How building resilience can help you struggle well

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What does it mean to struggle well?

In 2006, then Major Mark Gasparotto, now retired as a Colonel, led the combat engineers during Operation Medusa in Afghanistan, Canada’s largest combat mission since the Korean War. As a keynote speaker, Gasparotto now shares how the lessons learned on that mission, of leadership following friendly fire, of having to fall back on his training and ask his troops to follow him into life or death situations has helped him teach others to struggle well and come out of stressful situations better people.

Gasparotto’s story is a remarkable one, and many likely wouldn’t consider themselves capable of showing the grit and courage that soldiers show. But Gasparotto says that resilience and personal strength is something that can be learned if people are taught the skills to help them navigate adverse environments and high stress situations.

In fact, he says, that training is essential and no one should be “thrown into the deep end” and be expected to swim. “Most of us don’t rise to the occasion, we sink to our level of training,” says Gasparotto, paraphrasing a Russian general. “So, how can you prepare yourself to be more resilient? And this is where it is something that with intention. With the proper resources you can build up to do things. No one’s ever born to run a marathon… but you can train to do it and and there’s some science there, and then there’s just some grit. You need both.”

Gasparotto shares how he has developed a practice of gratitude to help him cope with the trauma of the past and shares how preparation, practice, and recovery all play a role in developing resilience. “Farmers would understand this from a seasonal perspective. If you’re an athlete, you go to practice, and then you have a game, and then you recover, right? And then you do it all over again. So that’s the cycle of preparation, performance and then recovery.”

He adds that getting more out of life isn’t about adding more to it, it’s about simplifying, trading away drama and removing limiting factors. We can’t always take stress away, but we can add excitement and gratitude, and that makes us more resilient, he says.

Check out Bern Tobin’s conversation with Mark Gasparatto at the 2025 Southwest Ag Conference:

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