It's Your Response-Damn-Ability!

In 1939, eight years old Channa had everything a girl will want. Rich and loving home, big warm family that showered her with love and presents. She lived in a big house with servants in a small town. She had a dog and even a goat as a pet. From young age she would follow her siblings to school and hide just so she can study secretly. One day it all collapsed. When Hitler invaded Poland, little Channa had to run for her life in the super cold forests. With exception of four cousins, her entire big family was slaughtered, mostly in front of her eyes. In 1945 after the war was over, Channa is a fugitive, homeless, penniless, lonely orphan with 6 years gap without education. Broken emotionally and physically undernourished she vows not to to give up. To live and make a difference. To live a legacy and heal the world. She decides that she wants to become a pediatrician to save lives and heal kids.

You know how difficult it is to get into medical school? What is the chance for a good student who was out of school for six years to catch up? In post WWII Poland, under the Communist regime, Jews were accepted to medical school only if they have "A" in almost all the subjects. Channa works and studies and gets "A" in every subject and one "D" in Marxism. Accepted to medical school she eats free bread and water in the canteen, washes her one dress every night and put it on the radiator to dry for the next day. She aces her medical studies with "A"s from top to bottom ... with one exception, "D" in Marxism.

After long struggle and forced practice in anesthesia, she keeps the eye on target and does not give up, until she completes her specialization and certification as a pediatrician. Her happiness does not stay for long. At the age of 43, her husband suddenly dies from brain stroke, leaving her with two young kids and a big mortgage. She takes an extra job and continues to heal and save kids lives, while being full time mother and father to her kids to ensure they will finish university and they did.

Channa had to struggle all her life with harsh realities and nightmares. But she never took the position of a victim. She was a Victor. She didn't even have parents to blame for "screwing her up". She didn't have to chose what dress to wear or what restaurant to eat. She was human and she did complain and she did have bad days of severe nightmares and depression but she did not become the complains. She had a mission to bring up her kids and to heal the world and that gave her sense of meaning and purpose to rise above the adversities and even sing and laugh! Dr. Chana Zelizer was my mother.

Now how about you? If you are normal like me, you probably had your share of traumas, bad experiences, failures, depression. Are you outsourcing responsibilities? Are you deflating your own self esteem by choosing to become the victim, complain, blame, shame others, under-appreciate what you have more than Channa had, avoiding taking ownership and responsibilities?

Time to wake up and open a new page. Channa had shown that you can triumph the worst of traumas. Take Response-Damn-Ability over your life. You are NOT zero and you can restart your approach NOW.

Enjoy the clip:

My other blog posts:

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• Celebrate SMALL Wins 
• Voice Of A Champion - Best Practices In Listening To Your Employees
• Vampires, Zombies & JCL's 
• It Is NOT the End - Use Humor
• Really??? Are All The 10 Happiest Countries in Latin America?
• Be the Winning Horse - A Story Of Asian Positive Leader
• How To Manage A Toxic Leader? Tips from an Asian Leader
• HOW TO CHASE YOUR CUSTOMERS AWAY
• 60 Seconds of Fun @ Work
• Get Mad! But Smell the Flower, and Replace “!” with “?”
• The Laughter Gap - Overcoming The Law of Repulsion
• Deal With It!
• It's Your Response-Damn-Ability!

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Avi Liran (Economist, MBA) is a global speaker,  thought leader and expert on Work/Fun Balance, Purposeful Positive Leadership and Positive Organisational Transformation especially during Change.

With a title of "Chief Joy-Care Officer" of www.ha-p.com, Avi consults and coaches CxOs from top companies how to drive results by adopting leadership style that ignites intrinsic motivations and drives up engagement, retention, creativity and productivity while having so much more fun and camaraderie.