I often make reference in my workshops to the idea of resiliency relating to business, sports, teams, leadership, and so on. A recent experience brought clarity to the relationship between resiliency, past experiences, and the difference between being a victim and a performer. Read on, as this personal story has a lot of business relevance.

My maternal grandmother recently turned 103 years old…there’s a story of resiliency all on its own. In my 38 years, she has changed little except for bad eye sight and short term memory. However, a few weeks ago this sweet elder fell and broke her hip. I don’t usually make a big deal about injuries because bruises and scars are like stamps on our passports showing that we’ve done some living. An injury in a 103 year old is a different matter...perhaps.

I traveled back to my home town to visit my grandmother in hospital. The hospital had apparently frantically looked for my grandmother’s medical records when she first arrived, with no results. My mother had said, “You won’t find any files since there’s been nothing very wrong with her since the 1940’s!!” Anyway, I had expected this visit to the hospital to be the last time I’d see my grandmother as she was certainly too old to have the surgery needed to fix the hip. She had even suffered a small heart attack just after the fall due to the stress and shock.

Much to my surprise, my grandmother was in very good spirits and aside from being restricted to the bed, she was pretty much her old self. The more I visited the more I realized that this person wasn’t going to check out of this world anytime soon as she asked, “when can I get out of here”. You see, because her short term memories are only good for about 20 minutes, she kept forgetting why she was in hospital. She knew she was injured but not sure how or why. She had absolutely no memory of the fall. We don’t hear her talking about dying or leaving ... she doesn’t think about it. Instead, she’s thinking about what’s next on the agenda!! She doesn't put energy into how things got this way... she moves on in spite of them! By the way, she bounced back so strongly that she is now doing physio on a new plastic hip joint!

This brings me to the following observation based on an insightful comment my girlfriend made: If we don’t remember how we became injured, would we still feel victimized? If we don’t feel like a victim, how would that change our ability to keep going? If we have no memories of bad experiences, history, fears, reasons, excuses, and other emotional baggage to hold us back, how much sooner would we be able to achieve our goals and dreams…or just perform at a much higher level? If a company’s business had been crushed many times by economic downturns, global crisis, etc., is that company more resilient or more diminished compared to a start-up business with none of that history? What are the factors and choices that influence a person’s ability to overcome their history and fears? Perhaps not remembering our tough experiences would be a blessing. But what do you do when the scar-creating memories are front of mind?

As many of you know, I took a very powerful business growth course at Guthrie Castle, Scotland this past August. The intensive course was led by castle owner, Dan Peña. Dan is a perfect example of super-success and unrestricted high performance. His behavior and ability to achieve can best be described as “fearless”. Not that he hasn’t had a fear, it’s just that he never lets it get in the way of creating what he wants. The ability to act in spite of fear has given Dan near limitless choices in his life. There’s something to think about. He leverages his “scars” and history to build resiliency and results, rather than to build barriers.

So then, my questions for this month to consider are;