“Tragedy doesn’t create extraordinary people. It reveals who they were capable of becoming all along.”
Amy Purdy lost both of her legs at 19 after developing bacterial meningitis. Most people would understand if that became the defining moment of their lives.
Instead, she became a Paralympic medalist, a bestselling author, a motivational speaker, and someone who has inspired millions of people around the world.
And she’s definitely not the only one. One of the unexpected gifts of working with professional speakers is that I get to hear their stories. Not just the stories they tell from the stage. The stories behind the stories. The conversations about what shaped them, what broke them, and what ultimately changed the direction of their lives.
Over the past year, I’ve listened to people talk about surviving cancer, losing loved ones, overcoming addiction, rebuilding after bankruptcy, living through unimaginable trauma, and finding purpose after experiences that would have caused many people to give up.
It made me wonder…
For a long time, I thought tragedy created extraordinary people. I don’t think that anymore.
I think tragedy simply reveals them. Here’s why.
Most of us spend our lives never really discovering what we’re capable of. Not because we aren’t capable, but because we never have to. Life is comfortable enough. It isn’t perfect, but it’s comfortable enough that we convince ourselves there will always be another tomorrow.
- Tomorrow I’ll start exercising.
- Tomorrow I’ll write the book.
- Tomorrow I’ll leave the job.
- Tomorrow I’ll take the trip.
- Tomorrow I’ll become the person I keep saying I want to be.
Until one day … tomorrow disappears.
A diagnosis changes everything. A marriage you thought would never end, ends. You lose your job after 15 years. Someone you love is suddenly gone.
Suddenly, the life you knew no longer exists, and the version of yourself that fit that life doesn’t either. That’s when you’re faced with a question comfort never asks:
Who am I going to become now?
I don’t think that’s the moment people become strong. I think it’s the moment they discover they already were. When there’s no bridge behind you, you stop debating whether you can cross the river. You simply find a way.
The people I admire aren’t remarkable because something terrible happened to them. They’re remarkable because they refused to let that terrible thing have the final word. They rebuilt themselves, adapted, found purpose where most people would have found excuses. Their greatness wasn’t born from the tragedy itself, it came from the decisions they made after it.
That makes me wonder if we’re asking the wrong question. Instead of asking why some people become extraordinary after hardship, maybe we should ask why so many of us wait until life forces us to change.
- Why do we wait for the diagnosis before taking care of our health?
- Why do we wait for the relationship to end before saying what we’ve been feeling?
- Why do we wait until we lose the job before chasing the dream we’ve talked about for years?
Why do we wait until life backs us into a corner before discovering what we’ve been capable of all along?
I believe every one of us is carrying more resilience than we’ve ever had to use, more courage than we’ve ever been asked to show, and more potential than we’ve ever been required to uncover. Most of us simply haven’t encountered circumstances that demanded those parts of us.
The people we admire aren’t different from us. They were simply placed in situations that required an answer. And they answered.
Thankfully, life doesn’t require unimaginable tragedy before we choose to grow. We can ask ourselves the same question today that hardship eventually asks so many people, “Who do I want to become now?”
Not after life falls apart. Not after everything is taken away. Now.
Because maybe the greatest lesson from people who have overcome incredible adversity isn’t that tragedy makes us stronger. Maybe it’s that strength has been inside us all along. Sometimes life reveals it. But sometimes, we get to choose.
Remember, YOU GOT THIS!
ONE ON ONE COACHING – Good Things Are Gonna Come
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