“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”
–Frederick Douglass
I went to a youth music competition this weekend. There were 12 musicians in the age category I watched. They varied a great deal in their ability. After an hour of performances, the judges announced the winners. There were 2 First Place winners, 4 Second Place winners and 6 Third Place winners. Everyone won. I overheard one of the Third Place winners asking her parents if Third Place was really Last Place. The parents looked at her, not knowing what to say as she took the medal off her chest and put it away. She wasn’t fooled.
There is a movement toward sparing the feelings of children when they lose, make a mistake, fail, or simply aren’t the best at something. We raise our children in a culture where “everyone’s a winner.” However, when they grow up and find out that only very few people get into the best colleges and very few end up in their dream jobs right out of school, they are dumbfounded and caught off guard, and they crumple in defeat. We aren’t preparing our children to survive in a world where everyone really isn’t a winner.
Resilience is probably the most important quality for success at work and life. Being able to stay strong, even in the worst of times, is what leads to success. It is the rare individual who goes through life without adversity. In fact, it would be surprising if there were any such people. Some people face greater adversity than others and have to be strong to get through it. For example, think of cancer survivors, kids who have escaped from neighborhood gangs, Holocaust survivors, or the Lost Boys of Sudan. How did they endure? What kept them going? It was inner strength and optimism. They never gave up.
Hopefully, none of us will have to face such severe adversity, but it is important to be able to get through what adversity we do encounter. How do we develop the inner strength to stay strong? We train for it just like we do for everything else. We start out small with low levels of adversity, such as not getting the piece of candy we want, working out our differences with our school friends, and learning from a failing grade that we have to study for tests. We move onto bigger problems to get through, such as handling the pain of breaking an arm or getting stitches, denting the car and having to pay for it ourselves, and working through our first heartbreak. Then we move onto even bigger things, such as learning to live with a difficult roommate, turning down an evening out with friends to save for the rent, and sticking it out at a miserable summer job. These experiences prepare us for the critical ones that require us to draw from our strength to get through trying circumstances and forge optimistically ahead.
Successful people are resilient.
