No Way Back
Adam Holbrook invited me to his podcast a few weeks ago to talk about resilience. At some point in the conversation, he called me Mr. Resilience.
Most people think of resilience as bouncing back to where you were. Adversity hits, and eventually you return to the life you had. That’s not what happened to me. I haven’t gone back to the world I had. I’m not going to.
For me, resilience isn’t about returning to who you were. It’s about becoming someone who carries on in new directions, not back to the old one.
It’s not some unbreakable quality that certain people are born with, and the rest of us aren’t. It is not being afraid to fail repeatedly. Looking back at whatever version of success I’ve had, it was never about getting it right the first time. It’s about how many times you get back up after falling down. It’s about staying in the arena, even when it’s messy, even when nobody, including you, is sure how it ends.
Thomas Edison, a native son of my hometown, West Orange, said that genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. He held 1,093 patents, more than anyone in history, so he knew what he was talking about. My dad quoted that line to me constantly growing up. I don’t think I really understood it until I’d failed enough times to know it was true.
He was right. They both were.
That’s more or less what Adam and I get into this week. I hope you’ll give it a listen.
As Jimmy Cliff says in his song You Can Get It If You Really Want, first in Jamaican patois: “Forward and fiaca, manacle and den bosaca. Forward ever, backward never.”
You just can't argue with Jamaican wisdom.
You persevere! That is for sure.