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The Role of Adversity
Here's a favorite quote from Lou Holtz:

"Show me someone who has done something worthwhile, and I'll show you someone who has overcome adversity."

Why do people (including me, at times) look for some magic wand that will bend everything around them to providing them with an effort-free life? We buy into the fantasy that life is supposed to be easy and that the path to finding that easy life boils down to one little secret that unlocks the door -- without us having to exert any effort to attain it.

I've learned differently. I've come to the conclusion that the way we learn is through adversity.

When I was studying theatrical lighting in college, my professor and mentor told me a story of a lesson he once taught some other lighting students. They were doing lights for a suspenseful play in which one crucial scene involved one of the characters struggling to find and turn on a lamp in a darkened room.

The professor looked over their plans. One thing caught his eye.

"I notice here that you're plugging the lamp direction into a live outlet on the stage. Why didn't you connect it to the same circuit as the stage lights that will come on when the lamp goes on?"

Their eyes lit up. "We figured it would be much simpler that way than running all the extra cabling to do it the way you suggested."

"But how are you going to control it so the lamp and the lights come on at the same time?" he asked.

"Oh, that'll be no problem. We'll simply turn up the lights the same instant the actor turns on the lamp. There's really no reason to go to all that extra work of running all that cable."

He was about to tell them to do it the way he had told them, but they seemed so proud of themselves for figuring out a better way of doing it than "the old man" had told them, that he decided to let them see for themselves.

As they got into the dress rehearsals, they had no end of trouble trying to sync up the actor onstage turning on the lamp and them in the booth turning up the lighting. Either the single light bulb went on first, followed by the stage growing lighter a second later, or the stage grew lighter a couple of seconds before the light bulb went on.

They tried all manner of plans to ensure the lights went on a precisely the same time, but nothing worked. Finally, they decided to run the necessary cable so they could control the lamp from the booth, along with the other lights.

Afterwards, they came to the professor and asked why he hadn't insisted they do it his way. "If I had," he said, "you would have figured I was just set in my ways. The next time you got the chance, you'd do it your way. Maybe then you'd be on a tighter schedule and wouldn't have time to fix your mistake. This way, you'll never even consider making that mistake ever again."

We learn most clearly from our mistakes. That's why it's a mistake to look for a path that promises us an easy, obstacle-free way to success.

We actually need obstacles in order to succeed. We need mistakes in order to learn.

It's been said time and again that they way for us to succeed is not for us to wait until we have every potential problem solved so we can proceed, obstacle-free. That situation never occurs.

The solution is to take action, encounter whatever problems we're going to encounter, learn from them, and move forward from there. That's the realistic route to success.
Jeff

Labels: inspirational quotes