13 Aug How to Turn Stumbling Blocks Into Stepping Stones
It’s not negative, just realistic to note that life is full of obstacles.
It just is.
But that need not be a bad thing; those obstacles can become life lessons from which we can grow and improve, become better and happier.
How? Well, this Thrive Global article by Deborah Liu provides some good ideas …
Charting your own course isn’t easy, but breaking down the problem and seeking support and accountability can be the secret to long-term success.
Sanyin Siang long called herself “the girl with a plan.” She graduated as the valedictorian of her high school and won the prestigious A. B. Duke Scholarship, which Duke University awards to only the top few applicants each year.
From a young age, Sanyin wanted to be a doctor, and she worked toward that goal her whole life. During her junior year in college, because of her slipping grades, she lost her scholarship, and her dreams of becoming a doctor disappeared overnight. While her future had once been clear, she now faced a yawning void. Her disappointment in herself over the loss of her dream devastated her.
So “the girl with a plan” now had to come up with a new one. Sanyin turned that failure into the catalyst to write her next chapter. Now free to explore all her options for the first time, Sanyin regrouped and decided to explore a different path. This eventually led her back to Duke to get her executive MBA from the Fuqua School of Business. She then founded and became executive director of the Fuqua/Coach K Center on Leadership and Ethics, a role she has held for nearly two decades.
Today Sanyin coaches CEOs, well-known athletes, and military leaders. She has over a million followers on LinkedIn who learn from her experience. She sits on the board of multiple companies and nonprofits. This was all possible because of that stumbling block when she was twenty-one, which became her stepping-stone to success.
We all fail at one point or another. The only decision we can make is whether to let that failure define us. When I was in business school, I wanted to work abroad during the summer between my first and second years. I took an internship at McKinsey & Company in Hong Kong, which allowed me to live out my dream of spending time with my grandmother and explore working abroad. But at the end of that summer, I didn’t receive an offer to return to McKinsey full-time. To not be invited back to a prestigious firm after a summer internship signaled failure and was deeply crushing. I haven’t talked about it until now. Looking back, I realize now that it was also the reason I didn’t fall back to the safety of consulting and instead took a risk joining a startup, PayPal, in Silicon Valley. This opened the door to the rest of my career…
… keep reading the full & original article HERE