What My 96-Year-Old Nan Taught Me About Resilience

Sometimes the people you least expect are already doing the work. Once a week, I drive my nan and grandad to visit my sister. It’s a short journey - about twenty minutes - but it’s long enough for patterns to emerge. The same questions surface. How was your week? Who’s unwell? What’s gone wrong this time? And, if you listen carefully, the habits of a lifetime quietly reveal themselves. My grandparents are in their late nineties. Practical. Old school. Deep trust in doctors, systems, and doing things properly. Mindset work is not their native language. They are not reading psychology books. They are not attending workshops. They are not talking about emotional regulation or neuroplasticity. And yet.... A Comment I Didn’t Expect On one of those drives recently, my grandad noticed what I was listening to in the car - an audiobook about how people use their mind and behaviour to support healing and recovery. He teased me, asking whether I was planning to change my life. I kept my explanation simple. No neuroscience. No jargon. I just said that some people learn how to work with their thoughts, emotions, and habits in a way that helps their body recover or cope better when things go wrong. What happened next genuinely caught me off guard. My nan, not exactly famous for her optimism, began talking about a woman they know locally. She had been seriously unwell. Surgery. A difficult period. And yet - fast recovery. Back home. Back to living her life. My nan was impressed. Then she said, calmly and without hesitation, “If you want to get better from anything, it’s all about your attitude.” No irony. No self-help language. Just a simple statement. Sometimes the deepest truths arrive in the plainest sentences. Mindset Isn’t Modern - It’s Human It struck me because this wasn’t someone who talks about personal development. This was someone who usually prefers a good complaint and a detailed list of what’s wrong with the world. And yet there it was - the principle, spoken plainly, in her own words. Most people assume mindset work is modern, fluffy, or even controversial. Something you either “believe in” or don’t. But the truth is, the core ideas have always been around. They simply show up in different language depending on generation and experience. Long before we talked about cognitive behavioural approaches or neuroplasticity, people understood that attitude mattered. Research consistently shows that outlook influences recovery rates, pain tolerance, stress resilience, and even immune response. This is not wishful thinking - it is measurable. But here is where the tension lies. Knowing that attitude matters is different from choosing it deliberately. Responsibility Is Where Change Begins What changes lives is not reading the right book or adopting the right label. It is whether someone takes responsibility for how they respond to what is happening. It is how they engage with their thoughts when fear kicks in. It is how they show up on the days when nothing feels fair. This is where the real work of growth begins - not in dramatic breakthroughs, but in the quiet, daily decisions about how to interpret events. Sometimes insight does not arrive as a lightning bolt. Sometimes it slips out in a car on an ordinary Thursday afternoon. Sometimes the people you think do not “get it” are already living it. And sometimes change is not about adopting a new philosophy - it is about recognising the one you are already practising. What Might You Already Know? Here is the gentle challenge. If someone who has lived nearly a century can recognise the role attitude plays in recovery and resilience, what might you already know that you have been underestimating? You do not need to overhaul your life. You do not need to believe in anything new. You do not need to become someone different. You simply need to notice. Notice the moments when you choose not to spiral. Notice when you pause instead of react. Notice when you encourage yourself instead of criticise. Those moments are not small. They are evidence. As a coaching franchise, People Building exists to help people make those moments conscious and repeatable. Not because you are broken. Not because you need fixing. But because most of us underestimate how much influence we already have over our internal world. The work is not about pretending everything is positive. It is about recognising where your response shapes your experience. That is what we explore inside our coaching franchise every day - not fluffy thinking, not denial, but grounded responsibility. The kind my nan described in one sentence without ever calling it mindset. You may already be doing more than you think. The question is - will you choose to build on it? by Gemma Bailey (with the help of Ai) https://www.peoplebuilding.co.uk/franchise