The Drive to Aim High Read online

  One of the privileges I enjoyed, being the son of a diplomat in Romania, was the access to special diplomatic stores that existed because of the absolute scarcity at that time. I took great pleasure going to the diplomatic stores with most of the students in order to shop for them, mainly for groceries and basic needs that were not available in the local stores because of the food shortages in the country.

  Upon our arrival in Romania, our family started growing when my dad married Willia Eugenia Trinity. Shortly afterwards, a new member of the family arrived, when my step-mother gave birth to my beloved little sister Eugenia Jane-Ann. We all called her EJ. I now had a new step-mother and a little sister to look after and inspire.

  Later on, the family would increase again, this time due to the ongoing civil war back in Liberia. One of the Liberian students studying in Romania had to leave as his specialization was completed. This student had a child named Billy with a Romanian girl. He had taken Billy in his care at the residence while awaiting his allowance and air ticket from Liberia. Unfortunately, he didn’t receive sufficient funds, just one air ticket; therefore, he was forced to leave Billy, at the age of three, in the care of my father.

  New Challenges and More Challenges

  Back in Canada, I had become settled in terms of making progress in my education. But, since we left Canada before I finished high school, I had to complete grades 11 and 12 in Romania, no less! Moreover, moving to Romania meant that I now had to study in a foreign language.

  Remember, I only started to read and write properly at the age of 15. For that reason, in terms of languages, mastering the English language was my sole motivation, focus and goal. In Canada, I also had the option to study French as a second language, but being a foreign student, I was not obliged to study it. Therefore, I skipped all the classes, concentrating on English only.

  After only three years of schooling in Canada, I came to Romania, where there were no options of studying in my language. Romanian was the only language of study in all the public schools here. In order to not get discouraged, I would have to learn and adopt a different mindset.

  Being diplomats, it took time for my documents to be processed and for me to get approval to start school. Not only that, but as a diplomat’s son, I couldn’t attend just any school. In fact, I had to get special approval from the Romanian government to attend school at all. So, all of that red tape slowed down my admittance to school.

  When all of my paperwork was finally completed, I started school in Bucharest in the eleventh grade at the age of 20. It was really late as the school year had only a few months left. Besides that, trying to gain at least a rudimentary grasp of the language proved to be almost impossible during the time I was waiting for my paperwork to be approved.

  Normally at that age, in Romania as well as in many parts of the world, children are already ahead in their university or college studies. But, I knew that I had to go the extra mile, working harder than ever before in order to graduate from high school.

  I had to adapt to the multiple changes and challenges I was thrown into. The Canadian culture and school system were totally different. I found myself transplanted in this new, strange country that was essentially the antithesis of my life in Canada. I had no more control, and far less freedom of choice. In Canada, following my assessment evaluation, I had been attending a high school with an economics and business profile, but no advanced level mathematics, physics or chemistry. In Romania, however, in the 11th grade, college level mathematics and sciences were part of the compulsory subjects of study.

  The study of Romanian literature was also required. It was a huge challenge for me, but one that I knew I had to overcome if I were to succeed in graduating from high school. This is when I gradually discovered what the resilience mindset must be. Because I was faced with so many challenges, I had to become resilient in order to survive in school and succeed. Learning the Romanian language, and simultaneously learning algebra, physics, and chemistry felt absolutely overwhelming at times. There were so many hurdles to get past.

  Compared to Canada, Romania was like night and day in just about every way, including culture and environment. This was a communist country, and I had to be strong, resilient, and adapt quickly. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have stood a chance of completing my education. I had already discovered other important mindsets, but this time around, I became conscious that I needed to get through a much tougher version of high school. This clearly showed me there were many difficulties and setbacks as a result of my not having completed high school in Canada.

  But through it all, I always remembered what my birth mom told me and implanted in my subconscious: I was going to become a big man. In my mind, the only way that I could see ever become a successful man was to overcome the new challenges that I faced. I was conscious of what I had to do. I had to accept those changes and challenges in order to succeed. I had just learned how to read and write in English, and now, I needed to learn at another level in a completely foreign language.

  Fifth “Curve”

  As I shared earlier, the public school system in Romania was like night and day in comparison to Canada’s. Normally, I would have needed to learn the Romanian language before starting school, but I didn’t have time. School had already begun, and the diplomatic red tape took a few months while processing my school documents. So, I started school with just a very basic knowledge of the Romanian language.

  I was also learning the language at home, after school and on weekends. Once again, I had to catch up, which was proving to be a recurring theme in the story of my life. Besides learning a new language, I discovered my ability to retain visual information and reproduce it. I had to memorize lots of information and formulas that I didn’t understand at all. But, this ability was a requirement in order for me to get through high school. It was my only chance.

