I Learned the Secret to Unstoppable Resilience at a Young Age — Here's How I Use It as an BIZ Experiences There's something empowering — and admittedly, scary — about the idea that we alone control our own stories. Here's how that sense of ownership fuels resilience.
By Aytekin Tank Edited by Kara McIntyre
Opinions expressed by BIZ Experiences contributors are their own.
Growing up, my family moved around a lot. My parents worked for the government, and uprooting our lives for a new city became routine. I got used to the rhythm of packing up my room, saying goodbye to my friends and starting over in a whole new place.
These new starts were never easy — acclimating to unfamiliar surroundings takes time, and I often felt that right when I'd finally settled in, it'd be time to move again. But all that frequent moving endowed me with something that would become indispensable in my later life, an asset that no money can buy and can't be taught in any college course: Resilience.
Talk to any successful founder and they will tell you their road to success was not straightforward. There are major setbacks, roadblocks and in some cases, catastrophes. I think often of the story of Soichiro Honda, who founded his eponymous car company back in the 1940s, but not before his first factory was bombed during WWII.
Honda, like so many other BIZ Experiencess who fought through adversity, understood that he alone was responsible for realizing his vision — regardless of the challenges he faced along the way. A less committed founder might've pointed to the odds stacked against him and walked away. And who would blame him? But Honda didn't do that. He gathered up what was left of his factory, sold the scraps for what he could and used the proceeds to move on.
There's something empowering — and admittedly, scary — about the idea that we alone control our own stories, regardless of the circumstances we encounter along the way. But that sense of ownership is also what helps us build resilience. Here's why.
The connection between ownership and resilience
Humans have an intrinsic need to feel ownership — over our lives, over our work, over our things. Picture a garden: With enough time and care, what started as a patch of dirt can be transformed into a beautiful oasis of green, bursting with ripening vegetables and colorful flowers. But say a drought hits. A passerby who enjoys the garden might hope in an abstract way that it survives. An owner, however, springs into action, devising a watering system to ensure the plants continue to thrive, even when conditions are not favorable. It's one thing to appreciate a garden cultivated by someone else; it's another to take responsibility for its success, no matter what. The same logic applies to startups. When you feel ownership over your business, its success is inextricable from your own. You don't quit just because things get hard.
That said, it's important to remember that you are not your business. While you want your startup to succeed (who doesn't?), keeping a clear distinction between the two is vital for your mental well-being. As organizational psychologist Adam Grant put it,
"A healthy sense of self is rooted in character, not career choice."
It's a delicate balance.
Building resilience in practice
Resilience is a quality that's not only built up with time but through repeated run-ins with difficulty. I credit my peripatetic childhood with my adaptability, which undoubtedly helped me navigate the ups and downs of being a bootstrapped founder.
One way of building resilience is by adopting a missionary mindset, rather than a mercenary one. As professors Paris de L'Etraz and Michael Lepech discussed during a presentation at Stanford, mercenaries are driven by money — and when their funds run out, they'll quit. But when action is driven by internal passion, BIZ Experiencess will stick with their mission through the highs and lows.
Surprisingly, research has also found that resilience is a team sport. This doesn't mean you need to take on a co-founder — in fact, I recommend the opposite. But as Rob Cross, Karen Dillon and Danna Greenberg share in Harvard Business Review, a leader's resilience is strongly enabled by relationships and networks. In conducting in-depth interviews with 150 successful leaders, the authors found that these relationships helped with everything from navigating difficult situations to reminding them of their purpose, or even just making them laugh.
Related: 8 Ways Successful People Master Resilience
These networks are invaluable for people with a strong sense of ownership over their businesses, who tend to tie their identity and self-worth to the success of their company. Having a community can not only help you put your challenges into perspective but also remind you that you're not a one-dimensional automaton whose sole function is to drive your career forward. I founded my company, Jotform, on my own, and it's an incredibly important piece of who I am. But as my wife and kids remind me constantly, it's not all of who I am. Having people to keep me grounded has been key to my ability to lead my company for nearly two decades.
A strong sense of ownership fuels resilience because when you're invested in something, you'll do what it takes for it to succeed. A missionary mindset will help drive you through the highs and lows, but a strong network is also indispensable for keeping you from losing yourself in your goals. You alone control your success, but the support system you build will keep you going.
