Resilience: Bouncing Back From Adversity
The miracle. Or the power, that elevates the few to be found in their industry, application, and perseverance under the promptings of a brave, determined spirit.
—Mark Twain
True success comes from positive knowing, rather than positive thinking. Your goal should be to achieve the kind of unshakable success and happiness that makes you an unstoppable force of nature. Your job is to take every step possible to make yourself so positive that you become irresistible and able to accomplish any goal that you set your mind to. One of the most important
things you need is an absolute faith in your ability to overcome any adversity that the world can throw at you.
Persistence Is Essential
Napoleon Hill wrote that “Persistence is to the character of man, as carbon is to steel.” He also said that “Before success comes in any man’s life he is sure to meet with much temporary defeat and, perhaps, some failure. When defeat overtakes a man, the easiest and most logical thing to do is quit. That is exactly what the majority of men do.”
In reality, your persistence is your measure of your belief in yourself and your ability to succeed. If you absolutely believe, without question, that if you persevere long enough and hard enough, you will ultimately win, then nothing will stop you. When you build within yourself this absolute assurance, then virtually anything becomes possible for you. Your success and happiness goes
through the roof.
The Reality Habit
Robert Ringer, in his best-selling book, Million Dollar Habits (Fawcett, 1990), says that the most important of all the habits that lead to great achievement is what he calls the “reality habit.” It explains the attitudes of men and women who have achieved greatness in almost every field.
Happy, successful people are intensely realistic. They do not allow themselves the luxury of self-delusion. They face the world as it is, rather than the way they wish it would be. They accept the unalterable facts of life as given, and they work and plan their activities around them.
In learning how to triumph over adversity, the application of the reality principle is to simply accept that “problems are inevitable.” Problems, setbacks, and disappointments are an unavoidable reality of life. Your ability to deal with these difficulties has as much to do with your success as
any other factor.
The Test of Character
It’s easy to feel good about yourself and to have high levels of happiness when everything is going well, but the true test of a man or woman is when you can keep your head and continue to function when things seem to be falling down around you, and everyone else is discouraged and often blaming it on you. These are the times when you really show the kind of stuff you are made of.
The Stanford University Business School conducted extensive research into the qualities of a man or woman that mark him or her for advancement into the executive suite, and ultimately, to the position of president and chief executive officer. They used a variety of questionnaires, surveys, and tests, going back to when an individual first joined a large company, to find ways to predict which people would be most likely to rise to the top of a large organization.
After examining dozens of qualities, they were finally able to isolate two qualities that were most predictive of executive success, in terms of assuring that the organization under their control would continue to survive and thrive in a dynamic and competitive world.
Play Well on the Team
The first quality they identified was the ability to perform well as a member of a team, and the ability to put together teams to accomplish common objectives. All the business and the interpersonal skills that make a person valuable to an organization seem to be demonstrated in a team setting. This quality was relative easy to observe and measure over the course of a person’s career.
Crisis Management
The second quality they identified was harder to measure, even though it was absolutely indispensable for long-term, high-level success. This quality was the ability to function well in a crisis.
Napoleon called this “four o’clock in the morning courage,” the kind of courage that is instantly available to a person woken up at that time, who has no time to prepare mentally and emotionally for a crisis. He called this the rarest form of courage, and, in his conclusion, very few people had
it.
In military terms, they call this being under fire. A question that all soldiers, sailors, and airmen wonder about is how they and others will perform under fire. They know that this is the ultimate test of the character and training of an individual.
Organizations know that, often, their very survival will depend on how well an individual deals with the inevitable, unexpected reversal of fortune. The Stanford study concluded that, although this quality was hard to measure because a real crisis could not be anticipated or created for test purposes, it was still critical in predicting success in the higher levels of the business.
