Show Up Anyway: What Sumo Can Teach Us About Resilience

I watch a lot of sumo wrestling. One of the things I love most about it isn’t just the strength or the ritual — it’s the raw, visible lesson in resilience.

Every once in a while, a top-ranked wrestler has an absolutely terrible tournament.

Not just “off their game.” Catastrophic by anyone's standards.

I once watched an Ozeki, 2nd highest rank in the sport, win a tournament and then come back the next tournament and lose 13 out of 15 matches. It was horrifying! 

In most professions, that kind of reversal would trigger panic, excuses, or disappearance. But in sumo, there is no hiding. He showed up every day, stepped into the ring, and fought, and lost. Yet, he kept showing up and trying his best. 

That’s resilience in its purest form.

In January 2026 one of my favorite wrestlers, Ura, had a 4–11 tournament. Four wins. Eleven losses. One of his losses was especially cruel since he should have won it. In fact, he did win it. He beat the Yokozuna Onosato. The judges overturned his win by claiming a rule that doesn't exist (dead body rule) and ruled the match was a tie and made them wrestle again. And the 2nd time the Yokozuna won.  

Imagine beating the best wrestler in the world, feeling that victory, and then having it taken away. Publicly. Officially. Final decision.  His comment when asked about it was - I can't be expected to beat a Yokozuna twice in one day. Which is an unusually direct statement of annoyance from a Japanese sumo wrestler. 

And yet, despite how clearly unfair that situation was, he showed up the next day smiling.

Not fake smiling. Grounded smiling. Ready-to-fight-again smiling. In fact, one of the reasons I like him so much, is even when he loses, he laughs it off, and just shakes his head. 

He keeps showing up. He keeps competing. He he loses a lot. But he keeps engaging fully, even when the results aren't going his way. It's one of the reasons he's a fan favorite. 

The Myth of Winning Streaks

We like stories of constant progress and uninterrupted success. They’re clean. They’re inspiring. They’re also rare.

Real performance - whether it is in sports, leadership, activism, inclusion work, and personal growth - looks much messier:

• Strong seasons and weak seasons

• Big wins and painful reversals

• Fair calls and unfair rulings

• Breakthroughs and plateaus

No one wins every match. Sometimes you don’t just lose — you lose a lot.

The question isn’t whether you’ll hit a bad stretch.

The question is: Will you show up anyway?

Showing Up Is a Skill — Not a Mood

Most people treat showing up as an emotion-based decision:

“I’ll show up when I feel confident.”
“I’ll show up when things are going well.”
“I’ll show up when I’m winning.”

But resilience doesn’t work that way. Showing up is a behavior — and behaviors can be trained.

In behavioral science terms, you don’t wait for motivation. You build the response pattern first. Action comes before confidence more often than the other way around.

Sumo wrestlers don’t get to skip a day because the last match was unfair.
They don’t get to opt out because their record is embarrassing.
They step out onto the clay anyway.

The Discipline of Continuing

There’s a special kind of strength in continuing when:

• You know the odds aren’t in your favor

• You feel discouraged

• The last outcome was unfair

• Your record looks bad

• Others are counting you out

Continuing builds identity. It says: I am someone who engages, regardless of outcome.

That identity matters more than any single result.

The Quiet Power of Composure

What struck me most in these losing tournaments wasn’t just participation — it was composure.

No public meltdown.
No visible bitterness.
No withdrawal.

Just steady presence.

That doesn’t mean there’s no disappointment. It means disappointment isn’t in charge.

That’s emotional self-management in action — the same skill set that helps leaders navigate crisis, helps targets of bullying avoid escalation traps, and helps change-makers keep going when resistance shows up.

The Lesson

You will have seasons where things don’t go your way.

You will have stretches where you lose more than you win.
You will experience unfair calls.
You will feel the sting of reversals.

Show up anyway.

Step into the ring.
Do the work.
Engage the moment.
Keep your composure.
Return tomorrow.

Because resilience isn’t built in the victories.

It’s built in the days you show up while losing.

Leadership Takeaway: Show Up Anyway

Resilient leaders don’t wait to feel confident before they act — they learn how to regulate their emotions so they can stay engaged, steady, and effective even during setbacks. Showing up is a trained response, not a personality trait.

If you want a practical, behavioral-science approach to emotional self-management, response control, and conflict resilience, start here:

📘 Learn more: Mastering the 5 Managerial Superpowers
Learn how to control your emotional responses, interrupt escalation cycles, and stay constructive under pressure — so you can show up anyway, especially when it’s hardest.

Core skills: self-awareness • emotional regulation • strategic responding • conflict resilience • anti-bullying communication

Creating Change in Your Life

Whatever it is you don’t like that is going on in your professional or personal life – you can change it. Things don’t have to be the way they are. We can change things and make the world a better place for everyone to live if we take responsibility to do it and approach our problems using a combination of love, compassion science and reason. 

Most people have a list of things they don't like about themselves and others. Even if we like our job and the people around us, there are still things that annoy us and that we would like to change.

Half of the struggle in creating change is just deciding, it's your responsibility. Stop waiting for others to create change, and start - doing it yourself.

Do you have to do it alone? No. And you shouldn't do it yourself. But ... you do have to take personal responsbility to do your part.

And often that means, starting with us. What do we need to learn? What do we need to do differently for ourselves? How do we want to be in relationship to others? All of these are matters of personal responsibility.

So - start with yourself. Start by defining for yourself what it is you truly value. Decide what sort of person you want to be and then start practicing your values in real life. When you need to make a decision think - how would I do this if I lived by my values. That pause to think before acting can make a world of difference. 

 Once you start acting according to your ethics, the next challenge is how to be more effective. For this, you will need to learn how to be a more critical thinking and you will need to become scientifically literate so that you start working on problems that a) are real problems and b) so that you can find solutions to your real problems that will really work. 

Finally, you need to find balance. All work and no play makes for bad outcomes for yourself and others. If what you want is more balance, implement that for yourself. You will find it easier to understand that balance between work and play helps you be more effective at work. 

I have found that I am at my best when I combine moral philosophy, critical thinking, and science together. I think you will benefit from this approach too - which is why I teach this. Visit my website to find books and courses that can help you be a more moral, effective and capable person. https://humanistlearning.com/ 

And yes, I do have a course on the science and ethics of why change is so hard and how to overcome the resistance to change in yourself and others. https://humanistlearning.com/change1/