By Lauren Murrell · 29th September 2026
There’s a version of positivity that is often mistaken for resilience. You’ll recognise the familiar refrains of “keep smiling” or “focus on the positive”. But maintaining an upbeat outlook when life sends you a curveball isn’t resilience. Resilience is how you decide to move through it.
When I was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia at 23 and given a 20 percent chance of survival, I wasn’t positive every single day of the many months I spent hospitalised in protective isolation. When Hurricane Irma later destroyed the Caribbean island I called home and forced me to rebuild my life again, I didn’t immediately see the silver lining. That upheaval would eventually lead me to leave law and become an entrepreneur, but at the time there were days when the fog of fear and uncertainty was overwhelming. I came to see that resilience was learning how to live with the reality of what was happening and still find a way to move forward.
That distinction matters, particularly in the workplace. When organisations tell people to “stay positive” during difficult periods, they can inadvertently ask them to perform optimism rather than develop the key skills they need to navigate change and uncertainty.
Key takeaways:
- Resilience isn’t staying positive. It’s how you decide to move through difficulty.
- You can be worried, disappointed or uncertain and still be resilient.
- The alternative to forced positivity isn’t pessimism. It’s agency.
- Use the Smallest Viable Step: shrink the next step until you can act on it today.
Resilience and positivity are not the same thing
Positivity can be helpful. Optimism can give us energy and help us imagine that circumstances might improve. But neither is a prerequisite for resilience. You can be worried and resilient. You can be disappointed and resilient. You can have no idea how things are going to turn out and still find a way forward.
For me, the alternative to forcing positivity isn’t pessimism. It’s agency: focusing less on what is beyond your control and more on what is still yours to change.
Focus on what you can control
During the most tumultuous periods of my life, I rarely had the luxury of knowing everything would be fine (the odds were certainly not in my favour). What I could do, though, was focus on what was possible in front of me. Quite literally: in my hospital room.
I turned those four white walls into a portal to the future I wished for, pinning posters of New York and the Caribbean to the wall, visualising brighter days ahead. I brought in a Nordic cross-trainer to mimic the early morning runs I used to take around my local park, even though I was squeaking out my reps tethered to an IV pole. While I couldn’t change the diagnosis, I could decide how I showed up every day. Those small actions helped me hold onto my sense of self and reclaim a little agency in an environment where so much was out of my hands.
The Smallest Viable Step
That same principle sits behind an exercise I use today: the Smallest Viable Step. When your mind is spinning with uncertainty and life feels overwhelming, it’s tempting to try to solve the whole future at once. Instead, shrink the next step until it becomes something you can act on.
Ask yourself:
- What is outside my control right now?
- What is still mine to influence?
- What’s the Smallest Viable Step I can take today?
I use the word “viable” on purpose. The step needs to be small enough to feel achievable but meaningful enough to create forward momentum. “Sort my career out” becomes “send one email this afternoon”. “Work out the strategy” becomes “spend 15 minutes looking at the available options”.
Most importantly, don’t wait to feel positive or confident. Take the step exactly as you are, even if you’re in your pyjamas, like I was most days in hospital. Small actions compound. Each one becomes evidence that you are moving, and from that new position, the next step often becomes clearer.
Why “stay positive” can be the wrong message
When somebody is struggling, telling them to stay positive usually comes from a good place: we want to reassure them and make things feel better. But forced positivity becomes unhelpful when it leaves no room for people to acknowledge what is difficult before deciding how to respond.
Imagine a team going through a complex international restructure. People may be worried about their roles, frustrated by a lack of information or exhausted by ongoing uncertainty. Telling them to focus on the positives doesn’t make those concerns disappear. It can make people feel they shouldn’t express what they are experiencing.
A resilient culture should be able to hold two things at once: this is difficult, and we can work out what to do next. The first acknowledges reality, while the second restores a powerful ingredient: personal agency.
What resilient workplaces do differently
If organisations want to nurture resilient teams, they need to give people permission to express what’s difficult while helping them identify where they still have influence. That means being frank about what isn’t yet known, creating space for people to voice concerns and then bringing the conversation back to what the team can do.
The Smallest Viable Step works here too. When a team is facing uncertainty, ask: what can’t we control, what can we influence, and what can we act on now? It moves the conversation away from speculation and towards something practical without pretending the uncertainty isn’t there.
What resilience really requires
Perhaps the biggest lesson I’ve learned from rebuilding my life more than once is that resilience doesn’t require certainty about what happens next. It requires enough self-trust to take the step that is available to you now.
That, to me, is resilience. Continuing to move forward, even when you don’t know how the story will unfold. Whatever you’re facing right now, take that next step and see where it takes you.
About the author
Lauren Murrell is a resilience and mindset speaker, co-founder of award-winning brand By Sarah and writer of popular weekly newsletter Rise on Purpose. After surviving leukaemia and later rebuilding her life following Hurricane Irma, she now helps organisations navigate uncertainty and build resilience through change. She has spoken for Goldman Sachs and the University of Oxford, and has been featured in Forbes, The Times and British Vogue.
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