06 Jul 2026 7 min read GlobalSch

[Resilience], the aftermath of Men's Mental Health Month

Different light. Same man. That's resilience.

Of late, I have been thinking about resilience. True resilience, the one that carries real power behind it. The raw and powerful version of it. The one that actually gets a man through a murky situation he wasn't sure he'd survive.

I grew up in an era where we were told that book smart was everything. That the smartest kid in the room, that guy with a high IQ, had everything laid up for him in terms of a bright future. Where solving equations was regarded as the only option ya kutoka block! But unfortunately no one taught us how to solve life, and the smartest in the room has it hard as most of us.

Along the way I have come to rely on other forms of intelligence. Take these two for example: Emotional Quotient, the ability to pick really good friends, have a healthy relationship with them, maintain peace with them and respect their boundaries. Then Social Quotient (SQ), through this, I have maintained healthy relations with these friends and family and in turn have become my social pillar when things get rough. Something that my high IQ has failed to do. It has become increasingly imperative to be wealthy in your friendships and family relationships. Generally build social wealth with people in your environment. Dr. Myles Munroe puts it well, you are as poor as the friends you keep, and as wealthy as the friends you have. Most times you don't need money, you need friends with money.

As you build your relationships around people you can rely on in hard times, it has become increasingly important to build RESILIENCE. Coz sometimes your circle can be depleted.

Resilience is the ability to recover quickly after difficulties, to bend without breaking, to bounce back after being knocked down.

Now I want to be clear about something, because I think we've been getting this wrong for a long time. Resilience is not bottling things up. It's not walking around pretending everything is fine when its not. That's not strength, that's a slow burn, and if you carry it long enough it turns into something else entirely, anger you cannot explain, a short fuse, distance from the people who love you. I've seen it happen. Maybe you have too.

Real resilience looks more like this: You fall, you feel it, you're honest about how much it hurts, and then you gather whatever strength you have left and get back up anyway. Psychologists have a name for it: Post Traumatic Growth. The idea that you don't just survive the hard season, you actually come out of it stronger than you went in. Not despite what happened to you, but because of how you carried it, how you managed it. This I believe is the 4th new paradigm, Dr. Paul Stoltz calls it Adversity Quotient (AQ), this is the measure of your ability to go through a rough patch in life and come out of it without losing your mind. This is where you develop a tough skin, an extra mental muscle that simply doesn't know what giving up is. When faced with what may seem like an impossible situation, a tough spot, AQ will determine who will give up, who will abandon their family, or who will consider suicide.

If you want to hear Dr. Stoltz explain this in his own words, here's a good place to start 👆🏽

I didn't want to just tell you this. I wanted to ask around first. So this past month of June (which marked Men's Mental Health Awareness Month) I asked men here at Tetea one simple question: What has helped you cope with the mental and emotional challenges you've faced as a man, in the recent past? No pressure to sound strong. Just the honest truth. Here's what they told me.

"In the recent past, one of the hardest realities I've had to accept as a man is that sometimes the people you expect to have your back—even family—may not be there when you need them most. I remember a time nilikua nimeishiwa hadi na meko gas , so nikampigia mathe nikimuomba soft loan, nikamwambia ningemrudishia within two weeks. Aliniambia maisha ni ngumu na hakuna cash flow, aka-dismiss request yangu. Fast forward two days, akanipigia simu akiniambia Equitel line yake ilikuwa hacked na alikuwa ameoshwa Kshs. 45,000, akiomba nimsaidie. Hapo ndipo nilijua no one is coming to babysit or save you—not even family, na si kwa ubaya, but that's just the reality sometimes. Since then, whenever life inanilemea, najiita kamkutano. I take a deep breath, disappear kidogo into social hibernation, and spend time reflecting instead of panicking. Nimegundua mimi niko kama convex mirror; nikitulia na kuangalia mambo from a wider perspective, almost every time napata solution yenye ni practical. Na kama bado sijaona njia, hu-reach out kwa close friends wangu, tu-brainstorm together, and we focus on what's doable, si lazima kile tunapenda kuskia, but the truth of the situation. Hiyo ndiyo imenisaidia kubaki grounded. Kama kuna takeaway moja ningependa mtu mwingine achukue, ni hii: anza mahali uko, tumia kile uko nacho, na ufanye kile unaweza kabla ya kufikiria kuquit." — A brother from Tetea (name withheld)

"As we observe Men's Mental Health Awareness Month, I've realized that one of the biggest ways I've protected my mental health is by learning to move forward instead of staying stuck in difficult situations. Life brings challenges, lakini nimejifunza ku-adjust haraka, kukubali yenye siwezi badilisha, na kufocus na what's ahead. Being an optimistic person has also helped me a lot. I choose to believe that every setback is temporary and that better days are always possible.
life lazima isonge, si ati ukae hapo ukijisumbua. My hope and faith keep me grounded, zinanipa nguvu wakati mambo ni magumu, na zinanikumbusha kuendelea kusonga mbele na confidence na purpose. Mbele iko sawa, na kila siku ni chance mpya ya kubuild a better version of myself." — Symo

"My name is Peter (Nash),40 years old and Fourty isn't just a milestone number; it is a landscape of deep focus, requiring a delicate balance between the high stakes discipline of technical systems and the weights of daily life. There was a time, in the recent past, when the pressure felt like an unyielding background whisper. Staring at the patterns of striving to engineer a working strategy, the mental fatigue could easily compound,it was the sheer emotional endurance required to remain entirely steady analyzing through standards frameworks at work timelines. The breakthrough didn't come from a grand, overnight shift, but from an intentional choice to treat mental well-being with the same precision applied to any complex system. First came the practice of the tactical reset. When the workplace demands mounted, instead of pushing through the exhaustion, I learned to step back. I began treating emotional overwhelm not as a flaw, but as a critical system warning that required an immediate, deliberate pause to prevent burnout. Then I recognized the power of grounded perspective. True resilience in this chapter of life wasn't about carrying an entire operation in isolation. It meant intentionally carving out spaces for physical output, stepping entirely away from the screens, and building a mindset that values long term endurance over short term strain....We soldier on regardless. One step at a time. As always... *Dum Spiro Spero, While I Breathe I Hope.* — Nash

Resilience has many names, some physiologist call it Post Traumatic Growth, others AQ, while others AR - Adversity Resilience. The Bible on the other hand calls it endurance, that ability to sustain effort and hold steady through hardship, stress, or fatigue. In the 1st chapter of the second book of St.Peter it is written: for this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with goodness, goodness with knowledge, knowledge with self-control, self-control with endurance. This isn't just about optimism. It's about endurance. Standing in the middle of the storm and whispering, "I'm not done yet".

So that's what I've been meaning to tell you about resilience. It's not something you either have or you don't. It's something you build, one fall and one rise at a time. And if the men above are any proof, it's something a lot of us are already doing, even on the days it doesn't feel like it.

Last year, I wrote something to help men strengthen their mental health, one affirmation at a time. Take a look 👆🏽

Men Vs Society — is a raw, unfiltered piece by Nash on what society expects of men and what it costs them. Take a look 👆🏽

One honest note before you go. Tetea isn't a mental health service, and nothing here replaces a real conversation with a professional. If any part of this hit close to home, please reach out to someone qualified to help. That's not weakness. That's exactly the resilience we've been talking about.

If You’re a Man Feeling Overwhelmed...

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