Sage advice from the NFL
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A long time ago, I was reading an article in the sports section of the NYTimes detailing the bio and story of an NFL football player, whose name for the life of me I just cannot remember (!) I do not follow football, thus I am not surprised I cannot remember his name, yet I am sad as he shared a piece of advice that really impacted me (and continues to do so to this day). When asked what has fueled his discipline, perseverance, and hard work, he explained how when he was young, his grandmother told him “Life does not owe you anything”. He explained how his grandmother told him how nothing in life is guaranteed, no matter how hard he may work. You are not owed a life filled with things you believe you deserve. You are not owed your particular definition of fairness. You are not owed a future free of pain or sadness. Life doesn’t owe you anything; anything you want you are going to have to get, create, and build. And even then, you may work extremely hard for something, and you are still not owed a successful reward.
The above was a truth I already knew, yet there was something about his delivery and how it was written in the article that really hit home. Internalizing how life does not owe me anything, at any given time, has truly strengthened my ability to be resilient.
I have always been described as someone perseverant. If you look up perseverance in the dictionary, the definition is “steadfastness in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success”. My confidence around my perseverance has helped me tremendously throughout the years. I have always known that no matter what needed to get done, I would figure it out. Hence, I’ve never been too scared to take things on, no matter how difficult or big.
Resilience, on the other hand, is defined as “the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties”. This was another word I have always felt aligned with, especially when I was younger and experiencing less than ideal circumstances. Yet as we get older, it’s easy for our stamina to wane here. Maybe it’s when you are asked to be resilient over and over again and you start to wear down. Or maybe you start believing that you’ve “paid your dues” and it is now time to reap the rewards. Or, it could just be a function of time, a function of less physical energy, emotional bandwidth, and mental capacity. Whatever the reason, resilience can become a bit more elusive.
Yet, every time I remember the advice this football player’s grandmother gave him, I feel a calm within me. Life doesn’t owe anything to any of us, the best we can do when we are knocked down is to:
- Calmly assess the situation
- Gather any resources around us
- Pick ourselves up
- Recover to the healthiest state we can
- Go back at it again
Some might get depressed by this, but I find there to be an incredible amount of beauty in it. It allows me not to fall into victim more, feeling that life is “picking” on me unfairly. Life doesn’t owe anyone anything no matter who they are, where they were born, and what they have accomplished. What could make us more human to each other than that? And what could call forward our resilience more than such a connection to the overall human thread?
I hope this helps! I would love to hear from you, so please leave a comment below. If you enjoyed this post, share it with your friends and family!
Lots of love,
Judith