Problems and Perseverance
Beth Wendt, AIF?
Client Services Associate at Alliant Retirement & Investment Services located at Alliant Credit Union
“Houston, we’ve had a problem.” A wry understatement from Jim Lovell aboard Apollo 13, April 1970.
Accomplishment. It’s a great feeling when you’ve set your mind out to complete a task and it is done well. Whether a home project, a race, a work assignment, or a change in personal habits it does not matter. Big or small, it feels great to know you’ve succeeded.
I’ve been reading Rise of the Rocket Girls by Nathalia Holt about women at work early in the history of JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory). I am learning all kinds of new, wonderful things. For instance, today, when we think of JPL and NASA we think of rockets. However, when the founders of JPL renamed themselves (initially called the Suicide Squad at Caltech) they avoided the word rocket as it was then associated with pure science fiction fantasy. What I discovered was that our early space program had far more early disasters than it did successes.
Like big concepts often do, it got me to thinking about how we chart our course for life after work. Similar to any space mission there is all this preparatory work ahead of the event that we’re not sure will ultimately work. Contemplation of whether or not we’re contributing enough. Wondering whether or not our employer is ever going to include a profit sharing feature in our 401k plan. Tinkering with our asset allocation, wondering whether that XYZ fund we selected after the last market fluctuation was really the best action to take. Like all the hours and years of work at space laboratories across the globe, any determination of definitive success is hard to calibrate part-way. Yes, there are excellent retirement readiness modeling tools out there that can give you a sense of where you are in your preparation. I encourage anyone to use one. However, if you’re close to or post launch day and you haven’t properly prepared your rocket, there’s a chance it might not get you where you want it to go.
In the end, Apollo 13 was considered a “successful failure”. Why? Because preparation, involvement in your project and passionate commitment does have a pay off. Nearly all long-term projects have some setbacks, some failures. Landing a man on a tiny moon, manning a space station and plans for travel to Mars have not all been without missteps great and small. Gratefully, our scientists kept plugging along. They believed in their projects. We should too, because we're worth the effort.