Your Resilience Blueprint: A Guided Coaching Exercise
Resilience is learning how to bounce back.
Many globally mobile professionals and families move through challenge after challenge with quiet strength. Yet when asked, “How do you do it?” the answer often comes as a shrug. We know how to cope, adapt, and get through. But we rarely pause to name how we do it. Let alone recognize these skills as tools we can rely on and refine.
In our recent webinar “Global Mobility for Beginners - Packing More Than Your Bags,” one insight sparked significant conversation: living a globally mobile life is like a “resilience boot camp.” And yet, many of us use this resilience intuitively rather than intentionally.
So the question emerged: How can we make our resilience skills more visible and tangible - so we can deploy them with structure and confidence, not just survival instinct?
Below is a guided coaching exercise I use with clients to help them uncover their personal resilience patterns. By documenting how you’ve navigated past challenges, you begin to build a blueprint for facing future transitions with greater clarity and intention.
Mapping Your Resilience Journey
Take 15 - 20 minutes with this exercise, making notes as you go. You may want to journal your reflections or record voice notes if you're on the move.
1. Identify a Resilience Moment
Think of a specific time when you bounced back from a difficult or uncomfortable situation. It could be personal, professional, or tied to a transition. Be as specific as possible about what happened. What was the challenge? What made it hard?
2. Map the Context
To understand your resilience, we need to see the full picture. Ask yourself:
Who else was involved in this situation?
What felt was at stake for you?
What resources - internal (e.g., mindset, past experience) or external (e.g., people, tools) - did you have access to?
3. Track Your Emotional Journey
What emotions were present at the beginning?
How did these emotions shift over time?
Were there any unexpected emotional responses?
This step helps you connect to the human side of resilience - not just what you did, but how you felt.
4. Document Your Response Pattern
Now take a closer look at how you navigated the challenge:
What was your immediate reaction?
What did you do in the first few days?
What strategies emerged after one or two weeks?
How had your approach evolved after a month?
You’re not just recalling actions - you’re tracing a resilience process.
5. Identify the Turning Point
When did things start to shift?
What signs showed you were moving through the difficulty?
Was there a clear “finish line,” or was it more of a milestone in an ongoing journey?
6. Name Your Skills
This is the most important step. What specific capabilities helped you navigate this challenge? Don't be shy - list every skill, strength, and resource you deployed. For example:
Was it your ability to seek support?
Your capacity to reframe the situation?
Your skill in breaking down overwhelming tasks into smaller digestible steps?
Your patience with the process?
Your willingness to adapt plans?
Your self-compassion during difficult moments?
7. Spot the Patterns
Review your notes and ask:
What surprises me about how I respond to challenges?
Which strategies or qualities appear again and again?
How could I intentionally activate these next time I’m in a transition?
What does this tell me about my unique “resilience signature”?
Your Resilience Toolkit
By completing this exercise with different examples from your life, you’ll begin to uncover patterns in how you naturally navigate difficult situations. These patterns form your resilience blueprint - a set of practices, mindsets, and strengths you can consciously lean on during times of change.
The beauty of making resilience visible is that it transforms what often feels like lucky survival or instinct into intentional strategy. You’re no longer just weathering the storm - you’re steering through it, by consciously activating proven personal strengths that have carried you through challenges before.
Just like a bouncy castle, we absorb the impact of life’s transitions. We stumble, fall, and bounce back up - lighter, stronger, and ready for the next leap.
This exercise is adapted from my coaching practice. If you’d like to explore your resilience patterns more deeply through one-on-one coaching, visit my website or reach out via Mail - I’d love to support you.
Warmly, Viviane
PS: This thought just popped into my head and I really wanted to share it with you. How can we help each other recognize resilience skills that might be invisible to us but obvious to others? What role can community play in making our natural strengths more visible?
Viviane Imhof-Braun is an Integral® Career Transition & Leadership Coach based in Dubai. She brings over 15 years of experience in senior marketing roles at global corporations before retraining as a professional coach in South Africa. Today, she supports future leaders and globally mobile professionals in turning transitions into catalysts for growth. A mother of three Third Culture Kids and a global citizen herself, Viviane combines professional expertise with deep personal insight - helping clients lead their careers and lives with clarity, authenticity, and curiosity.
