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Well, the last foundational element of good power is resilience, being resilient. Because I guarantee you: anything hard and anything worth doing, you will not find a straight line to success. And it means you will have to persevere, and it may take time, and it may be very hard. And so in that way, being resilient, I think of it as the spirit of good power, because it is what makes you always have a way forward. And I would think of just two elements. It’s your relationships and it is your attitude.
Building Strong Relationships
First, your relationships. Why? Because relationships are fuel and they give you perspective on any problem you have to solve. But a really important point: I ask you to think about how do you build a relationship? How do you build a network? It’s not by what you get, it’s by what you give. If you give, I guarantee that network will come back to you and, ironically, at just the right moments. And the more diverse, the better those relationships, whether it’s your husband, your spouse, your partner, work people, anybody. And you want it big and broad because in some ways, they hold a mirror up to you in a way that you can accept it. And so that’s your fuel.
Maintaining a Positive Attitude
And then your attitude. There is always, and I believe from my history, there is always a way forward. When my father left my mother with nothing, no money, no food, and about to have no home, she was determined that this was not going to be the end. I remember standing in the garage, I’d accidentally walked in, when he told her that, and he told her, “I really don’t care if you go work on the street.” And in that moment I thought, “My poor mother. She is in her 30s, four children, never worked outside the home, and didn’t have anything beyond a high school degree.” She could have been a victim of all of this. Never saw her cry. What she decided to do was, “No, no, there was a way forward.” She would go back to community college, feeling, as she would say, “I feel like a dummy sitting here amongst all these people.” But get enough skill to get a little better job and then a little better job. And she never said it to us, but by watching her actions, she showed us no one will ever define who you are but yourself. And there is always a way forward.
And so in that way forward, that’s just about conviction. It’s about the ability to control what you can control. I ask you what you can control, control it, because there’s so much you can’t. Hey, I wear a headband so my hair doesn’t go in my eyes. In style, out of style, I don’t care. I’ve got to keep it out of my eyes. Compartmentalize, because as you go on, or the bigger the problem you work on, things get harder and harder, you can’t let that just sit in your head always. Take a problem, put a plan, put it in a box, put it on the side, go to the next thing, compartmentalize. So control, compartmentalize. Have conviction in what it is that you are doing. They’re all such important tools about how do you find your way forward. And that’s why at the end of the day, resilience: those relationships, and that attitude, which by the way will seep into whatever group you’re part of, it’s contagious. I can’t underscore why it’s so important, and it is the base of good power.