Do you know how a pearl is formed?
It's literally “irritated into existence.”
Something small and abrasive - a grain of sand, a shell fragment, a parasite - lodges inside an oyster and scratches at its soft underbelly. The oyster responds by coating the irritant in a substance called nacre.
Layer by layer, that coating builds into a smooth, lustrous pearl. A thing of beauty is formed by repeated irritation.
I'm not an oyster, but plenty is currently scratching away at me as I write this. I'd guess it's the same for you.
That's why I keep coming back to one of my favourite areas of research, what I call adversarial growth (AG). As you'd expect, adversity tears at us emotionally, wears us down physically, and leaves us feeling disconnected and unsafe.
But my studies also show adversity can open up something in us we didn't know was there: a glimpse of how strong we actually are. It can broaden perspective (maybe that's where ‘pearls of wisdom’ comes from), deepen relationships, and grow our empathy for others who are struggling.
These shifts make us more humane and more connected.
One more thing the oyster teaches us: it only produces a pearl when it can't eject the irritant. Challenges we can sidestep or solve quickly don't scratch at us long enough to grow us…it's the ones we can't escape that do.
What builds this kind of growth?
A lot of people assume adversity leaves us worse off, so it's useful news that this isn't the whole story. Awareness alone, simply knowing growth after hardship is possible, changes how people recover from a crisis, especially when paired with action.
In the research my colleague Dan Loton and I published, we reviewed 18,400 studies on wellbeing and tested the findings across almost 36,000 students in 14 countries. What came out is SEARCH - six protective pathways schools and families can intentionally build: Strengths, Emotional Management, Attention and Awareness, Relationships, Coping, and Habits and Goals. Together, they're the human equivalent of nacre, protective layers we can deliberately build around young people, and ourselves.
Why adversarial growth matters for the students in front of you
Sharing this idea with children - that good things (the pearls) can come out of life's difficulties - is itself protective. Children who believe struggle simply breaks them cope very differently to those who understand struggle, held safely, can also build something. That belief shift changes how a child handles a bad grade, a friendship fallout, or something bigger.
This is where SEARCH does its quiet work: Coping and Emotional Management help students sit with a hard feeling instead of being swept away by it; Relationships give them someone to lean on; Strengths remind them what they already have to draw on.
Practical tip: Next time a student brings you something that's gone wrong, resist the urge to fix or minimise it straight away. Try instead: “That sounds really hard - I wonder what this might teach you about yourself once you're through it.” You're not dismissing the pain - you're planting the idea that struggle and growth can coexist.
Why adversarial growth matters for you, the teacher
In the schools we work with, teachers describe a common set of struggles that resurface whenever pressure is sustained for too long:
Rising stress and emotional exhaustion, seen across teacher samples internationally in recent years
High workloads and compliance paperwork
Not enough time
None of that is a personal failing, it's what happens when a job's demands outstrip its resources.
This is where knowing about adversarial growth changes the story. It doesn't erase how hard teaching is, but shows that, with the right protective factors, we can find happiness despite hardship.
The same SEARCH pathways that protect your students protect you: Emotional Management (naming your stress before it spikes), Coping (a rehearsed strategy for bad days, not just willpower) and Relationships (a colleague who turns toward you, not past you) matter most when work gets hard.
Practical tip: At the end of a tough day, name one thing it asked of you that you didn't think you could do - and did anyway. Say it to a colleague, or write it down. It's how you start noticing your own resilience building, not just your exhaustion.
Why adversarial growth matters if you lead a school
In the latest wave of ACU's 15-year national survey of Australian school leaders, principals reported working an average of 53.9 hours a week; physical violence against them has nearly doubled since 2011 (27.3% to 47.8%), and threats of violence now affect more than half (53.7%) (ACU, 2026).
More than half (54.4%) said they had seriously considered leaving the profession altogether; real, sustained and rising hardship.
None of that means growth isn't possible for you too - it means it must be intentional, and it doesn't excuse a workload schools and systems still need to reduce. The same principle applies to you as to your staff: it's the pressures you can't quickly eject that grow your strength and resolve as a leader.
The protective factors you're building through SEARCH. Structured recovery time, real relational support, honest self-awareness protect you too.
Practical tip: Pick the SEARCH pathway you model least for your staff - often Coping or Emotional Management - and let them see you use it this week. Naming your strategy out loud (“I'm stepping outside for five minutes before this conversation”) gives them permission to do the same.
Growing pearls, at a whole-school scale
My colleagues Jessica Bullock, Daniel Loton and I tracked wellbeing across a whole K–12 school in Hong Kong through one of the hardest stretches of the pandemic; three data points over twelve months of lockdowns, remote learning and repeated closures.
Every teacher and staff member, not just a small volunteer group, was trained in SEARCH. In total, 181 teachers and 782 students took part.
Two findings stood out.
First, individual wellbeing for teachers and students didn't decline across the year, it held stable, at a time when comparable international studies were recording clear drops.
Second, collective wellbeing, how much wellbeing people saw in colleagues and peers around them grew significantly over the same period, and the more a person's own wellbeing rose, the more they saw it rising in others.
That's adversarial growth at a whole-school scale: not one resilient teacher weathering the storm alone, but a whole community's capacity for coping and connection growing together. It's the difference between hoping a few people bounce back, and building protective layers into the fabric of the school itself.
This is what the Visible Wellbeing Program does.
Here is a FREE PEARLS OF WISDOM RESOURCE you can use to bring this message to life for students.
Book a Discovery Call with my team to see what all six SEARCH pathways could look like in action at your school.
P.S. Looking for more wellbeing resources? Check out Lea's shop...