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What Doesn't Kill You Gives You Knowledge, Power, and Inspiration
I’m generally a pretty chill person and I’m not easily stressed out or worried. I also tend to have a positive outlook and make decisions fairly quickly without deliberating or researching extensively. When people ask me for advice or want to know how I built this skill, I tell them that who I am today, my identity and my approach to life, is due in large part to three seminal life events.
“Aus der Kriegsschule des Lebens. — Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker
(Out of life’s school of war—What does not kill me makes me stronger).”
This is a slightly uncomfortable post for me, because it’s very personal. I often say my life is an open book and am not shy about sharing personal stories and details with others. However, putting this in writing on a blog feels a little scary. I’ve chosen to refactor that feeling as “uncomfortably excited” in the hopes that it might help someone out there. So here goes.
I’m generally a pretty chill person and I’m not easily stressed out or worried. I also tend to have a positive outlook and make decisions fairly quickly without deliberating or researching extensively. When people ask me for advice or want to know how I built this skill, I tell them that who I am today, my identity and my approach to life, is due in large part to three seminal life events. I am not where I am because of good luck. These were not happy events - in fact, you could inarguably call them tragedies. Don’t get me wrong, I have had a lot of good luck in my life. But I owe a lot to the bad luck and difficulty I’ve experienced. These events and the aftermath have all played an immense role in shaping my view of the world and the values I hold.
Content warning: Please note that the following stories include discussions of death, so if this topic could be troubling for you, skip right past the stories to the 3 Gifts Technique. On the other hand, I found writing about these experiences helpful and cathartic even after many years, so I’ve also published more detailed versions of the stories.
Loss of a Parent
When I was 18 years old, my mom died the week before my fall quarter finals in college. She had been diagnosed with cancer when I was 6, but my parents didn’t tell us kids much about it since we were so young. She occasionally went away for surgery and lost her hair during chemotherapy, but otherwise, her illness did not overshadow my childhood. When she passed away, it was my first experience with death and my first funeral.
In addition to grieving the loss of my mom, I returned to school the following quarter having to make up all of my final exams while starting a new set of classes. It was extremely stressful but I caught up in about a month. And eventually, I learned how to move on. The experience brought me closer to my father, because he and my brother were the only ones who understood what I was going through.
Prior to this, I had an innocent and happy childhood without facing any major difficulties, so this was the first time I had to deal with this level of pain and suffering. I learned that there were a lot of people I could count on to help when I was struggling, and I learned who my true friends were. I learned what grieving feels like. And I learned that I could survive one of the most devastating things that I could ever imagine.
Detailed version of this story
Natural Disaster
After I graduated from college, I moved to Kobe, Japan, for my first real job. About 6 months later, there was a massive earthquake (the Great Hanshin earthquake of 1995, 6.9 magnitude, 7.3 on the Richter scale) that destroyed buildings, roads, and other infrastructure and claimed over 6000 lives. I was living alone in an apartment on the second floor of a building that partially collapsed. I was displaced for several months, living in various hotels in Osaka and Kyoto and working in a temporary office space.
Since I had limited ties to Japan at the time, I was 90% sure I was going to leave the country, but ultimately decided to stay and over the next 3 years witnessed the rebuilding of Kobe and the amazing resilience of the residents. I had the opportunity to volunteer to help clean up homes that were ravaged by the earthquake, and learned how little material possessions matter compared to human life.
Divorce
I got married when I was pretty young (25), and it was not a healthy relationship. After years of counseling, mostly on my own, I made the very difficult decision to get a divorce. And while the decision was a relief, I felt confident that it was the right choice for me, and it was not a friendly parting, I still felt like a part of me was ripped away. I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with this person, and suddenly half of my identity was gone. It was like someone I loved had died, except that they were still out there and I might run into them any time. It was a huge financial burden too - lawyers are not cheap, and we opted for a one-time settlement instead of me paying ongoing alimony (we did not have kids). I had to borrow a good chunk of money from my 401K.
