2am, a Wet Giraffe and What It Clarified About Resilience

2am, a Wet Giraffe and What It Clarified About Resilience

May 8, 2026 · 7 min · Episode 339

About this episode

Tom Foxley discusses resilience and the importance of adapting rather than just enduring challenges in life and business.

2am on a Tuesday. Daughter sick. Bathroom dark. Boxers. Wet stuffed giraffe. 18-month-old supervising from the doorway with the expression of a senior consultant reviewing a deliverable. In the middle of it, Tom had a very clear view of his month. Product launch. Upcoming heart surgery. Ultra marathon training. The business. Being present at home. None of it relevant. This was the job. In this episode he talks about the version of himself that would have handled that night very differently — not in the bathroom, but in the days that followed. The familiar pattern of pushing through on nothing, white-knuckling the day after, patience thinning, quality of thinking dropping, recovery taking longer than it should. That's resilience. Absorb the hit and keep going. And it sounds like toughness — until you notice that absorbing hits repeatedly without anything actually adapting just means accumulating damage you haven't fully accounted for yet. Tom learned resilience in the military. In that context, it's exactly right. But running a business while training, while being a husband and a father and refusing to let any of those things become just words — that's not the military. And…

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Host: Tom Foxley

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