Reversals of Fortune
This is also true for you. Your happiness and success is closely tied to your deep inner feeling about your ability to be effective when faced with problems and difficulties that hit you like a punch in the solar plexus. It is your ability to pick yourself up from the mat and keep on swinging that is the real measure of what you are made of.
One of my favourite poems is The Quitter by Robert W. Service. There is a verse in that poem that goes like this:
You’re sick of the game, well that’s a shame,
You’re young and you’re strong and you’re bright:
You’ve had a raw deal! I know, but don’t squeal,
Buck up, do your damnedest and fight.
It’s the plugging away that will win you the day,
So don’t be a piker, old pard;
Just draw on your grit, it’s easy to quit,
It’s the keeping your chin up that’s hard.
The quality of your entire personality is affected by how you deal with adversity, how well you keep your chin up. Successful and happy people are not those who do not have problems, they are merely those who deal with their problems in a more effective way than the average person.
B.C. Forbes, the founder of Forbes magazine, wrote that “History has demonstrated that the most notable winners usually encounter heart-breaking obstacles before they triumphed. They won because they refused to become discouraged by their defeat.” So can you.
The Challenge-Response Theory
In 1952, historian Arnold Toynbee was nominated for the Nobel Prize, largely as the result of his work in studying the life cycles of civilizations. He estimated that, in human history, there had been 21 great civilizations, 20 of which had broken down over time. He considered the American civilization to be the 21st.
His writings were meant to illuminate and give guidance to modern historians and politicians so that they could better assure the survival and success of their nations, and in the case of the United States, the perpetuation of the American Republic.
Toynbee postulated what he called the challenge-response theory of history. He said that every large civilization began as a small group of people that eventually found itself facing a challenge from the outside. In most cases, this challenge was composed of enemy forces bent on its destruction. However, in some cases, the challenges came from the weather or geography.
Deal with the Challenge Effectively
When faced with a challenge, if the small group of people responded in a positive and constructive way, they would overcome the challenge and, in so doing, they would grow. In growing, this group or tribe would trigger another, even larger challenge, usually aggression from other tribes.
Once again, the group would have to reorganize itself internally to face the even larger challenge. If it again responded in a positive and constructive way, and overcame the challenge, it would continue to grow. At each stage of growth, the size of the tribe, nation, or state would trigger ever greater challenges.
At each stage, as long as the civilization continued to respond effectively to the challenge, it continued to grow. The turning point came when the civilization no longer had the will or ability to rise to the challenge of the time, and as a result, it began to decline and was eventually swept away by the events of history.
All Civilizations Eventually Decline
Sometimes, as in the case of the Roman civilization, it took several hundred years before Rome faded as a major Mediterranean power. Once the Roman people became addicted to “bread and circuses” and various forms of government welfare and handouts, they lost their will to resist the external challenges represented by the barbarian tribes from the north.
Sometimes, the civilization fell rather quickly. In less than five years from his landing at Vera Cruz, Cortez was able to destroy the foundation of the Aztec civilization that had endured for hundreds of years. The centuries-old Austro-Hungarian Empire, weakened from within, fell apart in the four short years of World War I, and it never recovered.
However long the period of decline, the critical event was always the loss of will and the inability to rise to the external threat or difficulty. Toynbee concluded that with very few exceptions, civilizations decline from within before they are conquered from without.
The Story of Your Life
The reason that Toynbee’s theory is so relevant to us is that it explains much of our lives. No matter how well our parents protect us while we are growing up, sooner or later we face challenges and difficulties in our relationships, our work, and in our other activities. Each time we face one of these external challenges, we have the choice of either responding positively and constructively, or of letting it overwhelm us.
If we choose deliberately to respond in a positive and constructive way, to keep our minds calm and cool, and deal effectively with the inevitable problem, we learn and grow and become stronger. Our success goes up. Our belief in our ability to achieve our goals increases. Our self-esteem rises.
We develop a better self-image and we become more self-assured, confident, optimistic and happy.
