Marshall Taylor was born into a financially struggling family in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1878. His grandfather had been a slave. His father had fought for the Union in the Civil War, and was working as a coachman for a wealthy family named the Southards when Marshall was born. As a young boy, Marshall sometimes accompanied his father to his job and exercised the horses.
When Marshall was thirteen years old, the Southards moved to Chicago. They wanted to take young Marshall with them, because he had become such good friends with their son, who was the same age. In fact, Marshall had spent so much time with the Southards that he was treated like a member of their family. But the Taylors didn’t want to move. And Marshall’s mother couldn’t stand the thought of having her son leave her. So Marshall stayed put, and overnight his life changed from advantage to adversity. He later said, “I was dropped from the happy life of a ‘millionaire kid’ to that of a common errand boy, all within a few weeks.”1
Marshall immediately began looking for ways to make money. The Southards had given him a bicycle, so he began using it to deliver papers. For entertainment, he also taught himself how to do tricks with the bicycle. When the owners of a local bicycle shop learned about this ability, they hired Marshall. They put him in a military-style uniform and had him do tricks and stunts in front of their shop. Because of the uniform, the locals started calling him “Major.”
This was in the early 1890s, a time when bicycles were all the rage. At the turn of the century, the United States had 75 million people and only 5,000 cars, but more than 20 million bicycles.2 And the biggest and most popular sport in America and Europe was bicycle racing.3 People loved the races and turned out by the tens of thousands to see them, the way that people watch football and soccer today.
There were all kinds of bicycle races. Some were short sprints of a fraction of a mile. Others were longer distances. A few were multiday endurance contests where racers slept for maybe an hour for every eight hours racing. These long races of exhausted riders often resulted in injuries and occasionally even in deaths. Thousands of spectators watched the races in major cities across America and Europe. And some professional racers made a great living—four times as much as pro baseball players.4
Trying to make the most of racing’s popularity to promote their bicycle shop, one of the shop owners who employed Marshall entered him in a ten-mile race.
“I know you can’t go the full distance,” he told the nervous Marshall, “but just ride up the road a little way, it will please the crowd, and you can come back as soon as you get tired.”5
What the shop owner didn’t know was that Marshall cycled to and from work every day—twenty-five miles in each direction. The boy took off, and much to his employer’s shock and pleasure, not only did he finish the race, but he won! Though the race exhausted him to the point of collapse, he beat the other experienced adult racers by a six-second margin. And he was only thirteen years old!
That day was the beginning of an exceptional racing career for Marshall Taylor. It was also the beginning of a life of even greater adversity. Many of the local racers didn’t like being beaten by someone who wasn’t white. As a result, they made it very difficult for him. He was regularly threatened. A group of white riders made sure he would not be allowed to join any of the local riding clubs. And eventually they even had him barred from competing in the local races.
They suspected that Marshall was better than they were. When he was seventeen, he proved it. A friend and mentor managed to get Marshall accepted into what would essentially be an exhibition, since none of his results would be official. Marshall rode in a one mile race and beat the track by more than eight seconds. Then he completed the one-fifth-mile race and beat the world record time.
Knowing that he would never be accepted in Indianapolis, Marshall moved to Massachusetts, choosing the state because its delegation of the League of American Wheelmen was the only one to vote unanimously not to prohibit black members at a previous meeting. He competed successfully there, but many people still refused to accept him. He was repeatedly threatened. Racers would work together to box him in or try to harm him. After Marshall won one race, another cyclist beat him and nearly choked him to death. And when Marshall decided to go south to train one winter and set up in Savannah, Georgia, he hadn’t been there long before he received the following letter:
If you don’t leave here before 48 hours, you will be sorry. We mean business—clear out if you value your life.
White Racers
A crude skull and crossbones had been scribbled at the bottom of the letter.6 Marshall headed back north.
Marshall’s career was remarkable. The Black Cyclone, as he was called, turned professional while still a teenager. Before turning twenty, he set seven world records. He won twenty-nine of the forty-nine races he entered. And he won the world championship of cycling in 1899. He retired in 1910 at the age of thirty-two.
Sadly, Marshall was wiped out financially by the stock market crash and the great depression. He died a pauper in 1932. And his story of courage in overcoming adversity was forgotten by many. But not by his family. His granddaughter, Jan Brown, says, “The most breathtaking part of his story is his resistance to the limitations that others would have had for him…. The fact that he retained the focus and sense of spirit necessary to define and pursue his own goals is itself a prize. The fact that he achieved them, and did so in such a stirring way, is pure icing on the cake.”7
Writer and professor Robertson Davies said, “Extraordinary people survive under the most terrible circumstances and then become more extraordinary because of it.” That was certainly true of Marshall Taylor. The pain of adversity never leaves us the same. It is the catalyst for change. In Marshall’s case, he didn’t become bitter. He just worked harder. When he discovered that his competitors were going to try to hurt him during races, he learned to get out in front of them and stay there! He used adversity to make himself smarter—and better.
