INSIGHT: Can This Document Be Saved?

Overcoming
The computer file disappeared. While on a tight deadline, two hours of work on a funding proposal evaporated before my eyes. As I tried to recover the document, frustration quickly displaced disbelief. To find the fortitude to start over (was it really gone?), I needed to reframe what had just occurred. That was a good first draft, I told myself. Achieving success is sometimes a matter of how we respond to failure. When I started over, still angry and wishing I could recover my carefully crafted paragraphs, I resolved to make this new draft (saved every other minute) even better, and write it quicker. Achieving greater sustainability, like most impactful innovation, results from an iterative process. The trick is to remain dedicated to the goal. I don’t necessarily believe everything happens for a reason. Rather, when events do occur, I think we have more choices about how to respond than are perhaps initially apparent, including shifting our perspective, however invested we might have been in the old one, in order to go on.