#29 - Accept Reality, Reject Limits: Mark Black on Resilience After Transplant
Today’s guest is Resilience Expert Mark Black
Most people let other people’s limits (doctors, bosses, even loving parents) become their limits — especially after illness, disruption, or big life changes. Mark’s experience and body of work is about showing that you can accept reality without accepting restriction — you can tell the truth about your circumstances and still choose growth.
In today’s conversation Mark Black explores how being born with a severe heart defect, surviving two open-heart surgeries as a baby, and then receiving a heart-and-double-lung transplant at 23 taught him the mechanics of real resilience. He tells you what it’s like to be told, “maybe you’ll work part time someday,” and then decide to run four marathons with someone else’s organs. He and Dr. Wells break down the mindset shift from “why me?” to “what now?”, and how his parents’ decision not to bubble-wrap him became the foundation for his speaking and coaching today. The episode lands on a practical, five-step resilience process that anyone can run when life goes sideways.
You will learn the difference between denial and healthy acceptance — how to tell the truth about what happened without getting stuck there; why having a picture of a better future (run a 5K → 10K → half → marathon) pulls you through rehab; how to reassess identity when sport, work, or health gets taken away; how to reassign meaning to hard events so they serve you instead of shrink you; and how Mark’s five-step loop — accept → aim → adapt → act → assess — can be used in health recovery, career change, or leadership.
You will discover that resilience isn’t a personality trait — it’s a repeatable choice: tell the truth about today, then pick the next hard, possible thing. That choice is available every single day, even after a transplant.
When circumstances blow up your old identity (athlete, healthy person, unstoppable leader), people often stay in grief or “it’s not fair” for years. Mark gives a way to honour the loss and move — small goals, stacked wins, new meaning — so life after crisis is bigger than life before.
Key take aways:
Accept reality; don’t accept limitation.
Aim at a better future, however small.
Act first, motivation follows.
Reassess: is this still working?
You always get to choose the meaning.
“You always get the choice to respond. You don’t always get the choice about what happens — but you always get the choice about what it means.”
Today’s Expert Guest - Mark Black
Mark Black, CSP, is a heart-and-double-lung transplant recipient, four-time marathon finisher, international keynote speaker, and resilience coach. Born with a serious congenital heart defect, he underwent two open-heart surgeries before his first birthday and a life-saving transplant at 23 — then went on to run marathons and speak to more than 150,000 people across North America.
Mark doesn’t teach resilience from a whiteboard — he teaches it from a transplant scar. He links personal adversity (heart failure, 11 months waiting in Toronto, post-op rehab) to an organizational message: change doesn’t have to break your team, it can build them. His “Resilience Roadmap” gives leaders and students a simple, Monday-morning framework to turn disruption into progress.
Follow Mark Black on Instagram & Linked In.
Check out his website.
Explore his book.
The Resilience Roadmap:
7 Guideposts for Charting Your Course in a Chaotic World
BookA book about the theory & practice of resilience...from someone who has lived it. Mark has taught this framework to thousands of people in audiences across the continent. Now he's sharing it with YOU.
This podcast contains advice and information relating to health and wellness. It should be used to supplement rather than replace the advice of your doctor or another trained health professional. If you know or suspect that you have a health problem, seek your physician’s advice before embarking on any medical program or treatment. All efforts have been made to assure the accuracy of the information contained in this podcast / interview / article as of the date of publication. The author and publisher disclaim liability for any medical or other outcomes that may occur as a result of applying the methods suggested in this material.
