensuring you can maintain them over time. Realistic actions include, for example, saying no more often, taking a five-minute break, or protecting time for your personal goals. Aim for consistency, not perfection.

“You may tell yourself that you can’t possibly need help to design something that should be so obvious. The reality is that it’s not.”

Once you’ve created your plan, communicating it can help reinforce new habits and gain support. People in your personal and professional life will notice the changes in your behavior. Discussing them with the people in your life can help you set and manage expectations. Sabrina, for example, worried her family would be shocked if she took even five minutes to herself, but when she finally did, nothing catastrophic happened. She just received a few curious questions. Sharing your resilience plan with trusted colleagues, mentors, or family members can help boost accountability and reduce resistance. Additionally, seeking professional guidance from a coach, psychologist, or mentor can provide valuable insights and structure.

Stay open to adjustments as you implement your resilience plan.

A sustainable resilience plan should be able to adapt to any obstacles and changes life throws at you. Say, for example, that you start strong, following through on your plan to do four weekly cardio workouts. Then, suddenly, your work demands spike, and you can only manage one or two training sessions a week. You might feel like you’ve lost momentum and failed. In reality, you adjusted. You didn’t abandon the plan; you created a modified version for high-demand periods, allowing yourself to sustain progress even when life got hectic. Instead of viewing disruptions as failures, recognize them as natural shifts that require recalibration. Your resilience plan is not set in stone. Your values and long-term goals should remain stable, but how you execute your plan must be flexible. Setting yourself up for success requires designing a strategy that can accommodate your current needs and the inevitable shifts that will come.

“Strategy is only as strong as its execution.”

Research shows that designing a “choice architecture” — structuring your environment to nudge you toward your desired behaviors — makes it easier to execute your plan. Tracking progress, even with something as simple as a daily checkmark or brief reflection, strengthens commitment and ensures actions don’t go unnoticed. Create a backup plan for times of significant and unexpected change, such as losing a partner or experiencing trauma. If you’re still struggling to implement your plan despite adjustments, a coach or mental health professional can help you refine your approach.

When taking a medical leave, follow a structured routine focused on recovery.

At times, demands can be so overwhelming you can’t deal with them anymore and burn out. Strategies such as restructuring your workday, adjusting responsibilities, setting boundaries, better managing your time, or taking a long weekend off might help you recover. However, if stepping away from work for a couple of days won’t suffice, you should take a medical leave. Knowing when to take a leave requires self-awareness and an honest evaluation of your ability to manage work.

“The…myth is that a leave of absence is like a holiday.”

View taking a leave of absence as part of your broader resilience strategy. For intentional recovery, follow a structured routine that includes professional support, therapy treatments, exercise, and enjoyable activities that energize you. The longer someone stays away from work without a structured plan, the harder it can be to return. When you return to work, use a gradual reintegration plan with clear boundaries to help prevent relapse. For instance, learn to avoid giving immediate yes-responses to new demands and reassess your workload before committing.

Build team resilience by cultivating a shared vision, encouraging collaboration, and building mental health awareness.

Simone, a senior partner at a private equity firm, and his team of top-tier professionals struggled when collaborating with other teams on a complex, high-stakes project. While they successfully closed the deal, the inefficiencies, frustrations, and lack of cohesion took a significant toll on everyone. The resilience of a team greatly depends on the psychological safety its leader fosters. Reinforce a shared vision, ensure open communication, and encourage collaboration, particularly when you form a new team or face high-pressure situations.

“All teams need psychological safety: conditions that allow for work to happen in a healthy way.”

As a leader, integrate resilience-building habits into your team’s daily operations. By supporting professional development, setting clear expectations, and promoting work-life balance, leaders can create environments where people thrive instead of burn out. Teams also benefit from understanding organizational mental health strategies, using available resources, and reinforcing a culture of adaptability. Even small, consistent actions — such as offering constructive feedback, encouraging emotional expression, and discussing stressors proactively — can make a significant difference.

About the Author

Author Marie-Hélène Pelletier is an award-winning executive coach and speaker.