I believe that one of the times people change is when they hurt enough that they have to. Adversity causes pain and is a prompt for change. Most of the time we don’t choose our adversity, but all the time we can choose our response to it. If we respond positively to difficulties, the outcome will be potentially positive. If we respond negatively to our difficulties, the outcome will be potentially negative. That’s why I call our response “the if factor.”
There’s a story about a young woman who complained to her father about her life and how hard things were for her. The adversity of life was overwhelming her, and she wanted to give up.
As he listened, her father filled three pots with water and brought them to a boil on the stove. Into the first he put carrot slices, into the second he put eggs, and into the third he put ground coffee beans. He let them simmer for a few minutes and then placed the carrots, eggs, and coffee before her in three containers.
“What do you see?” he asked.
“Carrots, eggs, and coffee,” she replied.
He asked her to feel the carrots. She picked up a piece and it squished between her fingers. He then asked her to examine an egg. She picked one up, broke the shell, and saw the hard-boiled egg inside it. Finally, he asked her to sip the coffee. She smiled, as she tasted its rich flavor.
“So what does it mean?” she asked.
“Each ingredient was subjected to the same thing—boiling water—but each reacted differently. The carrots went in hard. But after they were in the boiling water, they became soft. The egg was fragile with a thin outer shell and a liquid interior. But it became hardened. The ground coffee beans changed little. But they changed the water for the better.
“Which are you,” he asked. “When you face adversity, how do you respond? Are you a carrot, an egg, or a coffee bean?”
Life is filled with adversity. We can be squashed by it. We can allow it to make us hard. Or we can make the best of it, improving the situation. As British prime minister Winston Churchill noted, “I have derived continued benefit from criticism at all periods of my life, and I do not remember any time when I was ever short of it.” Since you will face adversity, why not make the best of it?
Adversity is a catalyst for learning. It can actually create advantages for you if you face it with the right mind-set. It all depends on how you respond to it. Here’s what I mean:
Adversity always gets our attention. We can’t ignore it. It causes us to stop and look at our situation. And at ourselves if we have the courage. Adversity is an opportunity for self-discovery. As the great Egyptian leader Anwar el-Sadat said, “Great suffering builds up a human being and puts him within the reach of self-knowledge.” This I believe is true—if we embrace it that way.
Unfortunately, many people choose to hide during times of adversity. They build walls, close their eyes, run away, medicate themselves, or do whatever they must to avoid dealing with the reality of the situation. They are like Sergeant Schulz in the old TV comedy Hogan’s Heroes. Anytime something happens that they don’t want to acknowledge, they say, “I know nothing. I see nothing.” If that is your response to adversity, you will never understand the situation or yourself.
One of my favorite books is As a Man Thinketh by James Allen. My father required me to read it when I was in junior high school. One of the ideas that left the strongest impression on me as a youth was this: “Circumstance does not make the man; it reveals him to himself.” That is true, but only if you allow it to.
Speaker Tony Robbins contrasts the differences between one person who wins the lottery and another who is paralyzed from the neck down in an accident. Who does he say is happiest after three years? The paralyzed person. Why? The lottery winner hopes for his life to change but bases it on circumstances. In contrast, the paralyzed person is introduced to himself through adversity. He rises to challenges he never knew he could face. And he comes to appreciate the good things in his life, including relationships, as he never did before.
“In the end,” says Robbins, “when someone looks at their life and thinks about what makes them happy, they usually think about the people they love, and the challenges they faced and overcame, as defining their inner strength. These things are what they’re proud of and what they want to remember.”
Adversity has introduced me to myself in many times during my lifetime. It has opened my eyes. It has plumbed the depths of my heart. It has tested my strength. And it has taught me a lot. Here are a few of the lessons I’ve learned:
Adversity has introduced me to tenacity, creativity, focus, and many other positive things that have helped me to like myself better. Novelist and songwriter Samuel Lover asserted, “Circumstances are the rulers of the weak; but they are the instruments of the wise.” If I respond negatively to my circumstances, they will keep me enslaved to them. If I respond wisely, my circumstances will serve me.
Adversity comes to us as a teaching tool. You’ve probably heard the saying, “When the pupil is ready the teacher will come.” That is not necessarily true. With adversity, the teacher will come whether the pupil is ready or not. Those who are ready learn from the teacher. Those who are not don’t learn.
