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More than twenty years ago, just two days before Christmas, nineteen-year-old Jami Goldman and her friend Lisa Barzano headed home for the holidays from a Colorado ski trip. Jami and her friend never imagined they would end up sliding into a snow bank and getting stuck on an Arizona back road that state troopers had closed without checking for travelers in distress. They endured three days and nights of a freezing snow storm that all but buried their Chevy Mini-Blazer. The car battery died during the first night, stranding the girls in below-zero temperatures. When the snow stopped, they gave up the idea of leaving the SUV as the surrounding snow was thigh-high. Instead they sat in sub-zero temperatures with a cinnamon roll and a frozen six-pack of Diet-Pepsi. Freezing, thirsty and hungry, they languished for ten painful days and eleven nights, wondering why no one had found them. At home, Jami’s parents launched a huge statewide search to no avail. The girls, close to unconscious, were discovered randomly by a man and his son on snow mobiles. Jami’s limbs were frost-bitten, beyond redemption and she was nearly dead. Once she was revived, Jami faced the harsh reality her legs would have to be amputated before the spreading gangrene would kill her.
Before the incident Jami was not much of an athlete and really did not exercise. Her main concern in the days before the operation was if she would ever walk again. Her medical staff insisted that she needed to exercise as part of recovery; within 48 hours she was using a walker and taking her first steps with her new prosthetic legs. As a part of her continued physical therapy, she started working out in the pool and within 6 months, she no longer needed a walker. She found she really enjoyed working out and decided to start running. The irony is Jami had to lose her legs in order to discover she had a skill set for running. Four years after her surgery, Jami started running competitively and set her sights on the 2000 Para-Olympics in Australia. Around the same time Adidas approached Jami to participate in an advertising campaign; Jami’s commercial took the media by storm and she received an overwhelming outpouring of positive feedback from the prosthetics community. She did compete in Australia in the 200, where she broke the 200 meter record. Jami has since gone on to become a motivational speaker, a published author, has appeared in two major motion pictures, a major athletic commercial, became an elementary school teacher, as well as a wife and mother. In an interview she was asked if she would want to have her legs back. She said, “Right now, no. My prosthetics define me. They are part of who I am, I am exactly the person I want to be.”
Champions like Jami understand that adversity is the catalyst to mental toughness and success. If you remove adversity, you remove the joy of victory. I often say, “You are either getting better or getting worse, you never stay the same.” Adversity pushes us to grow and learn. Average people choose the path of least resistance; where as successful people perform at higher levels of awareness, and understand the challenges they face make them stronger. Adversity to the average equals pain. Adversity to the successful is their training ground to success. Don’t get me wrong, successful people don’t welcome adversity, but instead view it through the lenses of learning and the opportunity to grow. Think about how you made it through a tough time in your personal or professional life and how it applies to this quote from J. Marriott, “Good timber does not grow with ease; the stronger the wind, the stronger the trees.”
