People with very high expectations have very low resilience – and unfortunately, resilience matters in success," Huang said during a recent interview with the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
not even the best universities in the world can teach you resilience. “I don’t know how to teach it to you except for I hope suffering happens to you,” Huang added. […]
For those fortunate enough to never have personally experienced hardship growing up, Huang doesn’t have any advice on how to welcome more of it into your life now. But he did have some advice on embracing tough times. “I don’t know how to do it [but] for all of you Stanford students, I wish upon you ample doses of pain and suffering,” Huang said. "Greatness comes from character and character isn’t formed out of smart people – it’s formed out of people who suffered.
Yes. People who have not experienced adversity and failure in youth crumble in the face of it as adults. I see this from the Gen Zs I work with. They no longer have their snowplough parents clearing a path for them.
I think there’s a book called something like: Why A Students Work for C Students, and B Students Work for the Government.
Yes. If you’re interviewing for a job, and you’re a straight A student right out of university, the recruiter has a problem hiring you. The problem is that the recruiter doesn’t know how you’ll react to adversity, how you’ll react when you get knocked down. And you will get knocked down. Will you get up? Will you get up 10 times if you’re knocked down 9? It’s a problem for a job recruiter.
One shouldn’t make people suffer, but people who have suffered often have a resilience as adults that people who haven’t suffered lack. I constantly read posts on here saying how much suffering SZ causes. Yeah, it does. I lived in terror when I lacked insight. But. BUT. You know what? It was nothing like the terror I lived with as a small kid in a home with constant physical and sexual abuse. I survived that and it helped me realize I could survive the SZ delusions. It gave me the courage to push back.
Suffering and hardship either helps you or it crushes you. It can go either way.
Back in 2014 it was crushing me. Got crushed a few more times between then and now. Came close to throwing in the towel numerous times but now im doing better than I have since I got ill. So now i feel like ive got a 2nd chance at life. Feels like a new start.
Guess i gained back my optimism. I was pretty pessimistic for a while.
I pretty much agree with you. But I should take it with a grain of salt:
This quote is attributed to Socrates 400 years B.C:
The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.
I had to fail hard before I could succeed. I agree suffering has the potential to grow character and build resilience. But it can also lead to resentment. I think the character grows when we manage to avoid resentment.
The Gen Zs aren’t that bad vs Millennials in the workplace. They’re less likely to show up to work hungover. The drinking culture is worse in the latter.
The new generation are always gonna contrast with the the generation before it, whatever the previous generation excelled or flawed at, the new generation learns and adapts.
It’s also their right to take history and use new tools make new things and observe their parents once adults and say you guys were stupid.
It’s interesting how gen z looks like gen x over millennials.
I think, like anything, people get better at things they practice. Learning to handle failure is easier for kids, because people expect kids to fail at things a whole bunch. They are given more leeway to learn from their mistakes, and they have lower stakes to start with. If a ten year old forgets to turn in their project, they might get a bad grade. If an adult forgets to turn in their project, they might cost their company thousands of dollars, might lose the bonuses for their entire department, might get fired, might end up homeless, etc etc etc. It is harder to learn a new skill when your basic survival is on the line.
This is something I think about a lot because of Starlet. Since the adoption was finalized, a lot of people don’t realize he isn’t our biological kid. When he acts up, people assume he is just a spoiled only child who never had to face consequences. The opposite is true. From his point of view, the consequences for his mistakes have, historically, been getting abandoned, ending up homeless, and sleeping at the fire station until a new home is found. The way the system works means that large conflicts often result in a kid being moved, rather than any significant effort being put into repairing relationships between foster kids and foster parents. He has low resiliency to failure because he has been facing adult level consequences for failure since he was a toddler. Most of our work with him is about teaching him the parts that come after failure. Taking ownership of his actions, apologizing, and working on skills to prevent him from repeating his mistakes.
The observable trait “low resiliency to failure” can be improved with exposure to low-stakes failures. We stuck the kid in sports he wasn’t great at. We made him play board games he lost at. We make him repeat his chores over and over until he gets them correct. None of those things carry significant consequences, and over time, he has been learning that. We also worked with him to get back in touch with friends from previous homes and schools. We helped him learn how to improve his relationship with his birth mom. That helped him learn that bridges don’t have to stay burned.
