“Success is not final, failure is not fatal…”

You may already have heard about Aron Ralston’s story, or seen the movie, 127 Hours. For those that haven’t, in a nutshell, here’s what happened.

One fine day in May 2003, Aron set off on what he expected would be an enjoyable hike through the mountains in Utah. How wrong he was. Very quickly, the trip turned into his, and indeed anyone’s, worst nightmare. Following an accident, his arm became trapped behind an 800-pound boulder. He was stuck. Badly hurt. And in the middle of nowhere. Worse still, nobody knew he had gone on the trip – he had committed the mortal sin in mountaineering terms of not telling anyone where he was going – and he had no means of communication, so rescue was unlikely.

After five days alone, trapped and in pain, he was forced to take an unimaginable decision in order to survive; he used his pocket-knife to amputate his arm and free himself from the boulder. Yes, I did say pocket-knife. He later said that he did not lose his hand but gained his life back. Serious determination, that’s for sure.

Determination is certainly an important trait to have, and never more so than during these crazy times. In fact, when you really think about it, in all walks of life, little is achieved without the ability to keep going, no matter what the odds. But could you have hacked part of your own arm off with a pocket-knife, even if your survival was at stake? I’m not so sure whether I could have done that; probably I would have, but you never know what you’re made of until you find yourself in such a position. Fortunately, away from such extreme circumstances, we do not have to lose an arm to survive. That said, determination is still a quality that people in general, and all managers, need in abundance.

I was reminded of this fact when I was in contact with an old college chum recently. We hadn’t been in touch for a while, so were just sort of catching up via Facebook messenger. He runs his own restaurant, which like most small businesses is really struggling at present because inflation has made his offering uncompetitive. The conversation took a gloomy turn, and as I read each message coming through, things got darker and darker with each one, until eventually he typed (I’ll avoid most of the text abbreviations here):

“Give my right arm to close down and head off for a couple of years.”

“This will pass,” I texted back trying to stay positive. “You’ve been through worse. You made it through COVID!”

“Survived it you mean. No, this is a major wake up call. I’d now gladly jack it all in and disappear. But go where? Got the family, mortgage, elderly parents…blah, blah. Am trapped.”

Then there were no messages for a while.

“You there?” I typed

“Yup, just measuring the rope …,” he replied, even adding a smiley face.

“Not f****** funny!” I typed back.

“Nah, you know me., will plod along. There’d be no craic at funeral now anyway, people can’t afford more than a few drinks. Be as boring as f***!!” Another smiley.

“Stop it!”

He did, and I know him long enough to also know that he’s prone to dark humour so I wasn’t unduly worried. Still, it’s never nice to see people so down is it? And it’s even harder to know how to respond to such dejection. There wasn’t much to be said really, other than to offer some assistance, or spout words of encouragement, meaningless as they might have seemed.

But I think just communicating helped, he seemed to perk up a bit and we had a good laugh. As all middle-aged men do, when in doubt, revert to reminiscing about the good old days in college. So, that’s what we did.

“Gotta go,” he suddenly announced.

And next, of all things, he typed in a quote from Churchill. He’s a bit of a WW II geek, you see. And the quote?

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts' - Believe In Yourself and Never Give in.”

Once he starts quoting Churchill, then I know he’s alright.

With that quote, he pretty much hit the nail on the head, I think. We’re all in the same boat to some degree, particularly business owners and managers. At times like this, sure what else can we do but keep going and ride out the storm as best we can? And seeing as we’re onto quotes, one of my favourites is from Steve Jobs:

“Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith.”

When there’s little to smile about, life boils down to a few important things:

Determination. Hope. Family. Friends.

If you found the content of this article interesting, I have expanded on this and related topics in my book, 'The Essential Manager'. Click on the image to the left to purchase the book on Amazon, or if you'd like a signed copy, you can purchase one directly on this site via our products page.