  Luckily, I made friends pretty quickly and easily. I was able to acquire the basic courses from my friends, especially a girlfriend of mine, Simona, who helped me a great deal. She took notes for me and helped me grasp a bit of everything from the ocean of information given to me. I would come home and read the notes or textbooks many times, basically memorizing all of the important parts and formulas so that I could pass my tests. I was reading the information over and over and over.

  Before each test, I would wake up at 5:00 a.m. and double-check myself to see if I still remembered the theory and formulas. I had not been exposed to anything similar in my previous education, and it was very stressful.

  I acknowledged new faculties that I wasn’t aware I had and put them to work. I discovered and embraced a new powerful resilience mindset that I absolutely needed if I was to succeed. All of these played a huge role in my getting through those last years of high school. Finally, graduating from high school at the age of 22 was a huge achievement for me. If I look back now at how, where and when I started and then comprehend my learning curve, I can say it again, graduation was a huge achievement for me. I cleared my first hurdle to becoming a “big man.”

  1989 Romanian Revolution

  A year after our arrival in Romania in 1989, I witnessed the fall of President Nicolae Ceausescu, considered one of the most brutal dictators of the Eastern European Communist bloc.

  The revolution started on December 16 in the city of Timisoara, located in the Western part of Romania. After several days of protesting, the army and security forces cracked down on the protesters who were demonstrating against the Communist regime policies. This left many protesters seriously injured and some dead. The news quickly reached other cities across the country, including Bucharest.

  On the morning of December 21, hundreds of people (many brought by the Communist party in buses) gathered in front of President Ceausescu’s Palace to see him deliver his speech condemning the uprising in Timisoara. Some of the people in the crowd began booing him and shouting “Timisoara” immediately after he started his speech. Within a few hours, the incident quickly turned into widespread p
rotest against Ceausescu and his regime. This marked the fall of Communism in Romania.

  For some reason, my dad didn’t go to work on that day. As the second part of the day approached, we heard gunshots. The protest had gained ground during the day and involved the police, the Securitate. This was the professional state security force, and the army against the civilians seemed to be the only solution for President Ceausescu to crack down on the protest.

  Our residence was located about 1.5 miles from the Revolution Square. My dad tried to reach his staff and students to see if they were all right, but he couldn’t. There was little he could do because the phone lines were down, and we had no access to any source of communication. We couldn’t leave the residence. It wasn’t safe for us or for any foreigners during those days of the uprising and the crackdown. I remembered seeing my dad glued to his radios all day, listening to the BBC News, and Voice of America. They were the only sources of information we had that were in English.

  University

  After high school graduation, it was time for me to choose my university studies. I enrolled in one of the best universities in Romania, the Bucharest University of Economic Studies. However, I ended up again missing the start of my university classes because I was waiting on my scholarship funding—more diplomatic red tape.

  When I started university, I had already missed the first few weeks of the courses. Again, this was a setback from which I thought I could hardly recover. One major shock for me was that the very first course I attended was Technology. This subject dealt with refineries and anything else that you might imagine that you probably would never need in life. I sat there stunned as our professor spoke for 45 minutes nonstop. To make matters worse, I understood nothing about those huge diagrams she was drawing on the blackboard.

  Thankfully, my ability to make friends quickly came in handy. After the first course, I met some new colleagues, and one of the first things I inquired about was who they thought was a serious student who could lend me course notes. There was this quiet, serious girl sitting in the first row who didn’t interact much with anybody. Her name was Brindusa. That girl just happens to be my wife today.

  After the collapse of the communist government in Romania, things in everyday life were changing rapidly. Romania was on a fast track towards a market economy and new opportunities were arising everywhere. Also, my Romanian had gotten much better. I was almost fluent, but starting in the second year at university, I was thankfully able to study in English once more. By that time, they had set up different sections of the university where you could study in the French or English language. I was transferred to the English section, where my life became so much easier. Finally, something familiar! I was very happy and relieved to be studying in English once again.

  The Resilient Mind

  Ford Did Have a Better Idea

  Ford Motor Company adopted the slogan, “Ford Has a Better Idea” in 2012, and they had the track record to prove it. You always have the opportunity to learn from industry leaders who have fought through a comeback, either due to an economic crisis or because of poor business decisions, such as the case of the collapse of the US auto industry in 2008.

  Alan Mulally became CEO of Ford Motor Company in the fall of 2006. At that time, the company was on the precipice of bankruptcy. It was in severe debt, and that was the most abysmal year in its history, having suffered over $12 billion in losses. When Mulally retired in 2014, Ford had done what many deemed impossible and made a massive turnaround. What was it about his leadership and use of the resilience mindset that brought this about?

  His own words hold some of the answers: “Leadership is having a compelling vision, a comprehensive plan, relentless implementation, and talented people working together. People also want meaning. All of us want to know that we are doing great things, that we are touching a lot of people, and that what we are doing is something bigger than ourselves.”