Philosopher and author Emmet Fox said, “It is the Law that many difficulties that can come to you at any time, no matter what they are, must be exactly what you need at the moment, to enable you to take the next step forward by overcoming them. The only real misfortune, the only real tragedy comes when we suffer without learning the lesson.” The key to avoiding that tragedy is wanting to learn from life’s difficulties.
One of the things I enjoy most about taking trips with family is the time we get talking together. Over the years, Margaret and I have enjoyed many wonderful trips with my brother Larry and his wife, Anita. We dine together. We visit the sites. We share laughter and sometimes tears. It’s fantastic to have so many memories from so many places in the world with people we love.
Not long ago we spent a week in Vienna, Austria. What a wonderful city, filled with history and musical influences. One night we sat in a café, where I shared with Larry and Anita that I was writing this book and asked for their thoughts. After hearing the premise of the book, Larry immediately quoted the following poem by Robert Browning Hamilton, which he learned as a boy:
I walked a mile with pleasure;
She chatted all the way,
But left me none the wiser,
With all she had to say.
I walked a mile with sorrow;
And never a word said she,
But oh the things I learned from her,
When sorrow walked with me.8
Oprah Winfrey’s advice to “turn your wounds into wisdom” can come true for us only if we want to learn from our wounds. It requires the right mind-set and a deliberate intention to find the lesson in the loss. If we don’t embrace those things, then all we end up with is the scars.
One of the greatest lessons I’ve learned as a leader is that adversity is often the door to opportunity. Good entrepreneurs know this instinctively, but most people have been trained to see adversity the wrong way. As speaker and cofounder of the Rich Dad Company, Kim Kiyosaki, observed, “Most of us are taught, beginning in kindergarten, that mistakes are bad. How often did you hear, ‘Don’t make a mistake!’ In reality, the way we learn is by making mistakes. A mistake simply shows you something you didn’t know. Once you make the mistake, then you know it. Think about the first time you touched a hot stove (the mistake). From making that mistake, you learned that if you touch a hot stove you get burned. A mistake isn’t bad; it’s there to teach you something.”
When many people face adversity, they let it get them down. Instead, they need to look for the benefit or opportunity. One of my favorite examples of this occurred with Proctor and Gamble back in the 1870s. One day at the factory, an employee went to lunch and forgot to turn off the machinery that was mixing the soap. When he returned, the soap had increased in volume because air had been whipped into it. What a mistake! What should he do? He didn’t want to throw it out, so he poured it into the frames, and it was cut, packaged, and shipped, even though he had ruined it.
A few weeks later, the company began receiving letters from customers asking for more orders of the soap that floated. Why? The soap was used in factories. At the end of their shift, factory workers washed at vats of standing water that became murky. Bars of soap that floated were easier to find when dropped. A manufacturing mistake led to an opportunity, the creation of Ivory soap, which is still sold today, more than one hundred years later.
You don’t have to be a businessperson or entrepreneur to take advantage of the opportunities brought about by adversity. For example, in the weeks following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, in New York City, Rudy Guiliani and other New Yorkers reminded everyone that New York was open for business, because few people were visiting the city. Margaret and I saw that as an opportunity and went to New York for a week. Imagine how much fun we had as we easily got tickets to all the best Broadway shows and ate at any restaurant we wanted. It was a once-in-a-lifetime trip!
As I write this book, the economies in America and in many other places around the world are not doing well. However, within the financial freefall many opportunities are surfacing. Business history is filled with examples of products and services that were launched during difficult recessions:
As Muriel “Mickie” Siebert, the First Woman of Finance, said, “Any significant change in business is an opportunity for a new business.”
Are you seeing the opportunities? Are you looking for ways to take advantage of them? Real estate prices are down: there is an opportunity. Interest rates are down: that brings opportunities. Business needs are changing; that provides a wealth of opportunities. Every adversity brings an advantage. Are you trying to make the most of it? Or are you letting adversity get you down?
In 1915, the people of Coffee City, Alabama, were devastated after their cotton crop was destroyed by boll weevils. The area’s entire economy was built on cotton. What would they do? Scientist George Washington Carver suggested that local farmers grow peanuts.
When the crop came in, Carver was able to show how peanuts could be used to create chemicals needed to make soap, ink, plastics, and cosmetics. It opened up the economy to new crops, new ideas, and a brighter future. Today peanuts are still a vital crop in the southern United States. How fortunate it was for everyone that Carver has seen the opportunity for a transition that adversity had provided.
In 1996, I founded EQUIP, a nonprofit organization that exists to train leaders internationally. So far we have trained more than 5 million leaders in 173 countries. But EQUIP also works to assist international leaders in times of crisis. Why? Because we believe that crises frequently give leaders the opportunity to learn, make positive changes, and create transitions to help their people. For example, when many of Poland’s leaders were killed in a plane crash several years ago, leaders from EQUIP traveled to Poland, because we knew that the response of leaders during negative transitions determines the response of the people.
