There is no better than adversity. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance the next time – Malcolm X
Steven Crandell wrote recently in the Huffington Post about the necessity for entrepreneurs to turn adversity into opportunity, saying a lot rides on how we exercise our free will to create a personal resiliency.
He came up with a quick three question test:
- Can you commit to what you really care about? How?
- Can you maintain that commitment even as outside events batter you, even as you prove yourself to be frail and fallible, even as you have to radically change your strategy and goals? How?
- Can you live your everyday life with the durability, flexibility and transcendence of love? How?
They’re decent questions. Adversity is just life. We can’t win every day at everything. But in my experience, adversity is only a foe if you let it break you. I take the simple Tom Peters’ approach: if you’re going to fail, fail fast, learn fast and fix fast. Failing is just a step on the road to discovering what works. And when you find what works, that’s called winning. They’re not so far apart.
