Obstacles Are Partners in Growth

Turning Life's Challenges into Opportunities for Personal and Professional Growth

Obstacles Are Partners in Growth

In The 7 Commitments of a Great Team, Jon Gordon writes that obstacles are partners in growth. They are part of our curriculum in life, and they are here to help us grow and get better.

I love this. And yet, obstacles have a way of stopping our progress. We attach meaning to them. We create stories about them. And those stories can keep us stuck longer than the obstacles themselves.

Adversity is a great teacher if we choose to look at it that way. But it doesn't feel good when we're in the middle of it.

I know, because 2024 rocked my world.

When the Curriculum Showed Up

We were coming off a fantastic 2023. Successes, wins, momentum. I was thinking 2024 would be our best year yet!

It unraveled in the second week of January.

I was preparing for our first BOLD: Advanced Leadership class of the year and flying out to California on a Monday morning. That weekend, I started feeling really yucky. Off. Achy. Three COVID tests, all negative. No fever. So I did what I always do... I powered through.

No sooner had I gotten in the air than I started coughing, and coughing, and coughing. By the time I landed, I felt like I had been run over by a truck.

I crawled into bed thinking I'd rally like I always do. When illness has hit before, the moment I step in front of a class, it's as if all the symptoms pause. I had a full class flying in. I was not going to let them down. Rest, sleep, rally.

That didn't happen.

I coughed all night, literally for hours. When I got up, I had no voice. BOLD requires a big voice, and mine was completely gone. I had to cancel the class.

Back home, urgent care ran every test. What they found was an upper respiratory infection that became the 100-day cough. Four rounds of prednisone. Three rounds of antibiotics. And when the cough finally went away, so did my voice. The virus had attacked my right vocal cord and paralyzed it. The doctor believed it would return... in 6 to 12 months.

I sat in his office crying. I don't have 6 to 12 months. I speak for a living. I teach. I am the primary facilitator.

That same day, I found out I needed two surgeries, each requiring a 2- to 3-month recovery. And one of our trainers quit.

Fear gripped me like never before. How were we going to keep Driven Leadership afloat?

Bitter or Better

In moments like these, we can choose to become bitter or better. It is a choice. Adversity feels awful, and sometimes it seems like there is no way out.

The story can be, "This isn't fair." "Look what they did to me." "This always happens to me."

Or the story can be, "So what? Now what?"

So what? We can't change the past. It happened.

Now what? What can I do? What action can I take? What's the lesson?

Here's what "now what" looked like for us. Our team rallied. One team member took over all of my follow-ups and sustainability calls. Another picked up sales and our online training. Eric, our co-founder, came out of BOLD retirement and started training again.

I learned to let my team help me. I learned that people are understanding and flexible. I learned to pivot by using a microphone, even though I never use one in training. And my Minnie Mouse voice (yes, I really sounded like Minnie Mouse) was still a voice, and I learned to be grateful for it.

It wasn't a tidy comeback. We lost two employees during my recovery, and that's a lot for a small business. We lost a major contract. We dipped into our own pockets to make payroll.

And we survived.

We didn't just survive; we emerged stronger.

Eric and I returned to training BOLD together, making adjustments that strengthened the experience and reconnected us to our foundation and roots. We created new content. Eric became an EOS Implementer. And we built a solid, stable business that no longer depends solely on BOLD.

I also learned to value my health—to rest when my body needs it so I can reset, recover, and show up fully.

As a result, both the business and I are stronger than ever.

I don't know if any of this would have happened without being taken down and taken out.

The Three Questions I Come Back To

When I'm facing an obstacle, or helping a leader or team work through one, I come back to these three questions:

What went well? What's a win?

It's important to celebrate the wins, even in the hard. There is always one if we choose to look for it.

I woke up. I have people who love me. I have a roof over my head. I have a job. I took a walk, went to the gym, moved my body. I made it through the day. I have a bed to crawl into tonight.

What could I improve? How can we get better?

What action can I take today to improve?

What's the lesson?

What can I learn from this that I couldn't have learned any other way?

Looking at obstacles and adversity as teachers helps us pivot, adjust, and become more creative in our problem-solving. It opens the growth side of our brain.

If we ignore the lesson, blame others, make excuses, or stay stuck in anger and frustration, our focus becomes the problem, and we can't see another way. That's bitter.