Fall Down, Stand Up, Repeat

“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?