How You Apply this Football Metaphor Dictates Your Ability to be Resilient
Most people think of resilience only in terms of how one reacts to adversity. However, it’s important to remember that the most important factor that dictates how one reacts is how one prepares.
Given that, resilience is a character trait you must build before you face adversity, not during. It’s not wise to wait until times of adversity to work on building resilience. The best metaphor I know for this thinking is a football metaphor.
Imagine you’re a quarterback with the season on the line facing fourth and goal, down by 4 points, with no timeouts, and only enough time left in the game to run one play. This is your moment of adversity. In addition, the play call is to run right, but it’s obvious the defense has a run blitz setup to the exact spot of the play design. What do you do?
This type of situation is what defines if you’re resilient or not. On the one hand, failing in this situation and coming back the next year better is a form of resilience. On the other hand, succeeding in this situation is a greater demonstration of resilience. What separates these two types of resilient responses is the ability to learn from failure vs. the ability to prepare in a way that prevents failure.
Learning from Failure is Good, but Preparing in a Way that Prevents Failure is Better
Yes, an important form of resilience is the ability to bounce back from failure. But the truth is you can’t bounce back from every failure. Sometimes a failure is final. For example, the case of a sports career ending or a rare opportunity such as the Olympics. It’s important to realize that the best form of resilience is in how you prepare to prevent failure.
With that said, let’s circle back to the fourth and goal football metaphor. If the quarterback is not prepared for the blitz, he calls the play as is and the play fails! If the quarterback is prepared, then he knows exactly what audible to call to take advantage of the weakness in the defense caused by the run blitz and wins the game.
An audible is a predetermined play that a quarterback calls in response to how he thinks the offense will be attacked by a defense immediately before the ball is snapped. The quarterback calls an audible either when he sees that the offense is at a disadvantage or when he sees a weakness in the defense that an audible can exploit. In our scenario, the offense is at a disadvantage because the defense is running a blitz to the exact spot of the current play call. The only thing that can save the game is if the offense properly executes an audible.
The Ability to “Audible” is Critical for Resilience.
Casual football fans typically take the “audible” for granted. However, the ability to read the defense and call the right audible is what separates average quarterbacks from hall of fame quarterbacks. Moreover, the ability to successfully “audible” in football, just as in life, is critical for resilience. But the only way you can call an audible is if you have an audible ready to call.
You can’t tap into your life savings if you don’t have any life savings. You can’t lean on your network for support in a difficult situation if you haven’t done anything to nurture your network previously. Get my point. No one wants to use their life savings to get them out of a bind, it’s an audible. No one wants to announce on LinkedIn that they’ve been out of work for six months and need help getting an interview, that’s an audible too.
In short, the better the audible the better the outcome, and to call a better audible you must be proactive in your preparation for adversity in the future. This is the ultimate mark of resilience.