The Rise and Fall of a Business
Every small and large company goes through the same cycle of challenge and response. If a small company is capable of rising to the inevitable setbacks and reversals it experiences, it continues to grow, and in so doing, it triggers even greater challenges, reversals, and setbacks. Peter Drucker said, “A company stays in business as long as it continues to make enough money to pay for its mistakes.”
One business consultant estimated that, every three months, a small business has a crisis that, if not responded to properly, will lead to the collapse of the enterprise.
You and I are similar to small businesses in many respects. Fortunately, an inability to respond will not lead to something as final as a business collapse. However, if for any reason, we don’t get on top of the challenges but instead let them get on top of us, our self-esteem and self-confidence will decrease and our ability to deal with subsequent difficulties will diminish dramatically.
Your Responses Determine Your Future
Almost everything that happens to you is determined by your responses to the ups and downs of daily life. Your responses are the result of everything you have learned and experienced over time. Thomas Huxley said, “Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.”
Your life, and everything about you, is demonstrated in the way you react. It’s not in what happens to you; it is how you respond to it. This is why the Stanford study was quite clear about this quality when it stated that “The proven ability to function in a crisis is the absolute prerequisite for promotion to a senior position.”
In a way, what we are really talking about here is character. One of your aims in life should be to develop your character, to become a better, finer, and stronger human being. The development ofcharacter, essential to your long-term happiness and well-being, requires that you go through the crucible of setback and temporary defeat and emerge victorious.
Problems and Difficulties Come Unbidden
You probably make every effort to organize your life in such a way that you minimize the unexpected and usually unpleasant surprises that may occur. You use your intelligence, education, and experience to arrange your life and affairs so that you avoid adversity wherever and whenever possible.
You probably plan and prepare carefully in advance to assure that things go smoothly, at home and at work. You are especially careful with your health, and with the well-being of members of your family. You are thoughtful about the things that you can do to assure a greater likelihood of success in your business or career.
You lock doors, insure properly, drive carefully, and otherwise reduce your potential exposure to unhappy events.
Almost everyone does this, except for those who are thoughtless and irresponsible. Yet, in spite of making every effort to avoid adversity, you experience adversity nonetheless. Adversity comes to you “unbidden.” You tend to be “blindsided” by adversity. It befalls you in spite of your very best
efforts to the contrary.
Adversity and Character Development
In the absence of adversity, however, you cannot develop a stronger character. You cannot become a better person. You cannot develop resilience, perseverance, and resoluteness of personality. You cannot develop into the kind of person who enjoys high levels of success, and a feeling that you can meet and master whatever you are faced with. You cannot grow stronger without the adversity that you so conscientiously avoid.
Caught in this conundrum, you have only one choice. You can choose, in advance, to be equal to the occasion. Ann Landers summed it up beautifully in these words, “If I were asked to give what I consider the single most useful bit of advice for all humanity, it would be this: expect trouble as an inevitable part of life, and when it comes, hold your head high, look it squarely in the eye and say, ‘I will be bigger than you, you cannot defeat me.’ ”
Your Response-Ability Is the Key
Frederick Robertson said, “It is not the situation that makes the man, but the man who makes the situation.” It is not what happens to you, but how you respond to what happens to you, that determines your whole life. In the responses chosen are contained the determining factors of human greatness or depravity. Great men and women are simply those who have responded well when the chips were down, and the rest is history.
Dr. Abraham Zaleznik of Harvard is one of the few people who has ever done extensive research into the subject of disappointment. What he found, in studying the way that different people respond to disappointment, was that you could largely tell how high and how far a person was going to go in life by simply observing how they reacted when they faced frustration and setbacks
in reaching their goals.
Dr. Zaleznik found that the great majority of people do not prepare mentally for the inevitable disappointments that come in life, and when they arrive, they tend to be taken off guard and emotionally overwhelmed. They then generalize these disappointments and allow themselves to feel that, because they have not succeeded, they are not really very good at what they do.
