Resilience for Changemakers: Sustaining Momentum Without Burning Out | Changemaker Mindset Series
Workshop Overview
Changemakers don’t just navigate change, they create it.
Whether you’re building a startup, leading social impact work, navigating a career pivot, or reimagining your next chapter, resilience is not just about pushing through. It’s about learning how to stay grounded, clear, and energized through uncertainty, pressure, and constant evolution.
This reflective and practical workshop explores resilience as a skill, a state, and a system, not a personality trait.
Participants will learn how burnout, chronic stress, and misaligned pace undermine long-term impact, and how resilience can be intentionally built as a high-performance, sustainable state.
What We’ll Explore
1. Resilience Through Lived Experience
A personal story of changemaking, burnout, and recovery, reframing resilience through real-world lessons rather than theory. Participants are invited to arrive as they are and ground into the session with clarity and presence.
2. Reframing Resilience (Beyond Self-Care)
Burnout and resilience are not opposites, they exist on the same spectrum. We’ll explore chronic stress, burnout myths, and why resilience is more than rest or self-care habits. Resilience is a regulated, sustainable performance state.
3. Navigating Uncertainty, Pivots & Change
The inner journey of changemakers and social entrepreneurs. We’ll unpack common stressors, emotional baggage, and identity challenges and distinguish between coping and true healing.
Changemaking as an expression of who you are, not just what you do.
4. Purpose, Calling & Identity
Purpose vs values vs passion, and how burnout often arises when these become misaligned. We’ll explore how meaning evolves, how passion can either deplete or expand us, and how values act as a stabilizing force during transition.
5. Burnout Awareness & Early Signals
Understanding burnout through a mental health and resilience spectrum. Participants learn to recognize early warning signs, normalize recovery, and reframe burnout as a state, not a personal failure.
6. Designing a Sustainable Pace (In an AI-Accelerated World)
As technology accelerates change, human nervous systems still need rhythm and regulation. We’ll explore sustainable pace, energy alignment, and a practical Energy Audit lens to support resilience in modern changemaker environments.
7. Integration & Embodied Resilience Practice
The session closes with a short, accessible breathwork exercise.
Participants leave with a grounded understanding that prevention is a practice and recovery is a process — and with tools to reduce chronic stress and support long-term impact.
Who This Workshop Is For
Aspiring and early-stage founders
Social entrepreneurs and changemakers
Students navigating career or identity transitions
Professionals starting something new — or starting again
Anyone who wants to build resilience without sacrificing well-being
Key Takeaways
Participants will leave with:
A new, practical understanding of resilience as a skill and state
Language to recognize burnout early and respond effectively
Tools to navigate uncertainty with clarity and self-compassion
A values-aligned framework for sustainable pace and growth
A simple embodied regulation practice they can return to anytime
Why This Matters
The most important startup you’ll ever build is yourself.
This workshop equips changemakers not just to endure change, but to grow through it, sustainably.
Meet Your Speaker: Duncan So
Burnout Interventionist · Transformational Experience Architect
Duncan So works at the intersection of resilience, burnout recovery, and sustainable human performance. After beginning his career building high-growth technology systems and entrepreneurial ventures, Duncan experienced burnout firsthand, an inflection point that reshaped both his work and his understanding of resilience. Rather than pushing through, he redirected his focus toward helping changemakers, founders, and creatives recover from chronic stress, reconnect with purpose, and build impact without sacrificing well-being.
Duncan is a board-certified Master Practitioner and Trainer of Mental Emotional Release® (MER®) and Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). His work integrates neuroscience-informed practices, emotional regulation, and reflective, embodied tools to support people navigating uncertainty, transitions, and growth.
His approach emphasizes resilience as a skill and a state, helping individuals restore internal coherence, design sustainable pace, and stay connected to who they are while creating meaningful change.
About the Changemaker Mindset Series
The Changemaker Mindset Series by the Centre of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (COIE) at Centennial College brings inspiring changemakers from our community to share how ways of thinking can shape impact — and how cultivating an entrepreneurial spirit can drive positive change. Each session highlights practical tools and powerful stories that help you reframe challenges, spark creativity, and take meaningful action in your studies, career, and community. Whether you dream of launching a startup, leading change in your workplace, or building confidence in everyday life, this series equips you with the mindset to make it happen. 🧠✨