Instead, he did what only the truly stubborn-hearted can do.

He got back up.

And he wrote a song about it.

I’m still standing

At first listen, “I'm Still Standing” sounds deceptively light. Bouncy. Bright. Like a soundtrack for driving with the windows down. But underneath the catchy beat is something grittier: the real, unvarnished story of resilience.

In the world of mental health, resilience isn’t just about "bouncing back." It’s about adaptive meaning-making — the capacity to reframe adversity not as an identity, but rather as an experience (Masten, 2014). It’s about absorbing the hit, telling the truth about it, and still finding a future worth chasing.

That’s exactly what “I'm Still Standing” does: It refuses to pretend the pain didn’t happen—

You could never know what it's like

—but it also refuses to let that pain be the final word.

And separate from the music scene in the eighties, Elton had experienced a difficult life from the very beginning. Born in England right after World War II, times were tough, his parents fought with each other, and his mother has been described as cold, distant, and cruel in the worst terms, and temperamental and complicated in the best terms (Miller, 2019). So after a lifetime of complications, hardship, success, failure, and the like, Elton decides he’s not just okay, but now he is even better than he was before.

I’m still standing

Better than I ever did

Narrative therapy teaches something similar: When people experience trauma or failure, the dominant story they carry can shrink down to 'I was defeated.' Narrative work invites a different story to emerge—one that centers strength, choice, survival, and resilience—and in effect gives that version of the story a microphone so it is the louder song (White & Epston, 1990). Songs like “I'm Still Standing” sneak narrative reframing right into the bloodstream of culture, and with the contagious rhythm and beat, they get deep into our bones. They remind us that endurance itself is a story worth telling, and can, as Elton sings, leave us better than ever.

There’s also brain science humming quietly under the lyrics and behind the enormous pink glasses. Neuroscience shows that recalling personal victories, even small ones, activates our brain’s dopamine pathways—the same circuits that promote motivation and hope (Berns, 2010). In other words, remembering that you survived once makes you more likely to believe you can survive again. And repeating it whether in your mind or belting it in the car embeds the reality even deeper into your psyche.

It’s worth noting, too, that the timing of “I'm Still Standing” also matters. In the early '80s, glam was fading, punk had rattled through, and New Wave was reshaping pop, but the mysterious and new AIDS virus was starting to devastate the communities Elton belonged to and loved. So surviving wasn’t an abstract concept—it was personal, political, urgent. It was actually life and death.

So Elton isn’t just flexing when he sings "I'm still standing better than I ever did." He’s actually modeling one of the most important survival skills: naming what you’ve overcome aloud strengthens the part of your brain that knows you can do it again. He’s singing the medicine right there. Over and over.

Survival isn’t elegant.

It’s scrappy.

It’s embarrassing.

But it’s gorgeous.

The thing about resilience—the real kind, not the Instagram-quote kind—is that it’s always a little messy. Resilience doesn’t mean you didn’t get knocked down. And it doesn’t mean you don’t limp sometimes.

It just means you keep choosing to get back up. Better than you ever have.

Elton never pretended to be invincible. But in this song, he dared to be vulnerable in a different way: by celebrating the battered, brilliant fact that he was still here. Still standing. Better than ever.

And if you’re still here—even if breathless, bruised, and half-laughing—you’re still standing too.

Put on some bright shades and scream it out loud!