Dyslexia, Cancer and New Year's Resolutions: Creating Your Strength

The United States has the intrepid leader, Abraham Lincoln, the United Kingdom has the bold Winston Churchill, and India has the freedom fighter, Mahatma Gandhi. For Canada, the nation's hero is unknown to many outside of the Canadian border.  He was not a eminent hockey player, a dignified spiritual or political leader, but a cancer-battling, one- legged runner by the name of Terry Fox. 

In the outstanding ESPN 30 for 30 documentary, Into the Wind, the film highlights the tenacious goal of the 21-year old bone cancer survivor, Terry Fox, after his right leg is amputated six inches above the knee. After the removal of Fox's cancerous leg, he recovered in a local children's hospital where many of the young patients did not survive. This dramatic experience had a profound affect on Fox. As an experienced athlete, he decided to shift his new weakness into a strength by fostering a goal to be the first person to run across Canada with only one leg. Here, Fox looked to promote cancer awareness and raise funding for cancer research. It is impossible not to shed a tear while watching the 30 for 30 film. Fox was and continues to be a champion among athletes.

Sadly, Fox was never able to complete his goal. After experiencing brutal weather conditions, constant fatigue (dude was running on one leg!), and self-doubt, he was only able to halfway complete his goal before discovering the cancer had travelled to his lungs, thus ending his courageous journey. Despite not finishing his goal, Fox had a more everlasting effect on his country. Not only has his foundation raised millions of dollars for cancer research, but his tenacity to not give up until he was physically unable to do so had Canadian citizens everywhere finding their own new strengths. Indeed, the country lost a hero, but gained national camaraderie.

Another less known, but not as heroic, individual that has turned his weakness into a strength is David Boies. In Malcolm Gladwell's newest outstanding book, David and Goliath, Gladwell depicts the story of Boies' unlikely success. Readers will first learn that Boies did not begin to read until the third grade! Boies battled with dyslexia and had incredible difficulty finishing his reading assignments. However, Boies lived in a small rural Illinois town where reading was not garnered with utmost importance. In his local community, it was common for classmates to quit school and go to work on the farm.

But in the Boies' household, his mother would often read to him while he laid in his bed. Although he could not read along with her word-for-word, he did establish an uncanny ability to listen very intently. It was not uncommon for Boies to regurgitate every word of a passage directly back to his mother. At this time, Boies did not think too much of his hidden talent, but later it would become a major strength to his profession. In fact, what happens to be a weakness (dyslexia), actually helped create an astounding strength (listening).

During high school, Boies' family moved to Southern California. His grades were unsurprisingly dismal and after graduation, he did not have much ambition. Boies later married, got a job in construction, and was living a modest life. Later he got a job as a bookkeeper, played bridge in the evenings with friends, and could have carried on with this lifestyle, but then his wife became pregnant. After their child was born, his wife pleaded her husband to make a career change. The family would need him to have a more serious-minded career. So Boies did the absolute unthinkable for someone with his weakness, he decided to go to law school.

Law school reading is immensely rigorous and demanding. However, Boies discovered that there were summaries of the major cases that provided the cases' key points. He was so good at finding the key points that he was able to generate outstanding grades and later transfer to Yale Law School. Yes, the same guy that barely survived high school! But analyzing and finding key points in cases were not going to create success for Boies as a corporate attorney. Corporate attorneys analyze thousands of cases. Boies' dyslexia would not allow him to succeed in this field so he decided to take a different, more suitable route, become a trial attorney.

Later, Boies' strong ability to listen meticulously allowed him to become one of the most prominent trial attorneys in the country. Here, Boies is known for his intense and lethal cross examinations. He is known to simplify complex cases to the jury while also causing the person he is cross examining to reveal information that is beneficial for Boies' case. Boies is now a named partner at Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP. He has argued one of the most important cases in past decade- Hollingsworth v. Schwarzenegger- which involved the California law limiting marriage to a man and woman.

Today is New Year's Eve. Many people will be creating resolutions to accomplish next year. Most popular resolutions are losing weight, saving money, and knocking a bad habit. But maybe a different goal should be created this year. Instead of focusing on the same monotonous goal, we should try to transform our more personal weaknesses into strengths. If you battle with anxiety or depression, embrace Yoga and meditation. If you have bad eating habits, learn to become a great cook. Essentially, you are creating a better you than simply creating a check list. Everyone has weaknesses, but it is those that embrace their weaknesses, exploit them, and turn those weaknesses into strengths that truly gain confidence and maybe change the world- just like Terry Fox.

