“Fall
seven times and stand up eight"
(Japanese proverb)
I was only
18 and had never been so nervous, standing in the front of a large lecture hall
filled with faculty and college seniors.
What was I going to say? Did I
remember the key parts of my talk? And,
most importantly, was I ever going to stop shaking? At the University of Richmond, the pinnacle
of your college experience was delivering your Senior Thesis to the faulty and
other seniors. It took most of the
senior year to prepare and you couldn’t graduate without doing it. I was presenting research Dr Ken Blick and I
had done on the neurological pathways of operant learning, combining work in my
dual majors of psychology and biology.
It was information I knew well, all I had to do was talk about it. But I had to stop shaking first.
As I began
to speak, my nervousness increased and so did my shaking…then I began to feel
light-headed…then the room went out of focus…and then it faded to black. I woke up on the floor behind the podium,
looking up into the faces of my two major professors and a handful of
students. I had passed out.
I
successfully struggled through the talk the following week, got a passing grade
and graduated, but I never wanted to be in that situation again. Three months later when I started graduate
school at LSU, I signed up for a speech class in addition to my psychology
classload. I joined Toastmasters, a
community organization of folks who met weekly to give impromptu talks and hone
their speaking skills. A year or so
later, I enrolled in the Dale Carnegie Public Speaking course, a 13-week
seminar on public speaking and building confidence. On the final night, each of the 48 class
members gave a 2-minute talk to the group on a random topic selected by the
instructor…I remember, mine was “horses”, and at the end of the night the class
voted on the best talk. I won. I still have the book on Abraham Lincoln -- written by Dale Carnegie and autographed by all 48 classmates -- that I
received as my award. I had
taken my failure and fear and made something positive. I may have fallen seven times, but I got up
eight.
And I think of that when I consider recent reversals at my hospital. Financial reversals have forced us to reduce our staffing,
have limited our financial resources, and forced us to postpone or eliminate exciting (and
needed) projects. But if I've learned one
thing about our hospital folks over the past three years, it’s that they're a resilient bunch. Throw something
bad their way, they bounce back. Suffer a
reversal, it’s “just temporary” they say. Together, we down fall seven times and stand up eight.
So, keep the faith and keep pointed to the horizon and we’ll all get there
yet. So ask yourself:
What do you do to
recover from failure?
Who do you rely on for
support during tough times?
What can you do to
support your team after a mistake or failure has occurred?
