Becoming a hero

- Taking the attitude of the player doesn't mean you're going to succeed. You will do everything you can, and you'll ask yourself, what can I do over and over again, but there're some problems that just don't have a solution. It's not true that everything works out at the end. Some things don't work out. Some things end badly. And yet, there's a way you can even be a player with that. There's a way that you can choose how to respond when things go badly that will keep your spirits up. They may not achieve the result that you want, but they will always allow you to express your values. You see, human beings are moral beings. We care about our integrity, perhaps more than we care about success. Deep down, we want to be proud of ourselves, and that's the most important thing. That's the prime directive. If someone gave you a choice between succeeding immorally or not succeeding in a way that you feel proud of yourself, what would you choose? That's the question of the hero, and that's the ultimate redemption of any experience, because when you think in terms of expressing your values, the worst possible circumstances turn out to be the best possible circumstances. This is not a Pollyanna statement, but it's actually deep philosophy. Imagine if you wanted to prove that you are not just a fair-weather sailor, what would you need? Well, you need a good storm because unless you get something that is not fair weather, you will always sail in fair weather and you wouldn't know what would you do if you ever got a storm? The only way to lose the fear of storms is just get into one. Of course, you need to be prepared. You're not going to do this as a crazy statement of bravado. But without the storm, you can't actually prove what you're made of. Another way to see this is when people say, you see who your friends are in the bad times. In good times, everybody's your friend. But who stays with you in bad times? That's the real test. So life has a way of acid-testing us because it will bring situations that are hard, depressing, difficult, and when our minds go like, oh no, oh no, this is terrible, what am I going to do about this, our soul is saying oh yes, this is my chance. This is the chance to prove what I really believe in. This is a chance to show what I am made of and what values I want to express in the worst possible circumstances. I refer to Viktor Frankl and how he found his truth and his spirit and his soul in the worst possible circumstances of a concentration camp. He found himself. He was able to overcome tremendous pain in a situation where he was at the mercy of people who had authority and a system that had authority beyond anything he could control. And yet he found his freedom. So similarly in your life, you could take even the worst possible challenges, the ones that have very few odds of success, and yet ask yourself, how do I want to present myself? What values do I want to express? And this is the last question. This is the question that takes you from being a player to being a hero.