I wasn’t expecting the call.

A little while ago, the president of the Southern Vikings, an amateur American football club here in Melbourne, reached out to see if I could help them with some leadership and development training. The players were already putting in the physical work in their pre-season, but the club wanted to strengthen their minds also. 

I said yes immediately because how often does a chance like this come up? But also, I was intrigued. Honestly, how many people even knew that gridiron was played in almost every state and territory in Australia? What also surprised me was what I learned from them. 

Walking Into Something I Didn’t Fully Understand

I’ll be completely upfront with you. I came into this knowing the game mostly in theory. I had watched a few Superbowls and honestly that was about it.  What I found when I showed up was a group of people who are genuinely serious about getting better. Not just fitter or faster or stronger, but tougher in the way that actually matters. The kind of mental toughness that holds up when things aren’t going your way.

Which, in American football, is often.

The game is relentless. A play happens. It ends. And then, regardless of whether it was brilliant or a complete mess, everyone walks back to the huddle and prepares for the next one. Repeat.

It was fascinating to watch, but it was three words that the coaches repeated after every single play in practice that stopped me in my tracks.

“Reset and go again.”

More Than a Catchphrase

What struck me about this phrase wasn’t just that it was said. It was the completeness of what it was asking. The deceptive simplicity of it. 

Reset and go again isn’t just “shake it off.” It’s a three-part neurological instruction, whether the players knew it in those terms or not.

Accept. The previous play happened. It’s done. There’s no changing it, and the brain needs to register that the threat (the mistake, the missed tackle, the fumble, the dropped pass) has passed. When we don’t accept, the brain’s stress response stays activated. Cortisol and adrenaline keep circulating. We stay in threat mode, and threat mode is terrible for clear thinking.

Adjust. What do we do differently? This is the prefrontal cortex doing its job — the part of the brain responsible for learning, reasoning, and planning. Brief, deliberate reflection. Not rumination. The difference between the two is crucial: reflection closes the mental loop, rumination keeps it spinning.

Go again. Fully present for the next play. Not carrying the last one. This is genuine resilience.  Not the absence of difficulty, but the capacity to return to baseline after it.

Three words with enormous neurological intelligence packed inside them.

Why This Matters So Much for Leaders

The reason this landed so hard for me is that most of the leaders I work with are carrying plays.

A difficult conversation from the morning still sitting in the room by afternoon. A project that went sideways two weeks ago still quietly influencing how they show up in meetings. A piece of critical feedback from a performance review that’s been running on a loop for months.

The brain doesn’t automatically close those loops. It needs a signal, a deliberate, practised reset in order to move from one play to the next without dragging the last one along.

And here’s what the Southern Vikings showed me that I think gets underestimated: the reset isn’t just a personal practice. It’s a team norm.

Coaches model it. Teammates call it out for each other. Nobody stews too long before someone taps their shoulder “come on, reset, we go again”. That repetition, that social reinforcement, is exactly how culture gets built at a neurological level. Repeated behaviours, modelled and reinforced, eventually become the brain’s default. That then becomes the culture of the team. 

This means that the question for leaders isn’t just “can I reset personally?” It’s “am I creating the conditions where my team can reset together?”

Resilience Is a Repetition, Not a Personality Type

One of the most unhelpful ideas floating around leadership is that resilience is something you either have or you don’t, that some people just bounce back naturally, and for everyone else it’s a character gap.

Neuroscience is much more hopeful than that.

Every time a player genuinely resets between plays (accept, adjust, go again) they are training a neural pathway. They’re building the brain’s capacity to return to baseline more quickly after a setback. Do it enough times and it stops being an effort. It becomes the default.

The same is true in any team, or in any organisation. Resilience isn’t a fixed trait. It’s neuroplasticity in action. And like any training, it responds to repetition, to modelling, and to a culture that makes the reset normal rather than exceptional.

What the Vikings Didn’t Know They Were Teaching Me

The Southern Vikings reached out because they wanted mental training to complement the physical work they were already doing. What they handed me, in return, was a framework I’ve been thinking about ever since.

Three words that contain, in a truly deceptively simple form, the neuroscience of acceptance, adaptation, and genuine resilience.

Reset and go again.

It’s good football. It’s great leadership. And for any team willing to practise it, it’s one of the most powerful things you can build.

Attuned Leadership Training delivers neuroscience-based leadership development for individuals and organisations across Melbourne and Australia. If this resonated, we’d love to connect.