Inspirational Leaders Make No Excuses

Inspirational Leaders Make No Excuses

Inspirational Leaders Make No Excuses

Instead, They Focus On Making Things Happen Despite Adversity

by Michael D. Hume, M.S.

I'm still enjoying an early summer here in Palm Springs, and the big to-do around here this weekend was the Kraft-Nabisco Championship. It's the first "major" tournament of the year for the world's best women golfers, and the competitors who gave this year's event its exciting finish are shining examples of inspirational leadership.

Stacey Lewis won the tournament. It was not only her first major-tournament victory, it was her first LPGA tour win of any kind. She went head-to-head with Yani Tseng from Taiwan, last year's Kraft-Nabisco Champion and currently the top lady golfer in the world. Lewis started the final round yesterday a couple strokes behind Tseng, but after both golfers traded brilliant shots all afternoon, the 26-year-old American had won by three. She continued the tournament's tradition by leaping into the pond next to the 18th green, accompanied by her little sister and her parents.

It's inspiring enough to see a young woman rise to the top of a stunningly-difficult endeavor like golf... but it's even more inspiring when you realize Stacey Lewis had to have surgery to correct a badly-curved spine. She had five pins and a metal rod installed in her back, and still managed to become superior in a sport that requires a lot from your spine. How much pain did she rise above, let alone the little discomforts that block the rest of us from doing our best work from time to time?

Young Morgan Pressel, only 22, was another inspiring story of a Kraft-Nabisco competitor who'd overcome adversity. She threatened the leaders during the middle of yesterday's final round, sinking birdie-after-birdie before a couple of difficult holes knocked her down to a third-place finish. Pressel burst on the scene a few years ago, and is already a major-tournament champion, but saw her meteoric rise to golf's stratosphere interrupted when her mother succumbed to breast cancer when Morgan was still a teenaged golf sensation. How much emotional strength did she have to muster? What does that say about the rest of us, who seem to let ourselves get bummed-out by much lighter burdens?

Whatever your line of work, you're going to run into adversity. The most successful people in life are not the ones who seem to have everything handed to them, but the ones who run into deep trouble and find a way to handle it.

I have met and coached a number of bright business talents who came from absolute poverty - far beyond anything you've likely experienced - to rise to the top of the world's best management consulting engagements. How much power do those talented people have to counsel their clients to overcome adversity? How much credibility?

And I have colleagues who are inspirational in their daily application of courage in their own internet businesses. One lost his legs in a construction accident; another is actually legally blind, and can barely make out a computer screen that covers a tiny fraction of the screen you're seeing right now. Crippled? Blind? Disabled? No, both of these inspiring gents would describe themselves as uniquely ENABLED by what they've had to learn about overcoming adversity.

Life is tough enough these days without extra challenges - and you don't wish blindness, or a tragic family death, or a curved spine on anyone. But when you hear stories like these - like yesterday's triumph by a young woman such as Stacey Lewis - it can be truly inspiring. And it can make you question again the little things you've let stand in your own way.

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