The life of a successful person is comprised of one transition after another. Being static isn’t an option in life. Time is always moving forward. We can’t stop it, nor can we stop its effects. We need to make changes, and adversity can often be the catalyst. James Allen wrote, “Let a person rejoice when he is confronted with obstacles, for it means that he has reached the end of some particular line of indifference or folly, and is now called upon to summon up all his energy and intelligence in order to extricate himself, and to find a better way; that the powers within him are crying out for greater freedom, for enlarged exercise and scope.”
In the movie Black Hawk Down a vehicle filled with wounded American soldiers lurches to a stop in the middle of a street where Somali bullets are flying in every direction. The officer in charge tells a soldier to get in and start driving.
“I can’t,” says the soldier. “I’m shot.”
“We’re all shot,” responds the officer. “Get in and drive!”
In life we should all expect pain. It’s a part of life. It’s a part of loss. The question is, are you going to let it stop you from doing what you want and need to do?
No one ever says, “Go for the silver.” Athletes, coaches, and fans always say, “Go for the gold!” Why? Because gold represents the best. If you’re going to endure the pain it takes to compete, why not compete to win?
Successful people expect to experience pain when they face adversity. They plan for it. And by planning for it, they set themselves up to benefit from it. Fred Smith once said, “I listened to Bob Richards, the Olympic gold medalist, interview younger Olympian winners of the gold. He asked them, ‘What did you do when you began to hurt?’ ” Fred points out that none of the Olympians were surprised by the question. They expected pain, and they had a strategy for dealing with it. As Bob Richards summed up, “You never win the gold without hurting.”
An article by Amy Wilkinson in USA Today described the entrepreneurial spirit of America, which can be traced back to its beginnings and came to fruition during the American Revolution. Wilkinson wrote:
The handful of individuals who founded the USA were no strangers to risk and innovation. George Washington started one of the largest whiskey distilleries in the new nation. Benjamin Franklin was an inventor, and Thomas Jefferson an architect.
But these entrepreneurs made their riskiest investment [in 1776] when they laid the foundations for a democratic nation that endured despite formidable odds. In doing so, they set a precedent for daring and imagination that would come to define the American Dream.9
The Founding Fathers knew that they would face adversity as they rebelled against England. They knew they would suffer pain. But because they were prepared for it, they also were able to reap benefits from it. The citizens of the United States continue to reap those benefits. Wilkinson sums up the lesson by quoting PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel, who said, “The lesson people learned was that things are hard but if you really work at it, you can get it to work.” This is a lesson that all successful people learn and put into practice.
Some people treat adversity as a stepping-stone, others as a tombstone. The difference in the way they approach it depends on how they see it. Performance psychologist Jim Loehr says, “Champions have taught us how to take an experience and essentially write the story of its effect. If you see a failure as an opportunity to learn and get better, it will be. If you perceive it as a mortal blow, it will be. In that way, the power of the story is more important than the experience itself.”
Golf, which is a game of high highs and low lows, provides great examples of this. Some golfers bounce back from adversity, and their actions write a great story. Others crumble. For example, in 1982, when he was forty-six years old, Jack Nicklaus lost the U.S. Open after Tom Watson chipped in and took the lead. Most people thought Nicklaus was done. But he won the Masters four years later. Contrast that with Tony Jacklin, who lost the 1972 British Open by three, putting from close range after Lee Trevino’s chip-in. Jacklin later said, “I had the heart ripped out of me. I was never the same.”
If you respond right to adversity, you see it as something that can help you to become better than you were before. I read a poem years ago by James Casey called “Climb the Steep.” The first stanza says,
For every hill I’ve had to climb
For every rock that bruised my feet
For all the blood and sweat and grime
For blinding storms and burning heat
My heart sings but a grateful song
These were the things that made me strong10
What kind of story will adversity write in your life? Will it be like Nicklaus’s or like Jacklin’s? I hope yours will be positive. Adversity without triumph is not inspiring; it’s depressing. Adversity without growth is not encouraging; it’s discouraging. The great potential story in adversity is one of hope and success. Adversity is everyone’s, but the story you write with your life is yours alone. Everyone gets a chance to be the hero in a potentially great story. Some step up to that role and some don’t. The choice is yours.
As you consider whether you will allow adversity to become a catalyst for learning in your life, consider this Franciscan blessing:
May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may live deep within your heart.
May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom, and peace.
May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, and war, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and turn their pain to joy.
And may God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done.
That is my prayer for myself, and it is also my hope for you.