Today is July 13 and the Navigate the Chaos question to consider is "How often do you feel sorry for yourself?"
Those who navigate the chaos seldom feel sorry for themselves.
They simply have no time. Desiree Linden, Juan José Méndez Fernández, Frida Kahlo and Nairo Alexander Quintana Rojas are examples of extraordinary people who did not feel sorry for themselves.
After battling sheets of rain, temperatures in the 30s and wind gusts up to 25 mph, Desiree Linden won the 2018 Boston Marathon; the first American woman to win there since 1985. “I think everyone was feeling bad based on the conditions,” she said in a New York Times interview. “But I was like, ‘Are you going to feel sorry for yourself, or are you going to compete and get this done?’
Her victory at Boston also illustrated her grit as it took her 12 years of competing in marathons to finally win one.
At 27 Juan José Méndez Fernández lost his left arm and most of his left leg in a motorcycle accident. “I passed out on the bike and crashed into a car. I got covered with a blanket until a policeman realized I was moving.”
Fernandez started cycling to lose weight and after gaining substantial weight woke up one day said “I can’t go on like this, I have to look forward, I want to live.” He would go on to win Paralympic medals in Athens and Beijing, gold in a world championship.
Mexican painter Frida Kahlo observed: “At the end of the day, we can endure much more than we think we can.”
Although she was disabled by polio as a child, Kahlo had been a promising student headed for medical school until a traffic accident at age eighteen, which caused her lifelong pain and medical problems.
During her recovery, she returned to her childhood hobby of art with the idea of becoming an artist. Kahlo's work as an artist remained relatively unknown until the late 1970s, when her work was rediscovered by art historians and political activists.
By the early 1990s, she had become not only a recognized figure in art history, but also regarded as an icon for Chicanos, the feminism movement and the LGBT movement. Kahlo's work has been celebrated internationally as emblematic of Mexican national and indigenous traditions and by feminists for what is seen as its uncompromising depiction of the female experience and form.
Nairo Alexander Quintana Rojas is a professional Colombian racing cyclist known for his ability to launch sustained and repeated attacks on ascents of steep gradient, high power output and great stamina to react and endure others attacks.
American statesman Benjamin Franklin noted “He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.”
Quintana had many reasons to make excuses but choose not to do so. As a result, he worked his way to the top of the cycling world. His best career results are winning the 2014 Giro d'Italia and 2016 Vuelta a España, as well as a 2nd place overall in the Tour de France of 2013 and 2015.
When he was young his family did not have much. According to Quintana “we didn’t have a lot of money.
My parents worked extremely hard for many hours to support us and the bicycle became an important utensil to help them in our shop and farm.” His parents taught him and his siblings the meaning of responsibility as they worked in his parent’s shop while doing homework after school.
When he was 16 years old, he used to drive his father’s car working as a taxi driver to raise money for the family so his father could rest. As Quintana said “Sometimes things have been really hard for all of us because of bad luck. My father suffered an accident at the age of 8. He was in a truck which overturned. Since then he had 14 operations on his spinal column.”
Quintana himself was involved in an accident when he was out riding on his own. “A taxi hit me when I was 15. I was in a coma in the hospital for five days. I was very lucky to survive. “Thinking about the past helps me to realize how hard everybody worked in my home so I can be where I am now.” How often do you feel sorry for yourself?