Nothing Can Stop a Man with the Right Mental Attitude

Admiral Jim Stockdale was the highest ranking United States military officer in the "Hanoi Hilton" prisoner-of-war camp during the height of the Vietnam War. While a POW, he was tortured over 20 times during his eight year imprisonment from 1965 to 1973. As you can imagine, during this time Admiral Stockdale was not certain if he would be released and returned to his family. 

His time spent in the prison camp corralling the prisoners' morale is a fascinating story that is illustrated in Jim Collins' book, Good to Great. But what was most interesting to me was Admiral Stockdale's comments on how he survived and why others perished. Here, Collins asked Admiral Stockdale, "Who didn't make it out?" and Admiral Stockdale replied, "Oh, that's easy. The optimists. The 'We're going to be out by Christmas.' And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they'd say, 'We're going to be out by Easter.' And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart."

Admiral Stockdale further states, "This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end- which you can never afford to lose- with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be." So in his case as a POW, "We're not getting out by Christmas; deal with it!"

How often do we set goals that we either abandon and/or are crushed when we do not meet a specific objective? Even the lack of achieving the simplest goals can damage our self confidence. For example, 'By the end of this month, I want to decrease my spending by $100!' But at the end of the month, you find a new set of clothes in your closet and an increase in your credit card bill. 

Or, in another scenario, 'I am going to lose 10 pounds over the next couple of months!' So you head to the grocery store to buy ingredients for some new hip smoothie, but in the next couple of weeks all you notice are empty wine bottles and receipts to meals that you do not want to know the calorie count. We've all be in this position. We've all been optimist. We've all experienced the rush feeling, 'I'm going to drastically change myself for the better.' Problem is, it doesn't work.

The answer to achieving goals is so simple that it can literally be applied to audacious goals such as winning the Hawaii Ironman or to more modest goals such as reducing your monthly budget. The answer- retain faith that you will prevail in the end and you must also confront the most brutal facts of your current reality. Here's a a great example:

Jim Collins' wife, Joanne, began racing marathons and triathlons in the early 1980's. After accumulating experience, she began to feel the momentum of success. So after entering a race full of the best triathletes in the world, and despite being a weak swimmer compared to her competition, she managed to finish the race within the top 10. Now here is a great example of facing her brutal facts- Joanne knew that if she could finish in the top 10 after only training part time then there was a chance she could actually win the Ironman if she trained full time. 

The Ironman is a world championship triathlon that involves 2.4 miles of ocean swimming, 12 miles of cycling, and a brutal 26.2-mile marathon on the hot Kona coast of Hawaii. Indeed, it is a very tenacious goal. But Joanne was confident she could win the Ironman and cognizant of the brutal facts. Here, she would have to quit her job and decline graduate school in order to train full time. After three years of resilience and relentless training, Joanne crossed the 1985 Hawaii Ironman finish line in first place.

The answer to achieving goals is so important that it is worth repeating- retain faith that you will prevail in the end and you must also confront the most brutal facts of your current reality. So, here are two examples of how I retained faith in the end result and faced the brutal facts of my own goals. By focusing on this strategy, I was able to gain acceptance into an MBA program and also get back into physical shape.

• Instead of focusing on losing weight, I focused on becoming healthier. I never once weighed myself. The brutal facts I faced were acknowledging I would have to eat healthier and no matter how tough it would be, I needed to exercise daily. I began to turn the wheel and over time I noticed results.
• Instead of focusing on receiving a certain score, I focused on learning each specific area of the GRE. The brutal fact I faced was that I would not receive a standout score like some of the other students. But I knew that if I focused on my specific weaknesses and corrected the errors, my overall score would increase. In fact, my score went up by 10 points within four weeks.

Also remember, 'Rome was not built in a day.' John Wooden, the long-time winning coach of the UCLA Bruins basketball team, coached the Bruins for 15 years before he won 10 national championships in 12 years. Here's a brilliant TED talk from the man himself. A man that greatly understood the quintessentials to success.