keyword resilience You have to recognize that the world…

Keyword predictability keyword resilience You have to recognize that the world is an unpredictable place. Sometimes even gifted people will get knocked back on their heels. It is inevitable that you will confront many difficulties and hardships. When you face setbacks you have to dig down and move yourself forward. The resilience you exhibit in the face of adversity rather than the adversity itself will be what defines you as a person.

— from Failure & Resilience (Challenge/Failure/Perseverance/Accountability/Flexibility/Resilience) · What it Takes, Lessons in the Pursuit of Excellence

In the book

"It is the resilience you show in the face of trouble — not the trouble itself — that will define you." (Sample epigraph — replace with one of your own, or with a line of mine you remember me saying.) The moment you set a real goal and take real action — the work of the last chapter — you do something both necessary and dangerous: you make failure possible. […] So this is the chapter every doer most needs, because the doing guarantees the falling. And here is the truth I most want carved into you, the one at the top of this page: in the end it is not the adversity that defines you — even the most gifted get knocked back on their heels — but the resilience you show in the face of it. [Tell here, in your own words, about the hardest fall of my life — the season I nearly went under — and what it taught me about getting back up.] […] [Here is the place for my own turbulence — write in, or let me tell you, about the business failure that nearly took everything, and how I climbed back.] Here is why this matters more than almost any skill in the book: because everyone faces adversity, and the difference between the people who are crushed by it and the people who are forged by it is almost entirely resilience — it is the response, not the event, that becomes the story of your life. The highest form of this is not merely surviving stress but gaining from it. […] So here is how to fall, and rise, and fly again. Lead with the response, not the event. Remember it is your resilience, not the adversity, that defines you — and that your response is the one thing you always control. Fail well. Take responsibility even when it isn't your fault; run the three black-box questions — what did I do, what could I have done, what will I do next time; then accept, learn, commit, and repair; taking that responsibility is not a burden but the very thing that turns into empowerment, control, and eventual success. — Failure & Resilience (Challenge/Failure/Perseverance/Accountability/Flexibility/Resilience)

Related