The Dolphin Statue at Stearns Wharf in Santa Barbara. My friend, Joseph Bottoms’ father created this statue and a sister statue for Puerto Vallarta. I took this photo during the past weekend. Seeing the statue makes me happy.
Now to the subject at hand. Does pain and suffering create resilience?
Resilience is the ability to cope with and recover from setbacks. People who remain calm in the face of disaster have resilience.1
A resilient person is someone who has strong coping skills and is able to marshall their available resources, ask for help when needed, and find ways to manage the situation they are facing.
https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-resilience-2795059
I brought this topic up because I heard a snippet of a speech to Standford students by CEO of Nvidia. I was impressed with what he said. I even mentioned it on a comment on Victoria Ponders.
From an article from March 15, 2024 on CNBC by Tom Huddleston Jr. called “Success requires ‘ample doses of pain,’ billionaire Nvidia CEO tells Stanford students: ‘I hope suffering happens to you.’
Jensen Huang has a simple message for young people who want to achieve “greatness”: No pain, no gain.
That was essentially the Nvidia CEO’s message for students at his alma mater, Stanford University, where he spoke last week at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.
“Greatness is not intelligence. Greatness comes from character. And character isn’t formed out of smart people, it’s formed out of people who suffered,” Huang said at the event, in response to a question about how students can maximize their shot at being successful.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/15/nvidia-ceo-huang-at-stanford-pain-and-suffering-breeds-success.html
Nvidia is one of the world’s most valuable companies with the high demand for their chips used in AI. Huang has been CEO of the company for three decades and has experienced ups and downs and had to lay off half of his employees at one time. He believes that the pain and suffering his company has experienced and their resilience is why they are successful today.
“People with very high expectations have very low resilience”
In the article, Huang is quoted as saying he has very low expectations but believes the students at Stanford have high expectations because of their elite education.
Often “people with very high expectations have very low resilience,” he went on, because they are not accustomed to, or prepared for, failure.
“Unfortunately, resilience matters in success,” he said. “I don’t know how to teach it to you except for I hope suffering happens to you.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/15/nvidia-ceo-huang-at-stanford-pain-and-suffering-breeds-success.html
Do you agree with the statement that people with high expectations have low resilience? Why or why not?
Do you believe resilience is formed through pain and suffering, or are some people born with it?
