The Resilience pledge – “I will always place my mission first. I will never accept defeat. I will never quit” – rang through the auditorium at Cardinal O’Hara High School, as Duncan Kirkwood, a global resilience advocate, made a return trip to the Tonawanda school on Feb. 1.
Kirkwood is a veteran, father of three, and recognized authority on psychological resilience. He has spent his professional life working to empower students, educators, organizations and communities. His mission is to ensure everyone can learn the critical tools to become the most resilient and best version of themselves. He currently serves as Resiliency director at Villa Maria College in Buffalo. He hopes his talk at O’Hara moves the students 10 percent further and 10 percent faster on their journey to success.
He spoke on ego, perseverance, responding vs. reacting, and purpose.
The first thing Kirkwood did after taking to the stage was to ask the students to write down something that has stopped them from being the best version of themselves; how that made them feel? what did they need to get through that? and why didn’t you ask for help? Then he instructed them to tear the paper and throw the scraps into a box.
“This is you letting that go,” Kirkwood said. “This is you saying that won’t stop me from being great anymore.”
Addressing the proper definition of ego, Kirkwood said, “Ego is the part of ourselves that tells us who we are in comparison to other people and other things. So, the ego will tell you, ‘I’m an artist’ or ‘I’m a democrat’ or ‘I’m a republican’ and it connects who you are to something.”
The downside is if you connect your value as a person to titles and material goods, then lose those, you feel like a part of you died. Anything that can be taken away from you cannot define you.
“You’ve got to let go of this ego thing that’s going to keep telling you that you’re not as good as them because their Tik Tok got 10,000 followers,” he said.
Kirkwood, who was rejected from two colleges and lost two elections for the Erie County Legislature, had to recalibrate how he saw those events. He doesn’t see failures as a bad thing. Connecting failure to negative emotions will make you stop trying.
“You’re actually not a loser because you didn’t get picked by the track team. You’re not a failure because you failed. The things you go through actually help you. They make you stronger and better,” he explained.
The reason he is able to be there speaking to them, and go on to speak in Africa the next week, is because he lost those elections. If he was elected, he’d be pricing salt trucks instead of speaking to the students. He said his life is 10 times better than if he had won.
In closing, he encouraged the students to respond to negative stimuli with thought of the future and not to react out of a preprogrammed instinct. Kirkwood learned to do this after getting kicked out of Buffalo Academy for the Performing Arts because he reacted to a situation rather than considering the consequences.
“We have thousands of these programmed reactions all day, every day on autopilot. We’re not using our willpower or our thoughts. We’re just reacting over and over,” he said. “You’re responsible for your choices.”