They tend to interpret these disappointments as being indicative of their lack of ability and competence. As a result, they become easily disappointed in themselves, and they lose the courage and confidence that they need to press forward. Often they become depressed, and in the majority of cases, they gradually give up. They stop setting goals and working on themselves and become more concerned about security and potential loss than about taking chances and potential gain.
Responding Well to Disappointment
The high achievers in his study responded to disappointment very differently from the low achievers. First, they mentally prepared for a disappointment, in advance, so that when it arrived, they had already given some thought to how they would react and to the possible courses of action open to them.
They regard a particular setback as being specific to a particular situation and not being indicative of a general lack of ability or of a character flaw. More than anything else, top men and women had developed a series of mental tools that they used almost automatically whenever things went
wrong for them.
Crisis Anticipation
Napoleon Bonaparte is considered by historians to have been perhaps the most brilliant battlefield general in human history. In a military career spanning 25 years and involving hundreds of battles, large and small, he lost only three battles. It was said that his very presence on the battlefield was
worth an additional 40,000 soldiers to the French army because of the boost in morale that it gave them.
Napoleon was famous for taking the time to study the battlefield and to think through every possible eventuality of the pending battle. He prepared with no illusions and with an attitude that dealt with the worst possibilities and reverses that could occur.
When the battle was underway, and confusion reigned everywhere, a steady stream of messengers and officers would come to him with news and messages, requesting instructions on what to do next. His responses were always clear, concise, and immediate. No matter what happened, he had
an order and an answer at the tip of his tongue. The reason for this, and what helped to make him the master of all of Europe, was because he had thought everything through in advance.
Advance Thinking and Planning
This article, Resilience: Bouncing Back From Adversity, is meant to be practical and helpful to you. I’m going to share with you some of the best mental tools used by the most effective men and women in our society to cope with adversity.
What I suggest is that you study them, turn them over in your mind, and review them regularly until they become an automatic part of your thought processes. When they do, I promise that you will take a giant step toward becoming unstoppable and toward enjoying the high levels of success and happiness that are possible for you.
The Concept of Failure
The first mental technique is for you to reassess your entire attitude toward the concept of failure. You know that the “fear of failure” is the greatest single obstacle to success and happiness in adult life. You also know that this is a conditioned response that originated in early childhood as the result of destructive criticism and other mistakes that your parents made in bringing you up. Fortunately, it is a learned fear, and because of this, it can be unlearned, thereby freeing you from the fears that hold you back and giving you the courage that propels you forward.
The starting point of eliminating this fear is for you to accept and realize that no success is possible without failure. All success is preceded by failure, usually great failure, repeated over a long period of time.
Abraham Lincoln was considered one of the great failures of American politics, a man who lost his business, lost his sweetheart, and was defeated for election over and over again. However, by learning from every defeat, he won the final election and became one of the most important and respected presidents the United States of America have ever had.
As Stanley Judd wrote, “Don’t be afraid to fail. Don’t waste energy trying to cover up failure. Learn from your failures and go on to the next challenge. It’s ok to fail. If you’re not failing, you’re not growing.”
Double Your Rate of Failure
You only learn how to succeed by failing, and no success is possible without it. A young journalist who asked him how he could be more successful faster once visited Thomas J. Watson. Watson, the founder of IBM, replied with these wonderful words, “Do you want to be successful? Then, double your rate of failure. Success lies on the far side of failure.”
Every man or woman of great achievement has been, at one time, a magnificent failure. The greatest successes of our generation and of our history books are the stories of men and women who failed so many times that they finally learned how to succeed.
On the David Susskind Show some years ago, they had four men who had all become entrepreneurial millionaires before the age of 35. They were asked, during a break, to add up and calculate the total number of different businesses that they had started or tried before they found the business in which they made their fortunes. It turned out that the four men had started an average of 17 businesses each, an average of 16 of which had been unsuccessful, but it was the 17th business that had made them rich.