I lived in a fog for months, and at one point rear-ended a pickup truck with my tiny Prius and had to deal with the car repair. I felt like this was all my fault because of the poor decisions I had made, marrying someone despite some major red flags because I naively thought they would change after we got married. Ha! Yet I was also pleasantly surprised by the overwhelming support from family and friends, after years of hiding my shame and not telling anyone about a lot of what was going on in my marriage because I didn’t want to turn people against my husband. They were happy for me and did not judge me for seeking divorce.
Still, I was resigned to being alone for the rest of my life as penance for my mistake. Miraculously, the following year, I met an amazing man who loves me just as I am and is better than I could have imagined or believed that I deserved. And I learned from my mistakes so I could be a better partner.
The 3 Gifts Technique
Fast forward many years to this past week. I’m enrolled in the Positive Intelligence PQ program led by Shirzad Chamine and this week’s lesson included the 3 Gifts Technique. I love that it provided a framework for how to turn a crisis into a gift, which is something I had learned to do implicitly through my experiences. Whenever we face a difficult situation or crisis, we can choose to stay in negative thoughts, or turn it into a gift or opportunity, and this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The Gift of Knowledge
Ask yourself: What learning or knowledge would I need to gain so that the payoff in the future could be greater than the pain I am feeling or what this is costing me now? Imagine how you might put that knowledge to practice and create good results.
For example, let’s say you experience a failure. If you can learn and understand what went wrong and how to remedy those things, you will be more successful in future, and that is your gift. You can do this by actively asking yourself questions. On the other hand, if you choose denial or to feel sorry for yourself, you miss out on this opportunity.
The Gift of Power
Ask yourself: Which power or strength must grow in order to handle this? Shirzad talks about the Sage powers - empathize, explore, innovate, navigate, activate - and you can also think of it as the mental muscles you could build. What is the gift of that power growing in this challenge and other parts of my life?
To use my personal tragedies as examples, all of these allowed me to be more empathetic to others in similar situations, and also to better navigate future challenges for myself.
The Gift of Inspiration
Ask yourself: What inspiring action can I commit to that I wouldn't have if this “bad" thing hadn't happened. Set an intention about creating something in the world that will be so positive that the price you’re paying now, the pain, is trivial - the bigger your crisis, the bigger your intention needs to be. The action becomes a gift.
Related: Shirzad shares a compelling example of the Gift of Inspiration in this short video.
To be clear, the 3 Gifts Technique is not about suppressing our feelings and forcing ourselves to “think positive”. My own processing of a crisis usually goes something like this:
Oh…this is not good…I can’t believe this is happening to me. Hey, this really sucks! I don’t like it. This can’t be real. This is really bad. I’m not going to take this! What can I do to change it, or who else can do something about it? Ok, this cannot be undone, as much as I don’t like it. Did I mention I am not happy about it? Now, how do I make myself feel better?
It can take seconds, minutes, weeks, or even months. And we do need to give ourselves time to feel the feelings. But once you get to the question about what I’m going to do about it, you’ve reached the Fork in the Road, where you choose your self-fulfilling prophecy. At this point, if you stay in your negative thoughts, the result is usually a lack of action. But if you choose to reframe your situation using something like the 3 Gifts Technique, you can create good.
I’ve been doing this unconsciously to channel my frustration and restless energy in a couple situations where I felt helpless to reverse the circumstances. Before the pandemic I was teaching yoga at a local studio that closed during lockdown. I started offering a virtual donation-based class and over the course of 2 months, raised $1300 that went to several Covid relief funds. And while I started this blog before the recent layoff of 12,000 employees at Google, it has definitely inspired some of the topics I’ve been covering in the last few weeks. Going forward I’m looking forward to applying 3 Gifts so that I can intentionally convert my day-to-day and larger crises.
Watch Sydney Cummings’ Ted Talk on resilience and emerging from your tragedies even stronger.
Read Positive Intelligence or listen to the audio book (I earn a commission from qualifying purchases).