What It Means To Be Resilient
More than ever, being a leader means both being resilient and teaching others how to be resilient. What the pandemic has taught me, is that resilience is first and foremost about belief in yourself. I am resilient because the voice in my head that says I can, or at least, why shouldn’t I try, is louder and stronger than all of the voices that say I can’t, including my own (which speaks to me every day). Resilience, to me, is deciding many times each day to only listen to voices that encourage me to be better than I am today, not the voices that discourage me from trying. It’s a lesson I’ve been learning for 30 years. (And it relates to the concept of openness and pyramid thinking that I wrote about in December.)
I was in 8th grade when I read the first story that resonated with me. It was an excerpt from Where the Red Fern Grows about the bond between a boy and his dogs, something I had always wanted. After reading my essay, my English teacher pulled me aside and accused me of cheating, making it clear that I wasn’t smart enough to write a strong essay. A decade later, I had my first paper published by an academic press as a college graduate. (I also have two great dogs, Cady and Lincoln.)
