It’s Glow Time – The Blog

Ever fail at something? You’re in good company! People who succeed at great things nearly always fail at some point along the way. Walt Disney was fired once because his boss said he “lacked imagination and had no good ideas.” While, at this point in history we know that is sheer nonsense, I’m sure it didn’t feel that way to Disney at the time. And I’m sure Oprah was equally devastated when she was fired from a news anchor job for being “too emotionally invested in her stories.” 

What sets the incredibly successful apart from everyone else is resilience, or the ability to recover from tough situations and keep going. As a kid, I loved the word resilience because it sounded like brilliance. In my head, when people would say someone was resilient, I pictured them with a sort of glow around them as they pushed through failures or hard times. Resilient people were strong, optimistic, and somewhat shiny. 

As we get older and face challenges, and especially failures, staying optimistic and moving forward can feel pretty lousy and anything but shiny. What makes it worse, as in the examples above, is when other people tell you that you are awful and reject you. It is the kind of stuff that keeps us up in the middle of the night. Thinking over and over about what “they” said. It is one thing to fail at something on our own, but to have someone point out our failures is pretty rough.

People are going to give us feedback, even if we don’t ask sometimes. But whether it is hard to hear, totally wrong or completely accurate, they are giving us their perspective. We are getting an opportunity to hear something to which we would otherwise not have access. And the more we put ourselves out there and try new things, the more likely we are to get feedback. That can be useful for sure, if we know what to do with it.

While Walt Disney literally created the Imagineers and has never lacked for “good ideas,” perhaps he was trying to hold back and be overly professional on the job or perhaps he did not communicate his vision well at the time. And maybe Oprah did get “too emotionally invested” in news stories for an anchor. Whatever the reasons for their terminations, as devastating as that moment seemed, they obviously found a way to pick themselves back up, learn from the experience and be resilient as both have become household names.

We may not all be destined to build empires and become billionaires, but brilliant futures do await us all, if we are only willing to live them. Whether we become great accountants, fantastic customer service specialists, creative chefs or the world’s best nanas, we all have the potential future of greatness. The road to being awesome does mean we are likely to fail along the way. And when we fail, get rejected, or fall upon some tough challenges, resilience is a choice. It is not always a fun or easy choice. Staying strong and optimistic in the face of hard times is a lot of work. But when these times come, as they will, just remember who you are and what you’re trying to accomplish. It’s Glow Time.