Now the obvious question is this: Did those young men fail in each of their previous business enterprises? The answer is clear. They did not fail. They were learning how to succeed. Their previous business enterprises were the testing grounds at which they learned the lessons necessary to achieve financial independence later.
Our Greatest Inventor
Thomas Edison was the most successful inventor of the 20th century, or of any century. He developed not only the electric light bulb, but the electric power company that made it possible to sell and deliver electric current and sell electric light bulbs to every city, town, and village in America. He patented more than one thousand devices at the U.S. Patent Office, almost all of which were brought into commercial production within his lifetime. The way of life of almost everyone in the world, has been profoundly affected by his successes in the area of invention.
However, Thomas Edison was also an extraordinary failure as an inventor. He failed more times than any other inventor of his age. He failed thousands and thousands of times in attempting to find the proper filament for the first electric light bulb. He failed thousands of times more in attempting to find the proper plant from which to draw natural rubber. In his laboratories at what is now known as General Electric, he brought together some of the finest scientific minds of the age so that they could dramatically increase the number and speed of their failures.
Success Is a Numbers Game
Edison knew that success is a numbers game. It is based on intelligent effort and the law of probabilities. If you try enough different things in enough different ways, and you learn from each test or failure, then you must inevitably be successful. The fear of failure, on the other hand, causes
people to try fewer and fewer things, thereby lowering the probability that they will ever achieve anything of consequence.
Henry Ford, who was bankrupt at the age of 40 and who went on to become one of the world’s richest men, wrote, “Failure is just another opportunity to more intelligently begin again.” Dr. Joyce Brothers wrote that “The person interested in success has to learn to view failure as a healthy, inevitable part of the process of getting to the top.”
Learn from Every Failure
Your job is not to fear failure or to avoid failure so much that you also avoid success. Your job instead is to move forward and take intelligent risks, thinking them through in advance and learning everything you can as you go along. Zig Ziglar said that you can tell how high a building is going to be by looking at how deep they dig the foundation. The height to which you rise in life will always be determined by the depth of your own personal foundation, which is almost always the quality and quantity of your failures, and what you have become as a result of them.
Napoleon Hill wrote, “When defeat comes, accept it as a signal that your plans are not sound: rebuild those plans and set sail once more toward your coveted goal.”
Dale Carnegie wrote, “The successful man will profit from his mistakes and try again in a different way.”
The starting point of bouncing back from adversity is to overcome the fear of failure, to the point at which you are willing to proceed boldly in the direction of your dreams. Whatever your emotions, fear, or desire, they control your decisions and everything you do. When you write down clear goals and make detailed plans for their accomplishment, and then think about your goals all the time, you build up within yourself the “white hot heat” of desire that
can eventually become so powerful that it overcomes any fear of failure that might hold you back.
The more you think, talk, and write about your goals, the more determined you become to make them a reality, and the more likely it is that you will push yourself forward to overcome the fears that might hold you back.
Plan for the Future
The second mental technique you can use to deal with adversity is called crisis anticipation, and it refers to your ability to think. Your mind is the most powerful tool that you have with which to apprehend reality. Everything you feel and all your reactions are initially determined by how you think about any subject. If you change the quality of your thinking, you change the quality of your life. This begins by applying your ability to think to your existing situation.
Crisis anticipation is the exercise of looking down the road, 6–12 months, and making a list of everything that could go wrong in the areas that are important to you. It is similar to what Napoleon did in anticipation of an upcoming battle.
If you’re in business, make a list of all the problems that might arise that could threaten the survival of your business. If you’re in sales, make a list of all the things that could happen that could dramatically decrease your sales volume. With regard to your family, or even when considering a family vacation, make a list of all of the unexpected events that could occur that would derail your plans and goals.
