What Doesn't Kill You Gives You Knowledge, Power, and Inspiration

[edited 3/21/26 for clarity]

Aus der Kriegsschule des Lebens. — Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker (Out of life’s school of war—What does not kill me makes me stronger).

— Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, 1889

This is a slightly uncomfortable post for me, because it’s very personal. I often say my life is an open book and am not shy about sharing personal stories and details with others. However, putting this in writing on a blog feels a little scary. I’ve chosen to reframe that feeling as “uncomfortably excited” in the hopes that it might help someone out there. So here goes.

I’m generally a pretty chill person and I’m not easily stressed out or worried. I also tend to have a positive outlook and make decisions fairly quickly without deliberating or researching extensively. When people ask me for advice or want to know how I built this skill, I tell them that who I am today, my identity and my approach to life, is due in large part to three seminal life events.

I am not where I am because of good luck. These were not happy events; in fact, they were undeniably difficult ones. Don’t get me wrong, I've been fortunate in many ways, but I owe a lot to the difficult times. These events have all played an immense role in shaping my worldview, values, and resilience.  

Content warning: Please note that the following stories include discussions of death, so if this topic could be troubling for you, skip right past the stories to the 3 Gifts Technique. On the other hand, I found writing about these experiences helpful and cathartic even after many years, so I’ve also published more detailed versions of the stories.

Loss of a Parent

When I was 18, just before fall quarter finals in college, my mom died. She'd been diagnosed with cancer when I was 6, but my parents sheltered us from the severity of her illness. While she occasionally went away for surgery and lost her hair due to chemotherapy, my parents kept our life as normal as possible. When she passed away, it was my first experience with death and my first funeral. 

In addition to grieving the loss of my mom, I returned to school the following quarter having to make up my final exams while starting a new set of classes. It was extremely stressful but I caught up in about a month. And eventually, I learned how to move on. The experience brought me closer to my father, because he and my brother were the only ones who understood what I was going through. 

Prior to this, I had an innocent and happy childhood without facing any major difficulties, so this was the first time I had dealt with this level of pain and suffering. I learned who I could truly count on when I was struggling, what real friendship meant, and that I could survive devastating loss.

Detailed version of this story

Natural Disaster

After I graduated from college, I moved to Kobe, Japan, for my first real job. About 6 months later, there was a massive earthquake (the Great Hanshin earthquake of 1995, 6.9 magnitude, 7.3 on the Richter scale) that destroyed buildings, roads, and other infrastructure and claimed over 6000 lives. I was living alone in an apartment on the second floor of a building that partially collapsed. I was displaced for several months, living in various hotels in Osaka and Kyoto and working in a temporary office space. 

Since I had limited ties to Japan at the time, I was 90% sure I'd leave. But ultimately, I decided to stay. Over the next three years, I witnessed Kobe's remarkable rebuilding and the resilience of its residents. I volunteered to help clean up homes that were ravaged by the earthquake, and saw how little material possessions mattered in comparison to human life.

Detailed version of this story

Divorce

I got married when I was pretty young (25), and it was not a healthy relationship. After years of counseling, mostly on my own, I made the very difficult decision to get a divorce. Though I felt confident it was right, and though it was a relief, I felt confident that it was the right choice for me, and it was not a friendly parting, I still felt torn apart.

I expected to spend my life with this person, and suddenly half of my identity was gone. It was as if someone I loved had died, except I could run into them any time. It was a huge financial burden, too; lawyers are not cheap, and we opted for a one-time settlement instead of me paying ongoing alimony (we did not have kids). I had to borrow money from my 401K to cover the costs. 

I lived in a fog for months, and at one point rear-ended a pickup truck with my tiny Prius and had to deal with the car repair. I felt like the divorce was my fault because of the poor decisions I had made, marrying someone despite the red flags because I naively thought he would change after we got married. Ha!

I was pleasantly surprised by the overwhelming support from family and friends, after years of hiding my shame and not telling anyone about a lot of what was going on in my marriage because I didn’t want to turn people against my husband. They supported my decision and showed no judgment.

Still, I was resigned to being alone for the rest of my life as penance for my mistake. Miraculously, the following year, I met an amazing man who loves me just as I am and is better than I could have imagined or believed that I deserved. And I learned from my mistakes so I could be a better partner.

The 3 Gifts Technique

Recently, I enrolled in Shirzad Chamine's Positive Intelligence PQ program, which introduced me to the 3 Gifts Technique. I love that it provided a framework for how to turn a crisis into a gift, which is something I had learned to do implicitly through my experiences. Whenever we face a difficult situation or crisis, we can choose to stay in negative thoughts, or turn it into a gift or opportunity, and this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The Gift of Knowledge

Ask yourself: What learning or knowledge would I need to gain so the future payoff could exceed the current pain or cost I'm experiencing?  Imagine how you might put that knowledge to practice and create good results.

For example, let’s say you experience a failure. If you reflect on what went wrong and how to remedy it, your gift is that you'll be more successful in the future. You can do this by actively asking yourself questions. If instead you choose denial or self-pity, you'll miss this opportunity.

The Gift of Power 

Ask yourself: Which power or strength must grow in order to handle this? Shirzad talks about the Sage powers: empathize, explore, innovate, navigate, activate. Think of them as mental muscles. What gift does growing that power give me during this challenge and in other parts of my life?  

To use my personal tragedies as an example, they made me more empathetic to others in similar situations and helped me navigate future challenges.

The Gift of Inspiration

Ask yourself: What inspiring action can I take that I wouldn't have if this “bad" thing hadn't happened? Set an intention to create something so positive that the current price, your pain, seems trivial: the bigger your crisis, the bigger your intention needs to be. The action becomes your gift. 

Related: Shirzad shares a compelling example of the Gift of Inspiration in this short video.

To be clear, the 3 Gifts Technique isn't about suppressing our feelings and forcing ourselves to “think positive”. My own processing of a crisis usually goes something like this: 

Oh…this is not good! I can’t believe this is happening to me. This really sucks! I don’t like it. This can’t be real. This is really bad. I’m not going to take this! How do I take control to change it, and who can help me? Ok, this can't be undone, as much as I don’t like it. Did I mention I am not happy about it? Now, how do I make myself feel better?

The process can take anywhere from seconds to months, and we must honor our feelings first. But once you get to the question about what you're going to do about it, you’ve reached the Fork in the Road, the point where you choose your self-fulfilling prophecy.

If you dwell in negative thoughts, you often remain stuck. But if you choose to reframe your situation using the 3 Gifts Technique, you can create good.

I’ve already applied this unconsciously in a few situations.

Before the pandemic, I taught yoga at a local studio that closed during lockdown. I pivoted to a virtual donation-based class and over the course of 2 months, raised $1300 that went to multiple Covid relief funds. I started this blog before Google laid off of 12,000 employees in 2023, and that inspired several articles.

Going forward, I’m looking forward to applying 3 Gifts to intentionally convert both minor and major crises.

More on this topic:

• Watch Sydney Cummings’ Ted Talk on resilience and emerging from your tragedies even stronger.

• Read Positive Intelligence or listen to the audio book.