Going For It When The Going Gets Tough

There’s an ancient Chinese curse that goes, “May you live in interesting times”. And like it or not, we are most definitely living in times that are not only ‘interesting’ but often strange, uncertain, and unsettling. Locally and around the world, there have been so many stressors – devastating natural disasters, what feels like the mass shooting-of-the-week, increasing volatility in the financial markets and petty, roller coaster politics.

On a personal level, there has been a growing spate of people in my life who are dealing with formidable health issues, and have had their lives turned upside down or even taken from them. Professionally, at Equinix, we are going through a change with the departure of my boss, our CEO – a charismatic and passionate leader of our company for more than a decade. 

I haven’t written anything down for a while, because amongst all this tumult, I’ve been trying to understand what I’m actually feeling. I was expecting to have distress and unease on several levels. But in fact, right now I feel calm. I feel grateful. I actually feel powerful and ready to take on what’s next.

Am I just delusional?

I don’t think so. What’s actually happened is this: I’ve emerged from this tempestuous time amazingly inspired by the examples of resilience, optimism, and growth I’ve observed from the people around me – friends and colleagues who are going through hell, and in Winston Churchill’s words, have kept going. These people have shown me what it means to face fear, prioritize what really matters, and overcome challenges. I see several of them now taking bigger, bolder risks, adventuring past what I wager they might have considered their limits before they understood life’s fragility. They are simply Going For It. 

Let’s appreciate the paradox here, that the people who have been beaten down, and have suffered – become those who are the most resolved, the strongest, the boldest. What we see here is the power of tests and trials and setbacks, and how they actually create fortitude, how they make us actually more capable of stretching our previous boundaries.   

I’ve seen this Go For It attitude at work, I’ve seen it at home, I’ve seen it in the news, and it also brings to mind a certain underdog American football team led by its second-string quarterback to a first-ever Super Bowl victory. What a tremendous example of mustering your courage in the face of the formidable Tom Brady and just Going For It! Even Patriots fans had to smile at the gutsiness of the “Philly Special”.

Inspiring stories of resiliency and resolve come in many forms, but they often revolve around the idea of individual grit and tenacity – a lone Horatio Alger digging deep, giving it all, and never ever giving up.

And I think this is true. But it’s also important to remember that an incredibly vital part of conquering our struggles is to share them. Truly resilient people and teams learn to rely on others when the going gets tough. It’s that human connection, shared compassion and belonging that gives us the strength to rise up, go for it, and triumph. 

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg came out last year with a book, Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy, in which she addresses her life after the sudden death of her husband in 2015. In it, she writes that resilience is not something we have a fixed amount of, but is something we build, and that we can build it not just in ourselves, but in our families, our communities, and our organizations. She also writes that the key ingredient for doing this is to acknowledge that we are in this together. That we are a team. Good old fashioned ‘you’ve got my back, I’ve got yours’ mentality.

And this brings me back to Equinix, and to one of our core values, “Put We Before Me.” The really magical thing about it though, is that not only do we have appreciation for the team, we have appreciation for the individual as well. And while we have high expectations of every person on the team, we are a company where people can be themselves and leverage their strengths, and where people reach out to lend a hand to one another without ever having to be asked. 

I just returned home from our global sales conference, which we appropriately call Connect, and what struck me the most is even amid these changing times, I couldn’t feel more passionate and optimistic about the unity of our team, our skills, and our resolve to Go For It. We remain deeply committed to making a difference to our shareholders, to our community, and most of all to our customers – helping them to innovate and thrive amidst uncertainty.

To me, resiliency at Equinix and anywhere is showing your own courage, your own compassion for others, and your own adventurous spirit despite the twists and turns in the road, and then working as a team to harness all that collective energy together into one unstoppable force. That’s what I felt at Connect. It’s also about knowing that whatever we might be going through, as individuals or as a group, we will work together to take it on and come out better for it.