Teabags & Pooh - Lessons in Resilience

It's been 23 years since my world was up-ended by an event that significantly altered the trajectory of my life. As I reflected on this yesterday, I was reminded of how I have grown from the experience and the importance of resilience.

My grandmother used to say:

“People are like teabags; you don’t know how strong they are until you put them in hot water”.?

I didn’t truly appreciate the wisdom of this until I found myself in the proverbial boiling water and discovered how much resilience I had within.?

I was born on a horse stud, my father was a champion jockey, and I was riding horses before I could walk. My all-consuming goal since I was a teenager, was to represent Australia at the Olympic Games in the Three-Day Event (which is the equestrian version of a Triathalon - Dressage, Cross Country and Showjumping). I worked incredibly hard to achieve that goal, surviving on 4-5 hours sleep a night so I could work both the breakfast shift at McDonalds and a night shift at the local pub, allowing me to train my horses during the day. I trained and competed with the best riders in Australia. Training horses, and my goal of an Olympic gold medal, was my entire life. It wasn’t just what I did – it was who I was.

In July 2001, while completing the Cross-Country course at an event, my horse misjudged the timing of a jump and hit it with his chest. We both flipped over it, and I plummeted headfirst into the ground. In mere seconds, I was lying on the ground with my spine, and my Olympic dreams, literally crushed.

Despite the time that has passed, I still vividly remember the kind eyes of my surgeon at Royal North Shore Hospital, Dr Michael Ryan, explaining how I had crushed 4 vertebrae, broken 4 ribs and cracked my sternum and how they would need to carefully remove the bone fragments that were dangerously close to damaging my spinal cord, carve out some new vertebrae from my hip, and insert titanium rods to stabilise my spine. I went into surgery that night, knowing my world would never be the same again. While physically I might be able to ride a horse again, training horses at the level I did meant that I would fall off again at some point, though now, the odds were no longer in my favour of surviving the fall. Having titanium fusions fixing 6 vertebrae together meant my spine would not have any flexibility at all and might result in it snapping completely at the points above and below the titanium. The risk was no longer worth taking. My professional riding career was over.

In the blink of an eye, my entire identity was gone. People you meet tend to ask what you do and suddenly, I no longer had an answer to that question. If I was no longer an equestrian athlete, who was I? I did not know how I was going to overcome this, it seemed insurmountable at the time. I was beyond devastated.

A dear friend visited me in hospital and gifted me a book called The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff, which introduced me to the concepts of Taoism through the stories of Winnie the Pooh and I can say with certainty this book transformed my mindset and was instrumental in shaping the person I am today.

One of the central tenets of Taoism is the concept of Wu Wei, which is literally translated into “effortless action” or more accurately “action without action”, or as poetically described by Chuang-tse, "flows like water, reflects like a mirror, and responds like an echo."

This concept seemed so foreign to me at the time - someone with a singular goal trying to control everything in my world in order to achieve it - yet at the same time it resonated so much. Just like water in nature – when it comes up against an obstacle it can’t move, it doesn’t stop, it finds a path around it. I had hit an obstacle in my life that I could not move – I was never going to be a competitive horse rider again – so I needed to embody Wu Wei and find a new path. As a testament to the impact this book and this concept has had on me, I now have the characters for Wu Wei tattooed on my wrist as a permanent reminder to always flow like water – which has helped me immensely over the years to become comfortable with uncertainty, to be more flexible and adaptable and embrace challenges and opportunities equally.

The accident was a stark reminder that you can’t control what happens to you, only how you respond to it. My grandmother was right – I did not know what I was capable of enduring and overcoming until I was faced with it. Resilience is what led me to pick myself up and find a new way forward. Resilience and flexibility is what has led me to continue to overcome any challenge life throws at me. As a parent, resilience is the number one capability I am trying to build in my children.

If I can share one lesson for anyone reading this?

Focus on building resilience – in yourself and those around you. You don’t know when you will need it, but you’ll be so glad to have it to draw on if you do.

The second lesson that I learned the hard way was also articulated so well by James Clear in his absolutely incredible book Atomic Habits, and it is related to defining your identity in a more flexible way. James also experienced similar sense of identity loss when his professional baseball career ended, and apparently this is also common with military veterans and entrepreneurs. When your whole life is spent defining yourself in one way, and that disappears, it can destroy your whole sense of self. James' advice (which I hadn't realised I had instinctively done until I read his book nearly 20 years later) is that you need to redefine yourself so that you get to keep the most important aspect of your identity, even if your "role" changes. When your identity is tied to your character not your role, you are more capable of adapting to change.

For me, "I am an athlete" became "I am resilient and tenacious, calm and focused under pressure and driven to achieve". I have carried this new identity throughout my personal and professional life, despite the different roles I have filled.

On a related note, I was beyond delighted that James referenced concepts from the Tao Te Ching to reinforce this notion. I have never felt so seen!

My final thought on the matter.... I highly recommend adding both books to your reading list.