At a time when the world is filled with a laundry list of pressures, from escalating geopolitical conflict to potential economic slowdown to the effects of climate change and more, the issue of burnout is very real. A recent report indicates that 62% of Canadian professionals say they feel burned out, up from 47% in 2024.
BMO Private Wealth hosted a recent event featuring psychology and education behaviourist Dr. Robyne Hanley-Dafoe, entitled Everyday Resiliency: How to Master Living and Working Well. Hanley-Dafoe’s work on cultivating resilience is essential for high-net-worth individuals, who may not have trouble reaching peak performance in their professional lives, but are more likely to have difficulty sustaining it.
“We can have our best year, our best quarter, our best season,” said Hanley-Dafoe, “but being able to maintain it time after time, or growing it, is actually the challenge.”
According to the award-winning author’s own Canada-wide research, high achievers consistently report that they’re not just tired or stressed – they’re experiencing a weariness that a vacation won’t fix. The answer: building resilience.
Many people believe resilience is about toughness or grit. But Hanley-Dafoe argues that it can be built through everyday habits, which will then allow you to continue to show up for your responsibilities, even when you’re dealing with enormous stress in another part of your life.
“What people do in ordinary time allows them to be extraordinary when they have to be,” she said, and went on to explain the five pillars of everyday resilience that she has developed.
Belonging – Hanley-Dafoe argued that having a “home team” that roots for you, whether it’s made up of family members, friends or both, is critical for resiliency. Having people who depend on you will always motivate you to continue when things get tough. “We will go farther in the pursuit of supporting others than we ever will for ourselves,” she said.
Perspective – In difficult moments, she said, perspective is everything. Look at the bigger picture and remember that one terrible hour, or quarter, doesn’t define you. Life is made up of little moments, habits and actions, and the way to get through the bad ones is to focus on the next wise step.
Acceptance – It’s crucial to accept what’s out of your control so you can focus on your controllables, according to Hanley-Dafoe. “The difference in high performers is that they focus on what is within their control.”
Hope – Choosing to live hope-filled, she explained, can change you physiologically as well as psychologically. It can help you persevere during trying moments. “We know something remarkable happens in the human condition when it has an encounter with hope,” she said.
Humour – Hanley-Dafoe noted that humour isn’t something frivolous; it’s a tool for managing and releasing stress. She added that her own research found that people who swear actually live longer.
Stress as fuel
Understanding the five pillars is only part of the equation. Hanley-Dafoe was equally direct about the role of stress itself. It’s not an enemy to be eliminated, but a resource to be managed.
“Stress is fuel,” she said. “It gives us energy, gives us focus, lets us know what’s important.” The problem, she explained, isn’t stress itself but the doses many of us are absorbing.
The antidote isn’t another biohack or wellness trend; it’s a short list of evidence-backed habits that work across ages and lifestyles. A 30-minute walk, she noted, decreases all-cause mortality by over 60%.
Connection matters too. If you’re someone who spends your day solving problems and putting out fires at work, the last thing you need is more conflict and stress at home. The most important conversations you have with your family happen in the first few minutes after you walk in the door, she explained, drawing on her own experiences with her three young adult children.
Rather than immediately asking why the recycling wasn’t taken out or why something else wasn’t done, take a moment to connect. “We have to connect before we correct, otherwise the message won’t land,” she said. “If you can get those first five minutes right, you’ll have a much better evening.”
Finding time for solitude is also essential, as it helps reset your nervous system. Nature and music round out the toolkit, and both are proven nervous system regulators that require no subscription.
The through line in all of it, she said, isn’t adding more to an already full plate. Often, the more powerful question is what to stop doing. “What behaviour, if we stopped doing it, would actually give us our energy back?”
Importantly, Hanley-Dafoe put her work on resilience into perspective by sharing her own story. At 16, she was in a horrific accident, during which her car slid into a frozen river and she almost drowned. As she struggled to escape the vehicle and reach the surface, what kept her going was her mother’s voice telling her she could do hard things. As the teen clung to the ice, a passing motorist spotted her tire tracks and risked his own life to pull her to safety.
That experience became a turning point for Hanley-Dafoe, who was a troubled high-school dropout struggling with mental illness and substance abuse. She began to build a healthier life. The road to recovery is not linear, and it involves a lot of “relationship repair,” Hanley-Dafoe told the audience, but her experiences eventually led her to become a scholar of resilience and wellness.
“We need one another, and the reality is that we also need to share hope-filled stories to let people know that we don’t have to be defined by our biggest mistakes or our most difficult seasons,” she said. “Sometimes our greatest setback will actually be a setup for something better.”
