Transcriber: Nguyễn Thị Thanh Ngọc 11CA3 - 13 - Reviewer: David DeRuwe
In my hand is a metal washer;
it distributes the load of a nut or a bolt.
During World War Two,
a device just like this one stopped Nazi Germany.
More on that later.
The previous example is one of success over surrender,
but not all stories share that same fate.
Failure is inevitable,
but it can be exceptional if you learn from it.
In fact, Albert Einstein believed that failure is success in progress.
Of course, this is often much easier said than done.
This leads to my bigger question:
How might we move forward from failure?
To answer this, I will share why, what and how
you can pivot over, under or around any obstacle.
Why am I here?
15 years ago,
my then one-month-old son, Max, stopped breathing during a feeding.
He turned gray, went limp and looked lifeless.
I started CPR,
carefully pressing on his chest while breathing into his mouth.
Pressing, breathing;
pressing, breathing;
pressing, breathing.
Time stopped.
Finally,
inhale, exhale;
inhale, exhale.
Max stared up at me curiously with fully dilated pupils.
It was a fulfilling but frightening experience.
It happened on my birthday, but it was Max whose life I celebrated.
Unfortunately, the next six months were a blur of hospitals and heartache.
Six weeks premature,
Max bravely battled a barrage of accumulating ailments.
The following July,
my mentor and grandfather, Papa, passed away.
A month after that, my older son, Jacob, was diagnosed with autism.
I struggled keeping my consulting business afloat
while drowning in medical debt.
A figurative fire of failure consumed every aspect of my existence.
Each attempt to overcome my obstacles was unsuccessful.
I continuously hit dead ends,
often getting close, but not quite to a solution.
I was emotionally overwhelmed,
physically drained and financially devastated.
I was abandoned by people who I had once admired
and betrayed by others who I had once trusted.
Eventually, my sons grew stronger and more stable,
but I hadn’t yet found my footing.
I simply could not succeed
in the same setting that had splintered me;
I needed to leave what I had
to discover what I had lost.
I unexpectedly found an oil well of opportunity
in the United Arab Emirates.
And so in September 2014,
I took an 8000-mile leap of faith to Dubai.
Two flights, and nearly 24 hours later, I was on the other side of the world.
Exiting the airport upon my arrival,
I was overcome with heat
and hope.
My expat adventure of self discovery and self recovery
was finally underway.
How can you move forward from failure?
Pinpointing a problem and seeking a solution
are the first steps,
but identifying an innovative idea is, alone, not enough to fix a flaw.
“It’s not about ideas;
it’s about making ideas happen,” says Scott Belski.
Ideation is easy; implementation is hard.
However, a purposeful pivot can prove powerful.
A pivot is an incremental or fundamental shift in your strategy.
The precursor to pivoting is facing feedback from a failure.
“Close but not quite” was the feedback from my many failures,
and to realize the remedy, I needed to pivot.
P - pause to perceive the cause of my concern,
I - identify a strategy to surmount my situation,
V - venture over, under or around my obstacles,
O - observe and evaluate the impact of my effort
T - transform my mindset, to support my success.
My pivot was fundamental,
others are incremental,
but all are consequential.
Even this very event pivoted in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Initially an in-person event,
it first pivoted a year later into a fully online experience,
and now a couple months later, it has pivoted again
into a hybrid of online, recorded and in-person interaction.
What is the proof that this works?
Let’s return to the metal washer example.
The Supermarine Spitfire was an iconic World War Two aircraft.
It rallied Britain’s resistance against Nazi Germany’s attacks,
but despite its remarkable reputation, it had one weakness:
its otherwise impressive V12 Rolls-Royce Merlin engine.
Now, Merlins had traditional float carburetors like automobile engines,
but negative G forces when diving or flying inverted,
disrupted fuel flow to the engine.
This caused the aircraft to lose power, cut out or stall,
all potentially mortal problems.
With direct fuel injection engines,
German aircraft didn’t have this same issue,
and they effectively leveraged this key advantage over the Spitfire's weakness.
Winston Churchill said that failure is not fatal;
it is the courage to continue that counts.
Enter Beatrice “Tilly” Shilling,
a scientist from the Royal Aeronautical Establishment.
With the courage to continue in the face of formidable failure,
she found a fix for the Spitfire in 1941.
Nicknamed “Miss Shilling’s Orifice,”
it was a half-inch metal disc with a hole drilled through the center.
When placed in the fuel line,
it stopped fuel from floating up and away from the piston chambers in the engine.
Shilling successfully pivoted around the negative view problem,
giving Britain a fighting chance.
While it was a stopgap solution,
affected aircraft could be efficiently fixed while still in the field.
Shilling’s innovation later inspired a 1943 redesign
that permanently prevented the problem.
Both solutions fueled the fight and ensured that the Spitfire
could move forward from its earlier failure.
Earlier, I mentioned my frustration getting close but not quite.
But I now know that closer but not quite is really more accurate.
Each step forward or backwards that I took incrementally taught me a life lesson.
Pivoting moved me forward faster from my failures by forcing me
to identify who I was meant to be,
clarify how I was meant to live,
and verify what I was meant to do.
My overseas experience in Dubai rejuvenated and reset me.
Like Miss Shilling’s orifice, it opened a portal to possibilities.
It didn't solve all of my problems,
but it put me on a positive path,
and it helped me realize that I’m not broken, and I’m not alone.
Not only did I find myself, but I also found my life partner, Sylvia.
Another pivot awaits me as I return to the United States.
After moving forward from failure, I must now move closer to my sons.
Being far from them
was the opportunity cost of moving closer to me.
But I can now be better for them because I became better for myself.
Mythologist, writer and lecturer Joseph Campbell once explained
that to live the heroic life is to live the individual adventure.
I welcome my next adventure, and I invite you to do the same.
I will stumble, I will fall, but in time I will accomplish wonders.
And so will you.