resilience …

“I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot… and I missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that’s precisely why I succeed.”  Michael Jordan

Top performers have learned something that many potential top performers haven’t learned yet.   They know how to bounce back from disappointment, loss and great challenges.

Resilience is the propensity to bounce back from a fall.    As a ball contacts a surface it compresses and that stored energy rebounds and causes the ball to bounce back.    When we fail or make a mistake we also need to find a way to bounce back.    Resilience is the story of winners not whiners.   Winners find a way to come back and finish strong.

Those who have found a way to bounce back.   When Jack Canfield got rejected time and time again before getting his “Chicken soup for the soul” published he could have let the first rejection stop but he didn’t he kept pressing ahead not after 1 or 2 or after 50 but closer to 100 rejections before a publisher printed his book.

Fred Smith could have turned thrown his dream into the wastepaper basket after his professor gave him a “C”on his idea for Federal Express.   SouthWest Airlines could have folded before it started if it weren’t for the resilience of Herb Kelleher.

Winners find a way to bounce back and achieve their goals.   When they do they have success stories that can be told and used in case studies about business success.   When Lance Armstrong was diagnosed with cancer he didn’t let the cancer define him, he used it as a stepping stone for greater success.   He bounced back.

How are you at bouncing back?    Do you feel like a setback is a reason to quit?   Do you feel like you aren’t good enough and you’re not the right person to take up the challenge?

People who are resilient take charge of their life rather than letting the circumstance take charge of their life.    If you are having a bad day, a bad week, a bad month, or a bad year, step back and assess your situation.  Are you taking charge or are you letting the circumstance dictate your next step?

If you’re ready to make a change and become resilient and you don’t know how … contact a coach, work with someone and become a resilient person.

be resilient

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” Steve Jobs

Many people feel like they are at the end of their rope.     Life has dealt them a hard blow and they have fallen from their perch that once was high and lofty.  Not long ago a business person thought that the best path to the future was getting out of the business he had been in for over 30 years.   The business was no longer satisfying, the hours were long and the work was hard.    Finding people to work in the business wasn’t easy either, turn-over was high and the work was hard.    His choice to quit, to give it up and turn to something else.  Even though the business was working,  the heart to keep the business running wasn’t.    So, what do you do?

After a long, long time at one occupation, one career, one way of work it takes a lot of energy to change and start doing something else.   It takes resilience, the same properties as a rubber ball, to bounce back and find meaning and passion in life again.

Resilience is an important property to have.   Resilience is the ability to recover from defeat and come back again.   There are many, many stories of people who started a business and did everything they could to keep it going and it still didn’t  survive.    Sometimes people are able to make a comfortable living doing something and then the whole market changes leaving them with one choice, to close the doors.   It takes resilience to come back from small defeats and the even larger defeats.

Most people have experienced some type of event that took the air right out of them.   There are people who have had major medical issues and had to fight back for years to regain their strength.   There are people who are still looking for a good job and are finding that there aren’t any that fit who they are.   It takes resilience to reinvent oneself.

Confucius spoke encouraging words when he said, “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”   Resilience is the positive force that allows one to spring back, to have the ability to grow and to build and to succeed where you haven’t succeeded before.

No defeat is ever final unless you let it be.   Bounce back and move to a height higher than you were before you felt the pressure to change.  Be resilient.