Rowing unassisted across 3,000 miles of hostile open water felt the more sensible option to continuing my day job.

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If that logic makes sense to you right now, you're running on the wrong kind of resilience.

I burnt out badly enough to nearly not come back. I rowed the Atlantic to find out why, and what actually rebuilds a person afterwards.

 

Mine was not 'stressed at work,' it was signed off, irrational, can't-think-straight, head-in-hands, can't-go-on burnt out. I was global head of a multi-million dollar commodities business. Burnout laughs in the face of titles though, it doesn't care about your salary, or how capable or senior you are.

 

People assume the Atlantic was the story. It wasn't. The Atlantic stripped away the distractions.

 

The rebuilding happened when I got home.

The crossing raised £160,000 for teenage mental health. Useful of course and I'm proud of that.

 

More valuable than the money we raised though was what I brought home: a way of understanding why capable people break, and what actually helps them rebuild.

I now help support individuals and organisations caught in toxic resilience, using what actually happened to me, not a textbook.

 

I've shared this work with organisations including the Royal Marines, the Royal Navy, Thames Valley Police, Google, The Times, the NHS, schools and mental health charities, alongside businesses ranging from SMEs to global organisations.

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You are not broken. You don't need another resilience strategy. You probably need to stop surviving the wrong way.