Resilience

It is funny the perspective and attitudes that can come with different life experiences.

I was reminded of this over the weekend by a simple post on Facebook from the Darwin Triathlon Club.

Over the weekend Darwin (my old home town) was hit by a cyclone. It was a relatively small one as cyclones go, only a Category 2. But that is sort like saying a person was only hit by a small car.

While the storm was a 'small' one, it still did its fair share of damage, trees down, power out, a few roofs lost, a lot of debris. It certainly left its mark. A person could be forgiven for being a bit shaken by the experience.

But this is where the post from the Darwin Triathlon Club comes in. There it was on Facebook, post cyclone apologising for having to cancel the 'come and tri' event that was scheduled for Sunday morning. In most parts of the world the event would have been cancelled the moment a cyclone seemed imminent. Not in Darwin, up there it wasn't until the winds had blown over half the trees in town that they were forced to admit that the race probably wasn't a goer. I can honestly say that I suspect cancelling the race probably didn't even occur to them until the amount of debris on the road forced their hand. It seemed so typically Darwin, which is a town that has a real tough nut, get on with it, never say die sort of attitude. While the circumstances weren't happy, I have to say the announcement bought a smile to my face.

It is a good example of how perspective and attitude can shape a lot of our experiences in life. In the case of the Darwin race they were forced to admit defeat, but not until it was truly forced on them. Plus from what I know of the people in Darwin, this will only be a minor setback, they will clean up their town and be back racing before you know it. This little hiccup won't slow them down.

Often the difference between an experience being negative or positive is simply how we approach it. Setbacks can defeat us or we can pick ourselves up and learn from them. It truly is a cliche to say that every challenge is an opportunity in disguise, but often it turns out to be true. Not all the time obviously, sometimes challenges are just that, when I tore my AC ligament there wasn't really any opportunities there, it was simply a challenge. However, more often than not I have found that from  my challenges opportunities have arisen. From most of my injuries I have learnt where I was weak, or where my technique was poor and improved from there. From most bad races I have learnt how to race better. Every bad session left me stronger and smarter. You can choose to make excuses and be defeated, or you can examine what is going wrong and try and work out a way past it.

I think there is a quite a bit to learn from the indomitable spirit of Darwin's triathletes.