Spread the Risk
In one business I worked with, the owner found that more than 60 percent of the sales were coming from 2 of the 11 sales people. If one of those people quit—or worse, went to work for a competitor—the company’s sales volume would decline dramatically, and its ability to survive might actually be threatened.
Once the owner was clear about this, he immediately began an intensive sales training program for all his people. Simultaneously, he began recruiting and looking for better sales people while making arrangements to encourage his poor performers to go elsewhere. Within six months, no single sales person accounted for more than 15 percent of the business. And when it happened that one of his previous top sales people did decide to leave, the business was able to absorb the temporary drop in productivity and continue to grow.
What Could Go Wrong?
What are the likely crises that might occur in your life? What if interest rates doubled, or your business dropped by 50 percent? What if your best-selling products stopped selling or your best customers stopped buying? In what areas are you overly dependent on someone or something else for your continuing success? And what steps could you take, starting today, to guard against a crisis, should it occur? You will be amazed at how much more success you have when you have thought through the critical areas of your life and made plans in case something goes wrong.
Otto Von Bismarck, the “Iron Chancellor” of Germany, was considered to be one of the finest statesmen of the century. He was famous for always having what came to be called a Plan B for every situation. No matter what happened, and no matter how hard he had worked to bring about a particular result, if he was not successful, he could always reach into his drawer and pull out a fully developed backup plan ready to go. This habit of preparing for the unforeseen outcome led to him becoming one of the most powerful statesmen in Europe.
Become Intensely Solution Oriented
Think about the solution, about what can be done rather than what has happened and who is to blame. Don’t waste a minute being upset or angry about something that has happened that cannot be changed.
Consciously choose the future over the past. Become intensely solution oriented rather than problem oriented. Think about what can be done immediately to resolve the difficulty. Look for the valuable lesson you can learn from this situation. Think how you can minimize the damages and maximize any opportunities that might arise out of this setback. As Friedrich Nietzsche, the philosopher, once said, “What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.”
The only real antidote to worry and negativity is positive, purposeful, constructive action in the direction of your goals. As soon as you take action, your self-esteem and self-confidence start to increase again. You begin to feel more in control of your emotions and of your life. You stop making excuses and you start making progress. You start thinking about how you can turn this situation to your advantage.
Never Consider the Possibility of Failure
In the final analysis, you triumph over adversity by having clear values, clear goals and plans, and complete control over your mind and your thinking. You win by thinking about winning all the time and refusing to consider the possibility of losing. You win by resolving to persist, no matter what the odds, no matter what happens, until you succeed. You recognize that persistence is a form of courage. It is the courage to endure in the face of adversity and disappointment, and it is the one quality that guarantees that ultimately you will be successful.
Calvin Coolidge, President of the United States, summed this up when he wrote, “Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”
Courage and Persistence
Persistence is self-discipline in action. Each time you exert the self-discipline to persist in the face of adversity and disappointment, your self-esteem goes up. When you practice persistence, you build up your resistance to taking the easy way out. You create the friction that comes from going against your natural tendencies. You generate the heat that crystallizes your character at a new higher level. And with this higher level of persistence, self-discipline, and character, your happiness, success, and personal pride increase.Your belief in yourself serves as a deep foundation of success on which you build a great life. You become more positive, more optimistic, and more unstoppable in everything you do. You do this because, as Churchill said, you “Never give up; never, never give up.”
Action Exercises:
1. Identify one major adversity that you dealt with and recovered from. What did you learn that has helped you to become a better person?
2. Determine the worst possible thing that could happen in your business or career. What could you do now to minimize the negative effects if it did occur?
3. What are the three worst things that could happen in your personal and family life, and what could you do to prepare against them?
4. What are the three biggest mistakes you have made, and what did you learn from each one?
5. What is the most effective way you could respond to your biggest problem today?
6. In what areas should you be prepared to take action and move forward rather than playing it safe?
7. What one action will you take immediately to face your fears and move forward to the achievement of one of your most important goals?