  After holding the CEO post a mere three months, Mulally made an unheard of pitch to the largest US banks at a conference in New York. He offered to mortgage the entirety of Ford’s assets in exchange for loans to renovate the company and get it back on its feet. Even though that approach was largely viewed as a desperate act, because Mulally was thinking outside the box and making use of his resilience mindset, he was able to convince the banks to give Ford $23.6 billion in loans.

  Putting those funds to brilliant use under his leadership, Ford had one of the biggest bounce-back victories in business history. Mulally spearheaded a partnership agreement with the United Auto Workers, who signed on to create a number of shifts to improve the company’s profit margins in a tradeoff where Ford guaranteed the return of production jobs to the US.

  He was also successful in consolidating the company’s purchases from vendors who agreed to become Ford’s partners. This enabled them to lower costs in Ford’s favor and brought them a larger portion of the business.

  When GM and Chrysler hit extremely hard times in the three years following Ford’s securing of the bank loans, they appealed to the federal government for help. Although Mulally didn’t need that assistance, he testified on behalf of his competitors, and thereby, contributed to the decision of the government to create the Auto Industry Bailout in 2009.

  Mulally knew that if his two rivals, General Motors and Chrysler, went under, it would damage the suppliers’ network, the auto industry overall and Ford itself. He felt that advocating on their behalf was just “the right thing to do.” His leadership was cutting edge when it came to both thinking outside of the box and applying a resilience mindset. It is a stellar example of successful reinvention based upon those very principles.

  Sports Legends Demonstrate Resilience

  We can also learn from sport legends who went through difficult periods during their careers, yet still made great comebacks. Legends like Tiger Woods, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal have all proven themselves to be remarkably resilient. Tiger Woods’s comeback in September 2018 absolutely took the golfing world by surprise.

  Learning from others is always preferable to reinventing the wheel and learning through your own challenges. Both are excellent teachers, but when we learn from others, we save time, effort, and disappointment. Don’t worry. You will always have your own personal challenges that will teach you things, but when you can read about, or watch a video of what others have overcome, and how they did it, watch, listen, and learn.

  Resilience Mindset Properties

  The resilience mindset in your toolkit of life skills is invaluable. It enables you to bounce back from seemingly insurmountable odds and challenges. This mindset can also guide you through those times when life throws you a curve. Rather than succumbing and giving up when faced with rejection, fear, worry, and loss, employing the resilience mindset makes it much easier to focus on solutions. It will also help keep you from feeling overwhelmed by problems. Instead, it will put you in the driver’s seat to implement change and discover solutions.

  Resilience is an innate quality that we all possess. It’s simply a matter of choosing to employ it when discouragement crops up, instead of throwing in the towel and giving up. Adopting a resilience mindset will deepen and broaden your other skillsets. It will enable you to handle challenges with a greater sense of control. This sense of control then stays with you and impacts your life in ways that will empower you. You will then mitigate the risk of events snowballing into other areas of your life.

  Now at age 50, I realize that my educational path was far from easy. It was no walk in the park, as the saying goes. It has always been a difficult climb for me in many ways, but still I have always been driven to aim high. Unfortunately, I skipped early childhood education and slipped past several years of elementary and secondary education, but I still made it to one of the most prestigious universities available to me, the Bucharest University of Economic Studies. I graduated with an MBA.

  I have been fortunate to work in multinational companies like Vodafone (formerly
Connex) as channel project manager. I oversaw the marketing activities of more than 500 business dealers across Romania when I worked at Vodafone. I also worked for Exact Software Romania, a Dutch software company that offers accounting, Enterprise Resource Planning and other software for small and medium enterprises.

  At Exact Software, I worked as a sales manager and was responsible for developing the market in Romania. Over the last 19 years, I set up my own business and have provided thousands of full-time jobs and tens of thousands of part-time jobs to students across Romania. Coming from such humble beginnings, I have tears in my eyes now as I recall my strange and wonderful journey,

  If it weren’t for the resilience mindset, I don’t know how I would have kept going during all of my challenges. I had no idea during my school years that my future in this gray, difficult environment actually would be the base that led me to a very powerful and rewarding path, one that I still follow today.

  Steps to Integrate the Resilience Mindset into Your Daily Life

  Resilience is the capacity or ability to recover quickly from difficulties. It is mental, emotional, and physical toughness. Resilient people always bounce back and never give up, no matter what life throws at them. It’s a skill you develop over time, and a skill you can’t develop unless you encounter many trying and frustrating situations in your life. It’s like weight lifting; you can’t develop big muscles unless you lift big weights. The more adversity you overcome, the more resilient you become.

  Increase your sense of control in areas where you have control. This could be in simple ways such as arriving on time, eating healthfully, employing good sleeping habits, and scheduling enjoyable types of exercise.