Training for the Future We've Been Working Toward
How somatic leadership, nervous system resilience, and inner capacity help us meet the resistance between where we are and where we know we need to go.
There’s a moment in every workout when your muscles start to burn, your breath shortens, and everything in you wants to stop. But if you ask any trainer, that’s not when you quit. That’s when growth begins.
Underneath the discomfort, your body is adapting. It’s calling on deeper reserves, strengthening your nervous system, increasing your oxygen efficiency. That burn is not failure, it’s transformation.
The same is true in leadership. And if you work in sustainability, you might be feeling the burn right now.
Everyone talks about wanting change. A better world. A more aligned business. A future where justice, regeneration, and integrity guide our decisions. But what few talk about is what it takes to truly show up for that future. Not just in strategy decks or vision statements, but in rooms full of resistance. In board meetings with budget cuts. In moments when your truth tightens your throat, and the easiest option would be to stay small, stay silent, stay safe.
But staying safe has never changed the world.
The future we’re working toward doesn’t just require new systems. It requires new humans. People who are embodied enough to feel discomfort without shutting down. Who can name what’s not working without flinching. Who can move through resistance with honesty and grace, not because it’s easy, but because alignment matters more than approval.
This moment of pushback, tension, and tiredness? That’s the burn. That’s the training. Not for something abstract or idealistic, but for the kind of future our nervous systems, our leadership, and our planet desperately need us to be ready for.
Pressure Isn’t the Problem. Disconnection Is.
There are two ways the nervous system can respond to pressure: distress or eustress. One fragments us. The other expands us.
Distress hijacks our brain’s ability to think creatively or strategically. It sends us into freeze, fawn, fight or flight. It makes us reactive, rigid, and exhausted. Eustress, on the other hand, builds our capacity. It helps us hold complexity, think long-term, and lead from our centre.
Which state we enter has less to do with external pressure, and everything to do with how we meet it.
This is where embodiment becomes a leadership practice. When we stay connected to our body under load, we don’t just survive the tension, we grow through it. It’s how we metabolise the discomfort, rather than store it as tension or let it calcify as resignation.
This is what the field of neuroplasticity and polyvagal theory is showing us. We can build our internal regulation. Each time we choose to stay present through pressure, we strengthen the vagus nerve (the literal nerve of resilience) creating the physiological foundation for leadership under pressure.
Resistance as Training, Not a Threat
There’s a concept in biology called hormesis. It’s when exposure to stress makes a system more resilient. Exercise is hormesis. Cold plunges. Intermittent fasting. A system, challenged at the right level, becomes stronger.
What if the backlash we’re facing is actually a form of hormetic stress? What if the external resistance is what helps us identify the weaknesses in our strategies, clarify our language, deepen our conviction?
Because let’s be honest. How much of what we've been doing in sustainability over the last decade has been performative? How much was driven by trend, not truth or real impact? When it was easy to be ‘green’, how much of it was actually transformative?
The pushback is inconvenient. But it’s also an invitation.
The Physiology of Resilience
We often talk about burnout, but rarely about how to train for the work. And this is training. Embodied leaders regulate themselves first. They use somatic practices not just to calm down, but to stay present and sharp. They reframe pushback as information: what is this resistance revealing? What isn’t landing? What do I need to listen to more deeply?
They don’t lead from fear or people-pleasing. And they don’t pretend to have all the answers. But they stay in the room, even when it’s hard. This is what antifragility looks like. It’s not just personal resilience, it’s about becoming a vessel that can hold the future that wants to emerge.
This Is Your Making
If you feel like your work is getting harder, that your vision feels more distant than ever, it doesn’t mean you’re on the wrong path. It means you're in the right place, and the resistance is your teacher now.
This isn’t about toxic positivity. It’s about developing the capacity to keep showing up with clarity, compassion, and courage. It’s about staying in your body so you don’t abandon your post. It’s about becoming the kind of leader who can weather resistance and still remain in service to a future that’s calling you forward.
The burn you feel is not a signal to stop. It’s a signal you’re building something real. So stay in it. Train for it. Trust the fire is forging something worthy.
Because the future won’t be built by those who avoid difficulty. It will be built by those who know how to meet it with grace, grit, and grounded vision.