Thunderbolts

It's a very dangerous thing to become accustomed to good luck and a charmed existence. Hurricanes, terrorism in Manhattan, outbreaks of disease or a friend's passing; none of us can predict the future. Through the millenniums thunderbolts have changed the trajectory of life and civilization. Some scars are slow to heal; lost warriors left to their own device in Benghazi, a shooting in an airport, an earthquake in Mexico, a deadly bombing at a celebratory marathon in Boston. Thunderbolts are beyond our control; events that strike and rock us (a bad PPM monthly doesn't qualify). Though we have no choice but to accept life's knuckleballs, we do have a lot of options about what to do next.

It's how we react to thunderbolts that matters most and they're certainly not all created equal. In the daily threat-stream of life and career, the best we can do is to stay vigilant. Sometimes that's not enough. Today when everything on the globe holds potential conflagration, we can become numb to the unending stimuli. Still the reminder, "Don't be afraid, be ready," best applies.

Saving the worst and most painful of these unwanted and unexpected shots to the cerebral cortex, we can bring some perspective to those body blows that can occur in our daily professional life. (1) There is no doubt as to "will they occur?" Instead, it's when, where and how significant the fall-out? (2) We can curse the tides and fates, striking out at people with whom we work or the ones we love. And, we can play the "ain't it awful" game, surrendering to our misfortune as a victim. NBA icon Pat Riley once put it in perfect context: "Rocked by adversity, people sometimes get so much empathy and caring poured on them that their misfortune actually starts to feel good: 'What a tough break, you don't deserve it'." But as Riley once told the Lakers, "Self-pity is like junk food. It has no real nourishment." Eventually the emptiness returns, while little goes forward in the interim.

It needs be said: These thoughts address professional or relational setbacks, not the life-changing loss of a loved one or close friend. With that, we can learn to forget about sympathy and reload our resolve. Even if the odds have shifted, they'll come back around assuming you expect them to. Venerable longtime baseball manager Sparky Andersen was fond of saying, "Having a really bad day? Well, the world turns over every 24 hours," said the skipper. He was right.

When hit by a thunderbolt no matter how many ways you sift through it you have two options;

Give in with resignation ("it just wasn't meant to be") or fight like hell doubling-down on your goals and your beliefs. Consider Maersk transport fleet captain Richard Phillips, subject of that captivating docudrama movie. Phillips had mentally rehearsed the desperate odds of a hijacking in order to convince his somewhat skeptical Maersk Alabama crew that piracy drills really did matter. Within hours of those drills off Somalia, two ominous blips traveling at high speed and dead on-course for his ship meant but one thing; life-threatening danger. Phillips figured the odds using laser-fast contingency thinking and because of it saved his entire crew, though the Captain himself was kidnapped by the Somalis, facing what seemed imminent execution.

We can't do anything about where we came from, what we were born into, or what next week might bring. But with those days in-between, there's much we can do about mental toughness and our expectations for dealing with life's inevitable thunderbolts.